What is logo clear space, and why does it matter?

A logo can be perfectly drawn and still look wrong. Often the cause isn’t the logo at all. It’s something pressing up against it: a headline, the edge of a page, a sponsor’s logo. When a logo can’t breathe, it gets harder to read and starts to look cheap.

That’s what clear space is for.

What clear space is

Clear space is the empty area left on every side of a logo, where nothing else is allowed. No text, no image, no other logo, not even the edge of the page.

It’s a simple rule. If it isn’t written down, it doesn’t last long. Someone laying out a flyer tucks the logo into a corner, nudges it a little closer to the edge, adds a headline next to it. Each step looks small. By the end, the logo is squashed.

Why x, not centimetres

Defining clear space as “1 cm on every side” looks practical at first. But a logo might be a few centimetres wide on a business card and a few metres wide on a sign. A fixed measurement ends up far too big on one and far too small on the other.

So clear space is defined with a measure taken from the logo itself, usually called x. As the logo grows, x grows with it. As it shrinks, x shrinks. The rule stays the same.

At Kischla, x is the width of the K’s upright bar, which is also the width of the chevron’s upper arm. We leave one x of space on every side of the logo and put nothing inside it.

Taze Sepet takes its measure from a different part: the diameter of the wheel in the emblem. Twice that diameter stays clear on every side. Which part you choose varies from brand to brand. What matters is that the measure comes from the logo.

Space inside the logo, too

Clear space doesn’t only protect the outside. In logos where a mark and a wordmark sit together, the gap between them needs defining as well. Otherwise the logo gets set with a slightly different gap in every new file.

Miabella’s brand guidelines (version 2, from 2025) fix the gap between the monogram and the wordmark at 1.5 times x. Whoever sets it, the spacing doesn’t drift.

Minimum size: the second rule

Clear space has a sibling: minimum size. Shrink a detailed logo far enough and its fine lines run into each other and its lettering stops being readable.

You’ve got two answers. The first is to write down the size the logo never goes below. In Taze Sepet’s guidelines, the horizontal logo stops at 35 mm in print and 140 px on screen, the vertical one at 22 mm and 90 px, and the emblem on its own at 10 mm and 24 px.

The second is to plan a separate version for small spaces. Kischla’s Instagram profile picture and the watermark on our posts don’t use the full logo, only the K. Miabella’s logo package includes the monogram on its own, next to the full logo.

How it’s shown in guidelines

In guidelines, clear space is usually drawn as small squares around the logo, each the size of x. Our own Kischla guidelines do it on 2 pages, once around the K on its own and once around the horizontal logo. Minimum size is shown with an example printed at actual size, so whoever opens the guidelines can see the limit with their own eyes.

A quick check

Pull up a few places your brand’s been used recently and ask:

• Is the space around your logo the same everywhere?
• Is it based on a written rule, or on someone’s eye?
• Where is your logo used smallest, and can you still read it there?
• Do you have a separate version for very small spaces?

Clear space is a short page in brand guidelines, but a very useful one. We walked through the other pages in What goes in brand guidelines?