How small your logo can go before it stops working

In Australia. The test is the same everywhere. Australian printers and signwriters work in millimetres, so every size here is given in mm.

The sizes to test at

60mm	signage, print
20mm	business card
10mm	the floor
Where they are printed	at actual size on A4, in the guidelines document with every kit and logo template

A logo does not fail gradually. It works, and then at some size it turns to mush. Finding that size takes about five minutes and a printer.

What sizes does a logo have to work at?

Most businesses use a logo at four sizes: 60mm, 20mm and 10mm wide in print, and about 16 pixels on screen. There is no universal minimum, only the smallest size you will use.

• 60mm wide. Letterhead, a folded menu, a sign read from a few metres. This is comfortable and almost nothing fails here.
• 20mm wide. A business card. This is where thin strokes and fine detail start to go.
• 10mm wide. A stamp, an embroidered polo, a swing tag, the corner of an invoice. The floor for most marks.
• 16 pixels. A browser tab favicon, an app icon at its smallest. Nothing with more than one idea in it survives here.

The first three are the sizes the guidelines document in every purchase prints at actual scale on an A4 page, so the test is holding paper rather than judging a logo on a screen at an unknown zoom.

What breaks when a logo gets too small?

Counters close, thin strokes vanish, tight spacing merges and detail turns to noise, roughly in that order as the size comes down.

Counters close. A counter is the enclosed space inside a shape: the hole in an a, the gap between a crescent and the ring around it. As a mark shrinks, ink spreads slightly on paper and pixels round on screen, and those gaps fill. A mark whose counters have closed reads as a dark blob rather than a form. This is the commonest failure, and it sets the floor.

Thin strokes vanish. A hairline that looks elegant at 60mm is thinner than one printer dot at 10mm. It disappears, or prints broken. Monoline logos, drawn entirely at one uniform thin weight, fail here first.

Tight spacing merges. Two elements that sit clearly apart at 60mm sit a sixth of that distance apart at 10mm, which is inside the tolerance of most printing. The mark and the wordmark touch, and letters run together.

Detail becomes noise. A mark with a scene in it, a building with windows or a tree with individual leaves, carries more information than a square 10mm across can hold. It does not read as a simplified version of itself. It reads as texture.

How do you test a logo at small sizes?

Print it at three sizes on plain paper and judge it standing up. A screen misleads, because you do not know its pixel density and you will lean in.

1. Place your logo in a document at 60mm wide, then again at 20mm, then at 10mm. Type the measurements in rather than dragging a corner.
2. Print on plain paper at full size, with any "fit to page" or "scale to fit" option off. That setting silently changes every measurement on the sheet.
3. Put the paper on a table and stand up. Do not lean in.
4. Photocopy the sheet once and look at the copy too. A photocopy is a fair stand-in for the worst reproduction your logo will ever meet.
5. At each size ask one question: can you still tell what the shape is, and are the gaps still gaps.

Two more checks worth thirty seconds. Print it in black only, because a mark that needs colour to be legible will fail on a stamp, a photocopy and an embroidery machine. And look at it from arm's length, which approximates the mark at half the size.

What should you do when a logo fails at small sizes?

Make a second version for small use. A real identity has more than one lockup, and the small one is allowed to be a different drawing. Redrawing the whole logo simpler leaves one compromised mark that is slightly weak everywhere.

• A monogram. Initials or a single letter, set in the same face as the wordmark. The standard answer for a favicon and a social avatar.
• The mark alone. Drop the words. A name illegible at 10mm contributes noise, and the mark by itself is usually still recognisable.
• A reduced mark. The same idea with the finest detail removed: one fewer ring, a heavier stroke, no inner detail. It should still read as the same logo from across a room.
• A different arrangement. Sometimes the problem is proportion rather than detail. A wide lockup at 10mm tall is illegible where the same elements stacked are fine.

Where should the minimum size be written down?

Write the minimum down and give it to whoever reproduces your work. A line reading "do not reproduce below 10mm wide" takes a sign writer ten seconds to read, and prevents the version of your logo that arrives on a van too small, with the counters filled in.

Embroidery deserves its own note. Thread has a minimum stroke it can hold, usually somewhere around a millimetre, and an embroiderer will simplify your artwork to fit whether or not you were asked. Sending a reduced version you have approved is better than receiving their interpretation of the full one.

How do BrandLaunch templates handle small sizes?

Every kit and logo template ships a monogram beside the primary lockup, so the small version exists before you need it. The guidelines document with every kit and logo template prints the mark at 60mm, 20mm and 10mm at actual size, with a note that below 10mm the monogram takes over. The marks are drawn as solid forms with modulated weight rather than uniform thin outlines, specifically so they hold at 16 pixels where a monoline dissolves.

None of that removes the need to print your own and look. Your business name is a different length from the one in the template, and length changes how a lockup behaves as it shrinks.

Common questions

What is the minimum size for a logo?

For most marks, about 10mm wide in print and 16 pixels on screen. That is a floor rather than a target: below it the enclosed gaps inside shapes fill in and the mark reads as a blob. Marks with finer detail have a higher floor, and the only way to know yours is to print it and look.

Why does my logo look blurry on a business card?

Usually one of two things. Either the artwork is a low-resolution raster being printed at 300dpi, in which case you need the vector file, or the mark has detail and thin strokes that cannot survive at 20mm. The first is a file problem and the second is a design problem.

Do I need a different logo for a favicon?

A different version, not a different logo. At 16 pixels a full lockup is unreadable, so use a monogram or the mark on its own. It should read as the same identity, just not the same drawing.

How do I test a logo for embroidery?

Print it at the finished size, photocopy the print, and judge the copy. Thread cannot hold strokes much under a millimetre, so anything finer than that on your test will be simplified by the embroiderer. Give them a version you have approved instead.

Can I just scale my logo down?

Only if it still works. A real identity has more than one lockup, and the small one is allowed to be a different drawing: a monogram, the mark without the words, or a reduced version with the finest detail removed.