What is the difference between an icon and logo?

Icons and Logos are both used for visual representation. They help in recognizing and visually representing information. It is common to get confused between the two. There are some glaring differences between them, which sets them apart. So, what are those differences, the fight between an icon and logo, and can the term icon and logo be used interchangeably?

What is an icon?

An icon is a graphical representation of the actions, ideas, concepts, or analogies. It is mostly used as a replacement of some explicit text that could have identified its functionality.

What is a logo?

A logo is a primary visual representation of a brand or a company. It helps in establishing the relation between the company, its products, and the users. A logo can have text with varying typefaces and fonts to help identify the brand image and the values of the brand it is representing.

Differences between an Icon and a Logo?

• An icon has significant responsibility for being identifiable and easy to recognize. While on the other hand, a logo needs to be different and not look similar to anything else in the market. This is because the main objective of any particular logo is to represent its corresponding brand and manage to do it effectively.

• An icon should always be just a graphical symbol, whereas a logo can have text, or a company's name or value attached to it

• Icons are sparingly used in the user interface to guide the user, help him/her navigate, and identify the everyday tasks across the website, while a logo is only used as a primary identifier and mostly used in the headers of a website.

• Icons are usually of a fixed size; else, the quality might decrease. Logos that are created are generally vector-based; hence they do not lose quality.

 'No,' the term logo and the icon cannot be used interchangeably. They have the same objective because the differences between them are too crucial to ignore.