Written by Richard Baird, founder of LogoArchive, the world’s largest historical logo book with over 5,500 curated logos, and of LogoHistories, home to 200+ in-depth logo histories.
A continuous line logo is drawn, or appears to be drawn, from a single unbroken stroke. Letters join, shapes flow into one another, and the eye follows the line from beginning to end.
The technique brings a natural sense of flow, connection and movement. It suits transport, communications and networks, where an unbroken line can describe a route, a signal or a connection.
Allan Fleming’s 1960 logo for Canadian National Railway joins the letters C and N into one continuous red line, soon nicknamed the ‘CN worm’. The brief asked for a mark that was bilingual, efficient and progressive, and that worked everywhere from business cards to fast-moving trains.
Yusaku Kamekura’s 1985 logo for NTT, developed with PAOS, is a circle with a loop dropping into its centre, known as the ‘dynamic loop’. Kamekura tested variations in line thickness and loop size before settling on the final form.
A continuous line can also create shapes in the space around it. Bruce Blackburn’s 1975 American Revolution Bicentennial logo forms a five-point star in the negative space of looping ribbons.
Marcel Wyss’s 1958 logo for Fourrures Bernhard loops a single heavy line into a figure of eight, as simple and fluid as a signature.
The challenge is control. A single line has to be legible as letters or symbols, consistent in weight and confident in its curves, or the effect quickly becomes a scribble.
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