Personally, I think a beautiful wordmark is the epitome of clarity and functionality. Too often, it seems the pure text solution suffers a bit of an inferiority complex in comparison to its sibling, the graphic logo. It’s just this insecurity that often leaves a typographic solution needlessly busting every move it can to be more competitive. How does type assure itself it will be recognized as a logo and not just another piece of text on the page? In the continuing appropriation of digital devices, the lowly text highlight box resurfaces to underscore the importance of “so much type.” Imagine drawing your cursor over a sentence and seeing a graphic text box encompassing your selection. That’s where the eye is directed as the highlight enunciates, “this is the important part.”
Appropriated from broader industry use, the highlighted artifact has found its place behind headlines on Bloomberg or Fast Company online to allow text to float over a photo or graphic. It now finds itself serving as more than just a box but with greater importance. From an identity standpoint, this lends itself to a technical personality or finds itself equally comfortable when a client is dealing in language or words as its trade. Here it frames out a name like Mozilla, the free software community. A mark that could well have stood on it’s own but that with the encapsulating box gives viewers a trigger to help them visualize this word on their screens.
 TYPOTHEQUE, MOZILLA |
 NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA, 3 DEEP |
 WHEELHOUSE COLLECTIVE, SCOTT BLAKE |
 COREY MCPHERSON NASH, DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS |
