Fabulous Favicons

When it comes to jumpstarting your branding, it makes sense to take it top down. Since the address bar is one of the first things viewers see, having a cool little favicon next to your URL builds recognition and shows surfers you know what’s up. If people bookmark your site, every time they scroll down their list of bookmarks, or favorites, they see your favicon, or “favorites icon,” once again. This gives you exposure and ingrains your branding, even before people go to your site. Plus, when viewers go overboard in using tabs and space is limited, a favicon will label your page’s tab when all the words get kicked out into oblivion.

Google has the ‘G.’ Craigslist has the peace sign. Gmail has the ‘M’ over a piece of mail. How will you make your mark?

A lot of popular sites will use the first or most prominent letter of their names in their icons, as in the two examples above. Sites like Microsoft, Wikipedia, Facebook, WordPress, and WordTracker all do this. Others, like Yahoo and Bed Bath and Beyond do that too, but mix it up a bit with an exclamation mark after the ‘Y’ and making ‘B’ to the third power.

Others stick to their main logos, like Starbucks. However, these can be hard to read if your logo is complicated, which really defeats the purpose of branding anyway. Perhaps that is why so many companies choose logos representing letters in the first place, like McDonald’s easily-recognizable golden arches. Companies with short names like eBay can also get away with using their regular logos.

Others choose some kind of symbol that marks their personality or movement, whether it is incorporated in the main logo or not. Examples are Craigslist’s peace sign, the White House’s patriotic eagle, Digg’s networking diagram, and Doba’s simple green dot.