That Clever Vertical Logo Comes With a Hidden Cost
Rotating logos and stacking letters may look striking on packaging, but consumers have to work harder to read them — and not every brand earns that extra effort.
Packaging designers love a good constraint. Give us a narrow bottle, a slim can, or a crowded label and sooner or later someone will turn the logo sideways, stack the letters, or break a word into pieces.
Sometimes it looks great. But there is a small problem. Human beings did not learn to read that way.
I see this often when directing packaging projects. A word gets rotated because it fills the panel better. A brand name is split across three lines because the composition feels more dynamic. Sometimes the breaks do not even follow actual syllables. The decision makes perfect sense graphically, but almost no one in the room asks what the consumer’s visual system has to do to put the word back together.