White space is one of those (smart) tricks to get your logo recognized, remembered and unique. We all know the Arrow in the FedEx logo. It represents the speed that FedEx want to bring to the customer and once you have seen the arrow in there you will always notice it. At least I do.

The company Gall and Gall (from the Netherlands) has recently changed their logo into a smart logo that has some kind of the same trick. The white space inside the G is formed into a bottle looking shape. This immediately sets the mind from their customers where they need to be, whine.

This trick can be compared to hidden advertisement. It’s there and the mind will pick it up without you noticing it.

But that isn’t the only sort of use with white space inside a logo. I wanted to talk a bit about the kerning and placement of the characters. The important thing about kerning is the right size of white space between the letters in the name from the company.

Kerning doesn’t only determine a lot about the company in the minds of the customers, but it also streghten the choise of fonts. For instance: when characters are placed further apart and in a serrif font, minds will have the idea that the company is more of an upscale type company. And when placed really short to each other and in a sans serif font the mind would say modern and hip.

Modern and hip.

Upscale.

I think kerning is about flow to, it must be easy to read. When it’s easy to read it’s easy to remember.

Then there is the placement of the characters (name of the company) to the mark. At my Debu design concept for an interior design agency based in the Netherlands. I’ve placed the mark at the center of the field. To get their message to their customers this company always needs to center their mark on the field. Just because that’s what it is all about, the interior design.

The characters are placed at the left top from that mark. (Notice that the space between the mark and the last character is tree times the space between two characters) This message to their customers is that the interior design is the important thing and that they are in the lead to help you with it.

Smart placement of the characters does not only give the right message to the customers, but will give let the company stand out from the crowd and get recognised.

And at the end a link for some nice inspiration on negitive white space usage in logo’s.