The logo soup problem (and how to solve it)

Written by Rostislav Melkumyan

You know the scenario. Marketing sends over a folder labeled "Partner Logos Final FINAL v3." Inside: a chaotic mix of file formats, each logo arriving with its own special quirks.

Some are perfectly cropped SVGs with transparent backgrounds . Others are PNGs with mysterious amounts of padding baked in, as if someone screenshotted them from a website and called it a day. One has a thick stroke that makes it look bold and confident. Another is just a thin wordmark that practically whispers its existence.

You line them up in a row, and they look like a ransom note.

You try making them all the same width. Now the square logos tower over everything else like skyscrapers, while the wide ones shrink into illegibility. You try making them all the same height instead. Now the wide logos dominate the entire row like billboards, and the compact ones vanish into the background. You manually adjust each one, tweaking widths and heights until they look somewhat balanced. It works. Until next week, when three more logos arrive.

This is the logo cloud problem. It's not glamorous. It's not the kind of thing that makes it into conference talks or gets you promoted. But it's real, it's annoying, and it eats up more time than anyone wants to admit.

The usual suspects

Let's talk about some real examples, all great logos in their own right. It’s when you try to put them together you’re getting into a bag of hurt.

Take logos like Nordstrom or Frontier. These are wide wordmarks, roughly 8:1 aspect ratio. Put them next to something like Sanity's square logo (1:1), and the difference is jarring. Then there's Browser Company, which manages to be both nearly square (1.44:1) and impossibly thin at the same time, somehow occupying visual space while barely registering on the retina.

Or consider the extremes. Good American's logo clocks in at a staggering 15.65:1 aspect ratio. It's essentially a horizontal line with letters. On the other end, you have logos like Rich Brilliant Lighting at 0.87:1, which are actually taller than they are wide. Put these in the same row using naive sizing, and you get visual chaos.

The problem gets worse when you factor in visual weight. Some logos are dense and solid, like Unity or Supreme. They're blocky, filled with color, and they command attention. Others, like Conductor or Frame, are mostly negative space with thin letterforms. Even if you get the dimensions right, the dense logos still feel heavier, like they're shouting while the thin ones are mumbling.

So how do you actually solve this without spending hours and hours tweaking with specific styles and Figma edits?

Yep, you use maths™.

Sprinkle some PINF on it

Turns out, there's a mathematical approach that actually works. It's called the Proportional Image Normalization Formula, a grandiose name for what is essentially grade school math dressed up in production code. The core insight comes from Dan Paquette, who wrote about this problem years ago. His formula looks like this: