How to make your brand’s Twitter, Facebook profile pic work in new circle format

‘Top heavy’ logos

Some logos work well either in squares or within an imaginary square space, but need to be carefully placed within the circular shape to avoid an awkward “top heavy” look.

NBC News, for example, has a simple and straightforward profile photo — the NBC peacock stacked atop its distinctive logotype.

The issue is, however, that while the logo itself is centered horizontally, it’s not centered vertically. Instead it’s placed higher in the space.

This does allow the entire logo to be shown within the circular space without any awkward cropping and doesn’t look bad per se (and, indeed, may have been done this way bey design), but there is an awkward bit of negative space below the words “NBC News.”

Note that this issue can also pop up if the logo is farther down the vertical axis, too.

The fix: While this layout isn’t bad per se, it’s still worth being wary of. The most straightforward alternative is to shrink the logo down bit so that it can all fit, centered, within the vertical space. Of course, this does tend to mean the logo will be smaller and perhaps less impactful, so a layout like NBC News’ is a decent solution. Other options might include, in the NBC example, keeping the logotype the same size but bumping the peacock’s size down a bit so there’s equal space above it as under the letters. A final option, if possible, is to add another design element or even a “.com” tagline under the logo, if appropriate.

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