I’m thinking on a logo for my personal site that is tech/dev oriented and I’ve been curious about the use of brackets/braces/parentheses in logos. Most of these special characters have a lot of different meanings depending on the language or context, so I was wondering if there are known general meanings. Some examples and my thoughts:
<brand> // HTML/web related? </brand> // HTML/web related (but different from no slash)? [brand] // typography/design? (brand) // math? modern? {brand} // CSS or web related?
Any help or sources I can look at is greatly appreciated. The subjectiveness of this question and my lack of knowledge in the area makes Googling for information rather difficult.
Update
Here are a bunch of examples I found at random. Some are known companies, some are stock art.
(source: cloudfront.net)
That last one is extra clever because the symbols make a speaker and sound wave.
Answer
In all your samples (except perhaps the last one) they simply are a reference to web design/development.
The use is similar to a wrench used in a logo for a mechanic or plumber – it’s just what the trade uses so it’s included as part of the logo.
Note the word “code” in 99% of your samples, this is what the various brackets refer to.
< > = html
with or without the backslash
{ } = CSS, Javascript, PHP, ASP, etc.
Basically, they just mean “code”.
Without knowing what you do and do not work on, it may be wise to not use such elements if you are a designer who does not create content for the web. By using these items, many educated consumers will assume you do create web content.
The other items such as braces [ ]
or parenthesis ( )
generally don’t have a direct connotation of “code” although they are used in server-side scripting and/or javascript/jQuery. So, it could be seen as references to more advanced coding (php, asp, etc.) than simply HTML and CSS.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : lyonsinbeta , Answer Author : Scott