Brand Identity Essentials

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY61 Trademarks

Originality is seldom the explicit client goal of a new graphic identity project, but stretching yourself to develop a graphic identity that doesn’t look like anything else may help legally protect the mark in the marketplace.

Just like names and taglines, the law recognizes a company’s logo as its intellectual property. Of course, a designer wouldn’t intentionally create a logo that looked like an existing mark (especially in the same category or industry). However, so many logos have been developed in the last sixty years that finding common, universally understood shapes or cultural icons that haven’t already been used can be difficult.

Beginning your identity projects with research may make it harder to ...