You’d probably guess Netflix’s ‘N’ or McDonald’s ‘M’ anywhere just by looking at their color or design. That’s exactly what a well-designed logo does — it creates a unique identity for your brand.
A logo is a visual representation of your company in the form of a graphic mark, text, shape, or any other visual element. One look at the logo, and people can recognize your products, merchandise, or ad campaigns.
A logo gives your audience a sense of familiarity with your brand, making it easier to distinguish from competitors.
Let’s see how you can create a unique logo using a Logo Maker tools and logo templates!
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How to design a logo?
A logo can make or break your business reputation because it’s the first thing people notice. So, ensure that it is visually appealing but also simple to understand.
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to design a logo:
- Define your brand identity
- Brainstorm ideas
- Research logos
- Develop initial concepts
- Choose a logo style
- Choose a color palette
- Select a font
- Use typography
- Make it versatile
- Design for your audience
- Be original
- Get feedback
- Make adjustments
- Test for scalability
- Ensure brand consistency
- Copyright and trademark considerations
1. Define your brand identity
The most difficult part about designing a logo is figuring out how to start.
Begin by defining your brand identity. Write down your mission, business aim, brand values, target audience, and buyer persona. This helps you map your brand story and decide whether you want a professional or creative logo.
Also, define your brand personality — inspirational, playful, innovative, or something else. This way, you can align your logo with brand values and purpose.
Take a look at the Venngage logo for example.
Since Venngage is a simple and powerful design solution for business communications, our logo is a pie chart which symbolizes what we do — help businesses communicate boring technical information with engaging visuals.
2. Brainstorm ideas
An easy way to start designing a logo is to list keywords, adjectives, or ideas that describe your brand. You can then create a shape to explain the relevant keyword.
Let’s say you are a real estate brokerage company, home loan provider, or any other real estate service provider. In this case, your logo can represent a house, as shown below.
The Colorcube Production logo shown below includes a cube based on its name, and the font uses multiple colors taken from its name.
3. Research existing logos
Designing a logo involves a lot of thinking and research. One method to save time is to study the logos of your competitors or the companies you admire.
This serves two purposes: you get design inspiration and learn what to avoid so your logo does not look similar to competitors. You can also explore online galleries such as Pinterest for logo inspiration.
4. Develop initial concepts
Try creating a rough sketch of what you want on paper or use design software such as Venngage.
Online logo design tools help you brainstorm unique ideas through editable templates. You can try different shapes, layouts, text formats, spacing, and colors to create a stunning logo.
For example, if you’re a fitness brand, your logo might be a dumbbell with your brand name in between, as shown below.
Once you have an overview of how the logo should look, play around with text, font, or color to make it look more visually appealing.
5. Choose a logo style
There are four types of logos based on the arrangement of text and symbols. Let’s see how you can use them:
- Wordmark
These logos use the company’s name in a distinct font and are best for brands with a unique name. The Disney logo is a perfect example of a word mark logo that uses a creative font.
Like the woodmark style? Edit one of our minimal wordmark logo templates.
- Lettermark
Lettermark logos use an organization’s initials and are suitable for organizations with complex names or whose initials are very popular.
NASA’s logo is a great example of the lettermark style.
Here is a template you can try to create lettermark logo:
- Brand mark
A brand mark logo has a unique design, image, or element. You can use them to convey your brand identity visually.
For example, thee Dropbox logo uses an open box icon as its brand mark.
Here is an editable brand mark logo template for a transport business:
- Combination mark
Combination marks are a combination of the wordmark and brand mark styles. They’re more suitable for brands that have wide recognition.
For example, Chanel’s logo includes both an image and text.
You can use this logo template to create a combination mark logo:
6. Choosing a color palette
Understanding color psychology is essential when designing a logo since colors convey emotions:
- Warm and bright colors such as orange, yellow, red, and pink get quick attention and convey excitement and energy .
- Pastel colors such as sky blue, lavender, or coral green represent calmness.
- White, gray and black colors represent minimalism or sophistication.
For instance, if you are a music brand, vibrant colors such as red and pink will go for your logo.
The color palette of your logo should adhere to brand style guidelines. Here is how you can change the color palette of logos in Venngage.
7. Select your fonts
Using creative fonts is an excellent way to make a logo stand out. However, the font should be easy to read, appropriately sized, and aligned with brand guidelines.
It should also complement the logo design. Let’s see how you can use different font styles.
- Serif fonts work well for simple, modern and professional logos.
- Script fonts are more suitable for casual or creative logos.
- Modern fonts such as Futura or Empire to make the logo look classy or elegant,
In the logo below, the font adds a nice creative touch:
Here is how you can customize fonts in Venngage:
8. Use typography
Typography means how all text elements combine to present your logo. It includes not only text arrangement, but also line spacing and font style.
You can get creative with typography by adding shapes or unique elements to alphabets in your logo like in the example below.
9. Make it versatile
Logos must be consistent for brand recognition but shouldn’t be rigid. A useful logo is versatile and adaptable for different purposes and platforms.
Remember, your logo needs to look good on websites, mobile apps, letterheads, business documents, billboards, and other marketing or business channels.
To make a versatile logo, use a simple color palette and font to make it look good in PDF, JPEG, and PNG formats.
10. Design for your audience
Your logo represents your business, but it should also make sense to your users. They should be able to look at the logo and guess its story or narrative.
For example, the below camping logo aligns perfectly with the concept of wanderlust.
11. Be original
While seeking inspiration from other brands can help you design a logo, it should not limit your ideas.
Your logo should be original and unique to make you stand out in the market. Being original also saves you from intellectual property infringement.
Explore hundreds of logo templates, thousands of icons, and various designs, color palettes, fonts, and shapes to create a personalized logo.
12. Get feedback
You have the first draft of the logo ready, but there is always room for improvement.
Seek feedback from internal team members, user communities, potential customers, or professional designers for ideas to improve the logo.
13. Make adjustments
Edit your logo based on feedback to make it more appealing, clear, and memorable.
On Venngage, you can collaborate with your team to edit the logo in real time.
14. Test for scalability
A creative logo that looks amazing on a website or social media but is not clear on print media or other platforms serves no purpose.
Your logo should be scalable, which means you’re able adjust its size and color without impacting overall design.
Once you download your logo , add it to different platforms, such as your website, business cards, and social media pages, to assess its final appearance.
Here are a few ways to test logo scalability:
- Does the logo’s print version look as appealing as the digital one?
- Can you adjust its size as per the platform or material without modifying any elements?
- Can you modify the logo background on different platforms for contrast and viability?
15. Brand consistency
Brand marketing is all about consistency. So, your logo design, shape, and size should be the same across all marketing channels and materials. It establishes brand identity, increases brand recognition, and boosts credibility.
Download multiple high-resolution images from online logo makers to ensure brand consistency online.
16. Copyright and trademark considerations
Now that you’ve downloaded and added the logo to your website and social media pages, what if another business uses the same template to create a similar design? Your customers will probably get confused, impacting brand authenticity and credibility.
To avoid this, register your logo as a trademark. It protects your brand’s identity legally and prevents unlawful use of your logo. You can file an online logo trademark registration application at the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO). You can register a logo in two ways:
- Standard character mark: For logos that comprise business names or slogans
- Special form mark: For logos with particular design elements such as font, color, shape, or size
Best practices for logo design
When creating a logo, keep these best logo design practices in mind.
- Aim for simplicity: Keep your logo design uncluttered. Minimal logos are easy to remember.
- Versatility is key: Your logo font and design should blend well with different backgrounds.
- Think about the audience: Consider how your audience perceives your brand and ensure they can relate to the logo.
- Be original: Your logo should be unique to avoid confusion.
- Aim for a timeless design: Try to make a logo that is timeless so that it stays relevant for years. It builds credibility and customer loyalty.
- Use color to your advantage: Use colors to convey emotions in your logo. For example, black represents authority, yellow is optimistic and green signifies health and peace.
- Size considerations: The logo text or size should be appropriate so that fits in online channels, printed material and merchandise. Generally, logo size is 250 × 150 pixels.
- Pick a quality typeface: Select a minimal and quality typeface while designing your logo so that the focus remains on the main icon or element.
Best logo design tools
Now that you know how to create a great logo — how do you create one?
In this section, I’ve shortlisted the best logo makers that can help you design in minutes.
1. Venngage
Our free online logo maker helps you create a unique logo even if you don’t have design experience.
Choose from hundreds of logo templates and over 40,000 icons and customize the color scheme, font and accent images.
You can download high-quality logos in PDF or PNG format and even create multiple versions to use them across different platforms.
You can even invite team members to collaborate with you in real-time to design the perfect logo.
- Main features: Hundreds of customizable logo templates, color picker tool for consistent branding, ability to create multiple versions of your logo, and a drag-and-drop interface.
- Best for: Business of all sizes across different industries.
- Price: FREE for the first 5 designs, $10/month for premium accounts, $24/month for business accounts and $499/month for enterprise accounts.
2. VistaPrint
VistaPrint offers multiple logo design options, with the basic option letting you create a logo using the DIY tool.
For more professional designs, you can hire a freelance logo designer through VistaPrint. If you want multiple design ideas, you can create a design contest and get various designs from freelance community members.
- Main features: Vast library of fonts, icons and layout options and 4000×4000 pixel and high-resolution images without watermarks.
- Best for: Businesses of all sizes across different industries.
- Price: DIY logo maker is free, $149 for hiring a freelance designer and $299+ for a design contest.
3. Adobe Illustrator
Adobe illustrator’s logo design tool maker offers various stock logo templates.
The tool is more suitable if you have some graphic design experience. You can experiment with geometric shapes, fonts and color schemes to design the perfect logo
- Main features: Multiple logo templates, font library and shape builder tools.
- Best for: Creating professional logos.
- Price: $22.99 per month.
4. Wix Logo Maker
Wix AI logo maker tool provides templates for different types of logos such as abstract logos, minimalist logos and retro logos. You can also choose a template based on the industry, style and color.
- Main features: Wide range of design templates, multiple styles for personalized logos and high-quality image files.
- Best for: Designing creative logos.
- Price: One-time payment of $20 for the basic plan and $50 for the advanced plan.
5. HubSpot Logo Maker
HubSpot’s free logo maker is an excellent tool for creating professional logos.
Once you add your company’s name, industry and slogan, it shares personalized recommendations. You can edit logos based on your brand guidelines and download it in multiple formats.
- Main features: Customizable templates, multiple image formats, and a simple user interface.
- Best for: Creating professional logos.
- Price: Free.
6. Shopify Logo Maker
Shopify’s free logo maker is ideal for all industries. You can choose from different templates, color combinations, designs and available in its design studio.
- Main features: Allows adding slogans for logo customization and high-resolution photos.
- Best for: Businesses of all sizes across different industries.
- Price: Free.
7. Looka
Looka is an AI-powered logo maker that provides a variety of custom logo mockups.
You can edit the mockups by changing colors, elements, shape or size. It also provides over 15 logo files in high-resolution format for different channels.
With Looka, you also get lifetime logo support and royalty-free logos for commercial and non-commercial uses.
- Main features: Easy-to-use logo editor, high-resolution logo file types and black and white or colored background variations.
- Best for: Business of all sizes across different industries.
- Price: $20 for downloading one logo file and $65 for multiple logo files.
Conclusion: Design impactful logos with Venngage that grab attention
Your logo is your brand asset and a permanent visual representation of your brand.
This leaves little room to get it wrong and why you need a powerful and simple design tool like Venngage to create logos that make an impact.
Our drag-and-drop editor allows anyone to make logos and experiment with colors, fonts and visuals. Check out our logo templates library, pick the most suitable one and create a design in just minutes!