Can a product carry the NFC logo?

Three marks, three purposes

The NFC Forum branding page licenses three things, and confusing them is the usual mistake. The Wayfinding Mark System tells a user that an item has NFC and where to tap it. The Generation One N-Mark is the original mark, which the Forum continues to license for backward compatibility in established markets. The Certified Product Mark says a product passed certification.

Each has its own licence agreement, and the brand guidelines that govern the artwork come with it: the Forum asks licensees to download the guidelines once the agreement is complete. The order matters for a product team, because the guidelines are what a designer needs before the artwork is drawn.

What the Wayfinding Marks say

The Forum states the purpose in terms of intent rather than presence. Other wireless technologies broadcast themselves; NFC is centred on user intent, so a mark that only indicates that the technology exists is not sufficient, and the mark has to guide the user to a tapping location.

Four variations are described. Directional gives the most explicit guidance to the connection point and is aimed at tags and occasionally used devices. Simplified suits everyday cases where users are familiar with the gesture, and gives less guidance in exchange. Instructional is a complementary mark for cases where awareness is presumed to be low, showing the gesture literally. Charging is reserved for NFC charging and confirms both the function and the antenna location.

The Forum licenses the Wayfinding Marks at no charge, to members and non members alike. That is worth knowing because it removes the usual reason products ship with an invented symbol.

The site's own measurement agrees with the premise: people aim at a marked spot and wave at a blank surface, which the signage page found to be the highest return change available in a public deployment.

The Certified Product Mark

This one is not about wayfinding. It indicates that a product is NFC Forum Certified Compliant, and it may only be used with certified products, under its own licence.

The certification programme behind it is open to non members, which is unusual among standards bodies and worth saying because many teams assume otherwise. The Forum describes several routes: a fast path for products built on certified subsystems or for an operating system update with no hardware modification, a full certification with extensive digital and analog testing by an authorised test lab, and a rename route for a product already certified under another name. The flow is the same in each case: choose the certification release, complete the ICS and IXIT forms, work with a test lab, apply with the summary test report, and receive the certificate and a listing.

What the mark does not say is anything about your product beyond conformance. It is not a durability claim, not a materials claim, and not a statement that the tag suits your process. The certification page covers what a tag buyer should ask for instead.

Putting one on a product

Licence first, then draw. The guidelines arrive with the agreement and they govern size, clear space and colour, which is exactly the part a product designer wants settled before a housing is tooled.

Put the mark on the tap point rather than near it, and make it the size of the antenna area rather than a small icon in a corner, since the whole antenna area is the useful region.

Check that the marked spot actually reads on the assembled product, which the prototype page covers. A mark on a product that does not read is worse than no mark, because it promises a tap the product cannot deliver.