What are the types of logos?
The standard logo types are the wordmark (the business name in distinctive type), the lettermark (initials or a monogram), the pictorial mark (a recognizable object), the abstract mark (a non-representational symbol), the combination mark (name and symbol together), and the emblem (the name enclosed in a contained shape). The categories are real; the decision that matters is which type a business can own, reproduce cleanly across every surface, and grow into.
The type is a positioning decision before it is an aesthetic one. A wordmark commits the business to its name being read, which works when the name is distinctive and worth reading and fails when it is long or generic. A combination mark hedges, giving a symbol that can eventually stand alone once the audience has learned it—the path most growing businesses actually need. The questions that decide the type are the same ones that decide the rest of the brand: whether the name carries the meaning or a symbol has to, whether the mark survives being shrunk to a favicon and stretched across a building, and whether the business will commit to one mark long enough for recognition to compound. Adjacent decisions sit beside it, like whether the logo should match the business name and whether it should include the LLC.
Where this matters
Most businesses choose a logo type by collecting examples they like, which is choosing the output without the decision behind it. The type that is right for a national brand with a known name is wrong for a new business no one can yet recognize, and the reverse holds too. The practical test is reproduction and endurance. A logo earns its type by working at every size, in one color, on every surface the business will ever use, and by being left alone long enough to become familiar. Marks that get redesigned every two years never clear the second bar, and the cost of that churn is usually larger than the cost of commissioning the mark properly once.
For where logo and identity decisions sit inside the practice’s brand work, see In Practice.