Using Another Company’s Logo: When You Need Permission

Press releases, comparison posts, customer stories, conference slides: you end up placing other companies’ logos more often than you’d expect. Each time, the work stalls on the same two questions. Am I allowed to use this, and which file should I use?

Most of the answer comes down to three checks. Did the file come from an official source, have you left its shape alone, and does it have room around it? Below is each check in enough detail to apply.

Find the official source first

Before you search for an image, find out where the company publishes its logo. Files from image searches and roundup articles are often downscaled or several rebrands out of date, and using an old logo is as wrong as recoloring the current one.

Checking these places in order usually turns up the real file quickly:

• A “Brand”, “Press”, “Media kit” or “Logo” link in the company’s site footer
• The asset bundle attached to their press release
• Their brand guidelines, which are often distributed as a PDF
• If none of those exist, write to their contact address and ask

You can also look in a directory of official kits, such as the one on MediaKit™. For the publisher’s side of this, see why your logo needs a public download page.

Alterations to avoid

A logo isn’t stock art. It’s the mark a company is identified by, and once you change the parts that carry that identity, what you’re showing is no longer their logo. Even without their guidelines in front of you, treat the following as off limits.

One rule covers the edge cases: if you’ve produced a version they don’t publish, you’ve altered the logo. If you need a knocked-out white version and there isn’t one, ask them for it instead of making your own.

Clear space around the logo

Clear space (also called the isolation area) is the margin around a logo that nothing else may enter. Besides looking tidier, it keeps nearby elements from reading as part of the mark.

Guidelines usually define it in units of the logo itself, such as “half the height of the symbol” or “the x-height of the wordmark”. They do this on purpose: the margin has to grow with the logo, and a fixed pixel value wouldn’t. For how a logo’s owner arrives at the number, see How to Set Logo Clear Space and Minimum Size.

If you can’t find a specification, leave half the height of the symbol on all four sides. As a practical minimum for someone using the logo, that satisfies almost every guideline; if the owner publishes a value, follow theirs instead. Owners rarely object to too much space. Too little is the usual problem.

Kits published on MediaKit™ take the clear-space figure from the actual logo and state the unit it’s measured in. The download guide explains how to read it.

Minimum size and background

Minimum size

Below a certain size, the details fill in and the mark becomes hard to read. Guidelines usually set a minimum for each medium, for example “at least 24px wide on screen” or “at least 15mm wide in print”. On very small surfaces like business cards or merchandise, check whether there’s a symbol-only version before squeezing in the full lockup.

Background

With backgrounds, the question is contrast. A logo placed straight onto a photo fails because the brightness underneath changes across the mark, so no version reads cleanly. The usual fix is to put a solid panel behind the logo instead of hunting for a version that survives the photo.

What trademark and copyright each protect

A logo is covered by two separate rights at once, and mixing them up leads to the wrong decision.

Trademark

Trademark law is concerned with confusion about origin. Using someone’s mark to identify your own goods or services infringes. Using it to refer to them (generally called nominative or referential use) doesn’t interfere with that function and is broadly accepted: naming what you’re comparing against, identifying a client, or showing what a product integrates with.

Copyright

The artwork itself may also be protected by copyright (rarely for a pure wordmark, more readily for a distinctive symbol). That right covers copying, whether or not anyone is confused. Reproducing a mark for reporting, criticism or research can still be permissible as quotation, provided the usual conditions, such as necessity and attribution, are met.

When to ask, and how

Stating a fact generally doesn’t require asking. Uses that imply a relationship do:

• Putting their logo on your product or packaging in a way that reads as a partnership or certification
• Using it where it suggests they endorse you, unless they actually do
• Making another company’s logo a recurring element in your own templates or icons

What about a customer logo wall?

This is the question that comes up most. Showing that a real relationship exists is referential use, but a logo wall also reads as an endorsement, so the professional norm is to ask first. Many companies say so in their trademark policy and require written approval before you list them as a customer.

Agree up front on what happens when the relationship ends. Logos left on a customer page years after the contract lapsed are a common and avoidable embarrassment.

Four things to put in the request

If you give them everything they need to decide, the exchange takes one round trip instead of four.

1. Where it will appear: the actual URL or publication, not just “our website”
2. How it will look: the surrounding copy, whether other logos sit beside it, and the rough size. Attach a screenshot if you have one
3. For how long, and that you’ll remove it when that period ends
4. Which file from their official set you plan to use

Whether or not their guidelines require prior approval, it’s worth having a record of the exchange.

Checklist before you publish

Go through these six in order before anything goes out:

Read in reverse, the list is the set of questions the company distributing the logo should already have answered. The easier those answers are to find, the less often the mark gets used wrongly. For how to write them down, see brand guidelines for small teams.