Pictorial mark
The logo is a picture of a real thing: an apple, a shell, a bird. The symbol on its own, no name attached.
See it
What it is
A pictorial mark is a logo that is a recognizable picture of an actual thing, simplified until it works as a silhouette. The Apple apple, the Shell shell, the WWF panda, the old Twitter bird. The object usually comes from the name (Shell, Apple, Target) or from the category, and the craft is in the reduction: how few curves can still say 'bird'.
Reach for one when there is a concrete image sitting inside your name or your product, and when you want an asset that reads instantly across languages. A good pictorial mark eventually detaches from the name entirely, which is why it is worth drawing early even if you ship it alongside the wordmark for the first few years.
Gotcha: the literal object can box you in. A camera icon is a problem the day you also do video, and an envelope stops meaning 'message' to anyone under twenty. The other trap is the stock-art cluster: mountains, leaves, rockets, and paper planes are already taken by several thousand brands, so pick the specific thing, not the category cliche.
Ask AI for it
Design a pictorial mark for '[BRAND]', a [CATEGORY] brand: a single recognizable [OBJECT] reduced to its simplest readable silhouette. Solid flat shape, one color, no outlines, no gradients, no shading, no text. Keep the whole mark inside a square with even visual weight, build it from a small number of clean curves, and make sure the identity of the object survives at 16px. Give me the mark on white and the same mark knocked out in white on a dark background.