If you’re a company with multiple branches, divisions, or properties, you’ve probably faced the struggle of creating logos for multiple entities. While there is excitement in any logo creation process, it can be difficult to decide the relationship between each of your companies’ logos. There are benefits to having similar logos for all of your companies, just like there are benefits to keeping the designs relatively separate. The good news is that it’s completely up to you! Here are HighRock’s guidelines for logo creation across multiple entities:

Decide on Your Brand’s Relationships

How your family of logos relate to each other is based on a variety of factors:

• How are the companies related? Are they affiliates, sub-divisions, parent and child company, etc? Consider how closely companies are tied to each other and how that might affect brand equity.
• Who is your demographic market? Does this demographic differ from that of the other companies in my brand? If so, what will appeal to my new demographic?
• How will I want to market this company? What characteristics will I want to highlight? The bottom line for logo and asset design is to create something that helps you achieve your final goal – selling your product.
• What elements can I use to tie my logos together? Depending on how you’ve decided to link your companies, there are multiple design elements that can be used separately or in conjunction with one another to create relationships between logos. Below is our list of elements that can make logo relationships clear.

How to Create Cohesive Branding Across Company Lines

Choose a Color Palette

One strong factor that can tie brands together is a similar color palette. When creating logos and other branding materials for real estate firm, Matan, HighRock created designs that incorporated the same dark blue, light blue, and green that are a part of their main corporate branding. The fonts and logo designs look nothing alike, but they are connected through the common usage of color.

Play with Font Choice

Another element that can be used to tie your brands together is font choice. Depending on the degree of connection you want your brands to share, you can either stick to the same font for all your logos or just stay in the same font family. Mixing fonts can create an interesting and varied aesthetic to your branding, but not all fonts are created equal – make sure you get a designer’s input when mixing fonts. HighRock created logos for two affiliated companies, the Independent Cinema Alliance and the Cinema Buying Alliance.  The logos are similar in their design and font choice, creating a close connection between companies.

Incorporate Similar Shapes

Logos can be linked by similar shapes and design elements. If your main logo features a circle, one way to connect your sub-logos would be to include a circle or other round elements or rounded fonts. For example, although affiliated, HighRock Group and HighRock Studios have completely different logos. These logos feature different color palattes, but they’re linked by the same font and a similar design element — diagonal lines. The use of the lines varies – for HighRock Group, the line appears as a border of the text box and for HighRock Studios, it’s featured in the shape of the triangle in the logo.

Create a Brand Guide

Once you’ve settled on your logo designs, the next step is to create a brand guide. The brand guide will outline the ins and outs of your branding for each company. Your brand guide should delineate what colors, shapes, and fonts should and shouldn’t be used for each logo. In setting creative bounds, you should also leave room for growth if you need to have more logos created in the future. Outline the possibilities of what could be, not what is.

Want to start building a family of logos? Need to connect some existing branding? HighRock is your team!

About the Author: Jeremy Bohner, Art Director & Partner, HighRock, a Capitol Communicator sponsor.

Jeremy brings an abundance of creative talent to HighRock in the form of award winning logo, print, web, and speciality design. He graduated of Frostburg State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art and Design with a focus in Graphic Design and a Minor in Art History. Before joining the HighRock team, Jeremy worked as graphic designer/creative director for a firm in the region and pursued personal business ventures. He resides in Pennsylvania with his wife Jess, daughter Sutton, and twin boys Tegan and Kellan.