logo
Plurallogos
- 1A visual symbol or emblem that serves as a trademark or as a way of identifying a company or organization.
The designer unveiled a sleek new logo for the airline.
Over the decades, the brand redesigned its logo several times.
Similarlogotype
Note
The core sense, and a young word: logo dates from 1937, clipped from logogram or logotype. The longer logotype is still used as a synonym. A logo rarely appears alone. It is one part of an organization's visual identity, and it is expected to agree with the letterhead, the signage and the color palette around it.
- 2An audio recording that identifies a company or organization, in the same way a visual emblem does; a jingle.
The network introduced a new audio logo for its evening programs.
Their five-second sound logo plays before every video.
Note
An extension from sight to sound. What the visual emblem does on a page, a short recording does in the ear. In this sense the word usually needs a qualifier, as in audio logo or sound logo, because bare logo will be read as an image. Jingle is the everyday equivalent, and James Hammond's Branding Your Business (2011) pairs the two directly: "audio logo/jingle."
- 3A single graphic image that brings together one or more separate elements within it.
The software merged the layers into one logo for export.
A complex logo may combine type, symbol, and background as one unit.
Note
Here the word names a structure rather than an identity. In scientific usage what matters is that several separate elements are combined and handled as one image. Unlike the company emblem, this sense does not require the graphic to stand for any organization. A composite figure can be a logo in this sense without identifying anyone.
- 4
- 5A company or organization that counts as a corporate customer of a business.
The vendor celebrated landing a major logo in the tech sector.
Each new logo boosts the firm's recurring revenue.
Similarclient, account, customer
Note
Sales jargon that counts customers by their brand, a figure of speech built on the company emblem. The word is countable and takes the verbs of deal-making: a team closes, lands or wins logos, and asks how many new logos came in this quarter. It belongs to business and sales talk. In writing for a general audience, customer avoids confusion with the design sense.
Practice
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Origin
First recorded in 1937 as a clipping of 'logogram' or 'logotype'.