What’s negative space? A brief technical definition from Wikipedia is “Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image.” This creative technique strengthens a sense of simplicity and helps designers create a harmonious balance in their projects without any cluttering designs.

When it comes to logo design, negative space is applied to make the space around or between the solid colored images left blank and form a silhouette to convey a hidden message. Logos that utilize negative space design can also work effectively to grab attention by creating some curiosity for visitors. And it will guide visitors to discover the essence of the business. One of the most well known examples designed with this approach is Fedex logo. It contains a right-pointing arrow in the negative space between the “E” and the “X” to describe the business nature – global transport or movement of freight.

Now, we know that negative space can make a big difference in logo design. But do you know how to make it work perfectly for us? To give you some inspiration, I compiled the following 18 negative space logos. You may check out how designers employ this popular trick to make creative and interesting logos. Enjoy!

1. Kölner Zoo

At first glance of the Kölner Zoo logo, the main elephant silhouette shows visitors its famous animal in the zoo.  And then you may find that the whitespaces in the elephant draw the outlines of a star, a giraffe, a rhinoceros as well as the grass, or something else like the Cologne Cathedral’s twin spires. In a nutshell, this logo gives us a pictorial zoo with simple negative space designs.

2. NBC

Take a look at this famous logo for NBC. Are you impressed by the beautiful peacock designed with the negative space and six colorful feathers? To evoke its mission further, the designer also makes the peacock’s head flip to the right to suggest looking ahead or forward.

3. Paint the City

This logo has a good concept to illustrate the name “paint the city”. The designer perfectly puts the negative space to shape the skyscrapers and the red color to form the image of a bucket with spilling paint around.

4. Girl Scouts of America

It is another famous negative space logo that can be easily recognized. As Girl Scouts of the USA is a youth organization for American girls, this logo takes a good advantage of the whitespace to outline the feminine faces in a fresh visual sense.

5. Guild of Food Writers

Simplicity is the key. This logo for Guild of Food Writers uses the negative space approach perfectly. Look carefully, you will see two different images related to the industry: a pen nib associated with writers and a spoon created by negative space to express the idea of food. Although there are not any texts in this logo, visitors can guess the business nature easily.

6. MyFonts

As a beautiful flowing typography logo, MyFonts also conveys a hidden message in its word “My”. The cleverly designed negative space creates a hand to indicate the personalization of the fonts.

7. WoodenHouse

This logo is created with a clever combination of the green background and the negative space design. The white tree and the green house are really a wonderful execution.

8. duck rouge

In this logo, you can see the white graphic features a “D” and an “R” at the same time. The negative space design in the letter forms a rare North American Redhead duck. Excellent idea!

9. Seahorse Adventures

The logo of Seahorse Adventures is used to show the brand identity of entertainment industry, advertising and much more.  The distinctive design of a blue “seahorse” and the hidden image of a horse head make this logo a great negative space work.

10. Negative Reality

The designer of this logo also did a very nice job. The negative space demonstrates a letter “r” in the letter “n”. Simple but creative!

11. Ed’s Electric

This logo gives us a breath of fresh air. I am sure you will be inspired by the “E” outlined with the plugs smartly in the negative space.

12. Yoga Australia

Yes, the first image come to your eye is a figure of woman doing yoga. But, when you give a second look, you will find the shape of Australia map between the woman’s arm and leg.

13. Design Swan

It is another creative work for elegant and classy brand. The swan with a long and curved neck formed by negative space adds spice to this logo.

14. Hanuet Wine Logo

When designing a wine logo, designers always prefer to the images of bottles or glasses. However, this wine logo was designed under a unique concept. It uses the initial character “H” featured with two wine glasses in the middle.

15. Blue Dog Properties

The designer of Blue Dog Properties also uses the negative space to create a secondary image in the logo. So, can you see the white house under the horse clearly?

16. ZOORGANIC

This logo uses the negative space design to its maximum. The eagle with other animals of a horse and a dog carved by white spaces really brings life to this logo.

17. Gaucho Wine

Gaucho Wine focuses on importing high quality Argentine wines into the New Zealand market. Its logo gives a professional sense with the head of a bull and a wine glass from the negative space to define the company name.

18. Empire Dentistry

Designed for a dentistry business, the old Roman style helmet in this logo may disturb the mission to comfort patients before they receive treatment. But the tooth image within the negative space is definitely very fantastic.

Share Your Thoughts

What do you think about these good examples? Do you have any other impressive negative space logo designs to share? Please drop a comment below.