Common transistor topologies
This is not an answer at this stage but merely shows a few problems with your understanding.

You are missing the power supplies on your schematics. Add them in.







simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab

Figure 1. (a) The LED is always on. When Q1 turns on it short circuits the supply and probably burns out. (b) This will work but the emitter will be about 0.7 V below whatever voltage is on the base.







simulate this circuit

Figure 2. (a) M1's gate is permanently connected to 12 V via R3. Q1 does nothing for it. (b) With a 5 V clock signal the emitter of Q3 will reach &lt; 5 V. This might turn on M3 a little but once current flows the voltage on R8 will rise, reduce the voltage and turn it off. If the clock signal voltage was high enough you could turn on M3 but without a discharge path M3 will probably never switch off.







simulate this circuit

Figure 3. The Q1 and Q2 parts are OKish but having M1 on the high side of the load will prevent it working properly.


  Also, in my particular examples, all of the collector have a 12 V applied and driven with a 5 V logic on/off.


In all except Figure 1a you are running the NPN transistors in "emitter-follower" mode the emitter will follow the base voltage minus about 0.5 to 0.7 V because of the base-emitter diode voltage drop. You will never get the emitter above about 4.5 V so most of your circuits won't work properly, if at all.



Edit after OP's update:


  The difference I see is that on the left, when the transistor is in cutoff state R1 and D1 aren't affected by a voltage drop through the transistor unlike the schema on the right.


That is correct. That arrangement is referred to as shunting the current. Your arrangement is inefficient, however as high current is high current is shunted it's rather power hungry. A better arrangement is shown below in 1a.







simulate this circuit

Figure 4. (a) All that is required is to shunt the LED current. R4 then limits the current to slightly more than when the LED is on. With the transistor turned hard on (note addition of base current limiting resistor) there will be about 0.2 V across Q1.


  I'm really interested to know is if there is a list known pattern for transistor arrangement and their pros/cons?


What you are asking is for transistor circuit topologies. I had a look around for a good one but drew a blank. My old The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill gives many examples.