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What are good strategies for making a logo (involving only fonts) so that spacing and relative position scale well, specially one with intersections where characters needs to be adjusted like for example in:

enter image description here

If the logo includes a graphics, there is almost always a clear choice for TikZ that can deal with all elements.

Take into account that logos frequently need to be colored to account for a background, etc ... An answer should contain precise code that behaves well under scaling and coloring.

Paulo Ney
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  • Fonts may not be easily transferable across all platforms / users for universal portability was thus invented PDF with embeded fonts IMHO the best alternative to that is SVG –  May 19 '19 at 13:24
  • @KJO The final transport method is almost always PDF - no doubt - but the ways to make and use a logo can be quite different. Besides resizing one may need to change its color to account for a background, etc ... – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 13:32
  • The need for modifications whilst format is W3c compatible is my reason for suggesting SVG built from importing the initial fonts –  May 19 '19 at 13:34
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    I suspect that this is "too broad" or (for actual creation possibly off topic) most "logos" are fixed things that can't be re-coloured, companies spend lots of money deciding on corporate colour schemes, I think that for anything that I would call a "logo" including it as PDF is a reasonable option. – David Carlisle May 19 '19 at 13:40
  • @DavidCarlisle, in general corporate identities are provided in long lists of color choices, but that is mostly a restriction imposed by the technology. – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 13:45
  • @DavidCarlisle totally agree that it is not TeX and subjective however I have often had to import logos into other materials / graphics apps and SVG is usually easier for import than PDF –  May 19 '19 at 13:45
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    @KJO in general yes but unless you are using dvisvgm then importing an svg into a tex document requires converting it to pdf first so it comes to the same thing in the end: make a pdf logo by some off topic means, perhaps involving svg, then include it at an appropriate scale, – David Carlisle May 19 '19 at 13:50
  • @DavidCarlisle on-topic you are 100% correct however I think the question is subjective outgoing rather than objective incoming :-) –  May 19 '19 at 13:52
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    Maybe this helps? –  May 19 '19 at 14:06
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    I think it would help if you made your query more directly related to TeX, LaTeX, and friends. – Mico May 19 '19 at 14:07
  • @Mico, the question is directly about TeX. Most likely the best strategy is to write a TeX macro accepting colors (the above logo has 2) and size. Amon the advantages is easy experimentation with color and sizes. Color is an easy issue, positioning and sizing under scalability is probably not. It would be nice to see an scalable code for this type of logos. The people that keep posting about corporate not allowing coloring is completely missing the point. – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 16:45
  • @marmot, I fail to see how the recipe put out by Heiko would beat something as simple as calling a macro with the color and size specified. The logo above has fine nuances in position and spacing which are key to the question. – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 17:56
  • @PauloNey I thought your problem is that the fonts will depend on the ambient document. Another thing you could do is to use a standalone document that gets called from the main document, which also defines a, say, tikz style that defines the color, sth like \documentclass[tikz]{standalone} \begin{document} \ifstandalone \tikzset{my style/.style={color=blue}} \fi \begin{tikzpicture} \draw[->,my style] (0,1cm)--++(4,-5); \end{tikzpicture} \end{document} and then \tikzset{my style/.style={color=red}}\includestandalone[mode=tex]{sub}. –  May 19 '19 at 19:34
  • Yes, I definitely think this would be more useful... and one can even push it further with a small package that loads the needed fonts and draws it -- the hard part is making it scalable. – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 19:50

1 Answers1

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Compile it as a standalone document to create a pdf (or eps) that only has your logo. In this document all the adjustments for overlapping letters etc can be done manually.

This pdf can then be included in all other documents via \includegraphics which makes sure that it will scale well.

Edit: to address the addition about changing the colour

I think this is the wrong approach. The colour of a logo should not be changed, the colour of a logo is part of the logo. If there should be different versions with different colours, then they should be provided as separate files, but users should not alter the logo itself, this would violate the purpose of any corporate design.

Take this logo for example:

enter image description here

The colour is just as iconic as the shape of the logo. For most people it is enough to see the specific colour to think about this company. Now imagine someone would recolour it to

enter image description here

while the shape is the same, it is no longer this easy to recognise.

For example my company provides three versions of the logo:

  • one with transparent background
  • one with white background and some additional margin to use in situations where the normal logo would be hard to read
  • and a colour inverted version with white font and transparent background to use on dark background (e.g. on our tshirts)

I never had to adjust any colour, one of these versions always worked fine.

  • This would not allow the logo to be colored with an specific color which is a big limitation in logos. – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 13:28
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    @PauloNey The colour of a logo should not be changed, the colour of a logo is part of the logo. If there should be different versions with different colours, then they should be provided as separate files, but users should not alter the logo itself, this would violate the purpose of any corporate design. –  May 19 '19 at 13:30
  • @PauloNey For example my company provides three versions of the logo: one with transparent background, one which white background and some additional margin to use in situations where the normal logo would be hard to read and a colour inverted version with white font and transparent background to use on dark background (e.g. on our tshirts). I never had to adjust any colour, one of these versions always worked fine. –  May 19 '19 at 13:38
  • most corporate identities establish a limited choice of colors for theis logos -- but that is not by design -- it is because of the limitation of the technology being used. Most corporate identities are provided in PNG/JPG format, so the limitation on coloring. If you are printing on a red T-shirt you do not want a red logo. TeX is specially suited in this regard, it allows end-users to adjust sizes, colors, etc ... as needed. The only other possibility I see coming close is SVG... but I am open to all solutions ... – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 13:42
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    @PauloNey Limiting the colour choices are done by design not because of limited technical possibilities. A logo should be easy to recognise. This is achieved not only by the specific shape but also by always using the same colour. People will connect a specific colour with a specific brand. –  May 19 '19 at 13:46
  • Well this question is about -- changing a logo -- size, color, etc ... – Paulo Ney May 19 '19 at 13:48
  • @PauloNey The logo size is covered and the colour a) was only added to the question after I posted my answer and b) is wrong to change. –  May 19 '19 at 13:58