Trademark (TM) must be unique and memorable for consumers and serves to individualize the company's goods and services, and is also an important element of the company's corporate identity. TK can be verbal, visual, volumetric, sound and combined, combining all the elements listed above.

When creating its verbal part, as a rule, a regular or designer font is used and stylization techniques can be applied, as well as for visual elements, which should carry the most complete information about the company.

Every year it becomes more and more difficult to create original trademarks, since due to the huge number of new market participants, tens, or even hundreds of thousands of new trademarks are registered every year (for example, in 2020, there were 64.4 million active trademarks in the world).

In a rapidly developing business and an incredibly huge number of newly registered trademarks, it is becoming increasingly difficult to create unique signs, and therefore each owner engages a team of designers and marketers who bring the designation to the desired aesthetic effect using

styling techniques

(from the word "style").

The main function of styling is to

simplification

(elimination of minor details from the image), abstraction (selection of essential, regular features, properties and connections) and

transformation

(arbitrary change in size, shape, relative position of parts of the depicted object in order to fill the image with new meanings). Various ornaments, colors that are not typical for the object in reality, and combined elements of various styles are also used.

Using

styling

manages to achieve a balance between the creative execution of the visual part of the trademark and the perception of its verbal element.

As an example of stylization using its basic techniques, one can cite the dynamics of changes in the Opel trademark (

https://turbologo.ru/blog/logo-opel/?ysclid=m0f5ysoqcr166159130)

The first version appeared in 1900 and featured the initials of company founder Adam Opel - a light burgundy letter "A" inscribed in a scarlet letter "O", the vertical sides of which widen towards the center and represent diamonds.

     Further, the logo was simplified and in 1937 it already represented an airship flying through the golden letter “O”, and in 1964 the image of the airship was replaced by an image of a gray lightning bolt.

        It should be noted that the Opel brand logo changed several times: in 1906, 1910, 1937, 1947, 1954, 1964, 1987, 2002, and in 2020, the currently used version was created - flat and monochromatic with thin and graceful lines, which emphasizes the company’s business style.

Such simplification of trademark images of well-known companies occurs quite often over time.

     Young companies are also trying to use stylization techniques to create easily memorable and effective trademarks that would be easily associated with them and their products, and, in combination with the high quality of goods or services provided, would effectively contribute to increasing profits.

     However, despite the fact that a stylized trademark is a new version of the previous trademark, the differences between them can be significant, and therefore it must be registered because the overall impression of it has changed. It must be remembered that registration of a trademark is important primarily for protection from unscrupulous competitors trying to achieve early termination of its protection and subsequent assignment of a designation.

        It should be remembered that, according to current legislation, a registered trademark must be used in the form in which it is registered and without significant changes.

     Stylization of a trademark image although it makes it more original, recognizable and benefits its copyright holder, it can still cause problems during its registration. For example, certain difficulties may arise in the process of conducting a substantive examination during phonetic and semantic comparison of a designation with already registered marks due to the emergence of contradictions in the perception of their verbal part.

     Summarizing the above, I would like to note that the use of stylization techniques for long-term and successfully used designations is most often characteristic of companies that have been operating for a long time and effectively not only in the domestic but also in the international markets, since their trademark has already acquired the status of well-known. For newly created companies just starting out in the business world, it is still necessary to be careful and careful when changing their trademarks or creating new stylized signs so that they retain their distinctive properties and do not become the target of fraud and illegal use by third parties.