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.
Line logos are built from parallel lines or stripes, either forming the whole mark or running through a letterform or symbol. Few techniques are as closely associated with the modernist period.
Stripes do several things at once. They suggest speed and motion, they introduce rhythm, and they can tie separate elements together into a single unit.
Will van Sambeek’s 1969 logo for Holland America Line reduces the identity to three stacked, tapering stripes, suggesting ships moving swiftly across water.
Paul Rand’s striped IBM logo is the classic example. Rand described the stripes as an ‘attention-grabbing device’ that made the letters more memorable and suggested speed and efficiency. They also tie the I, B and M together into one form, resolving their increasing widths.
Lines can also create optical effects. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez’s logotype for Mexico 68 is drawn in parallel lines that echo the forms of the Olympic rings, and the identity extended them into radiating patterns with a kinetic, op-art quality.
Varying the thickness of lines adds movement. In the Los Angeles 1984 ‘stars in motion’, horizontal lines increase in thickness across three overlapping stars. For Moscow 1980, Vladimir Arsentiev turned lines into a running track that rises to a red star above the Olympic rings.
Friedrich Joost’s 1984 logo for the Danish shipping company TM-Line divides a solid circle with flowing white lines, like a horizon seen through waves.
Line logos have a practical side, too. Lines need careful spacing so they do not fill in when printed small, a principle shared with proximity logos, but a well-drawn line logo stays legible across print, signage and screen.
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