Denielle Emans | Bilingual Logo Design

18 Sep Bilingual Logo Design

Posted at 10:30h in Thoughts on... Typography by Denielle

One way to create a versatile logo is to begin designing in black and white. This allows you to focus on the concept and shape, rather than color, which can be subjective in nature. If your logo doesn’t look good in black & white, it won’t look good no matter what color scheme you choose.

In a landscape filled with color, black & white logos also have the ability to stand out as striking, clean and memorable. Choosing to go black & white can even help printing costs (the more colors you use, the more expensive it will be for the business over the long term).

Check out the bilingual (Arabic & Latin) logos below and consider ….

Do they even need color at all?
Did they do a good job of balancing the Arabic and Latin logos? and why?
What do the logos have in common and how are they different in the use of typography?

Now, let’s think about what color can add. Check out the new Arabic word-mark for Hard Rock Cafe created by Pascal Zoghbi, Duncan Channon and Hard Rock’s internal design team. Pascal was kind enough to share his process, justification, and final solution on his wonderfully useful and informative blog 29 Letters.

Dubai and Doha happen to be a playground of visual exploration for bilingual logo design. Everywhere you look you find signage that is written in both Latin and Arabic. Of course, each and every mall showcases logos from international companies selling their products to the diverse community. Some do a fantastic job of translating the logos and valuing the local language…. others, not so much so. Sadly, there are many that don’t have a similarly weighted Arabic counterpart for the Latin and you can see how things can go terribly wrong when designers are not versed in the Arabic language.

1. BabyShop