You may have heard of the Nine Muses, Greek goddesses with their own creative specialties such as dance, comedy, or even mathematics. Well, we are here to be the tenth muse, the one who fills you with inspiration and logo ideas. As she starts dreaming up her logo design, we’ll show her the right places for logo inspiration so she can come up with great logo ideas. You can stop chasing inspiration and let it come to you.
Whether you’re representing a brand or a designer out of ideas, this is where you can find logo inspiration and create something new and beautiful.
Why is it important to find the right logo? —
Before we know where to go for logo ideas, let’s talk about the importance of a logo itself. Understanding the role a logo plays in your business will help you think about the best one for you.
In general, the goal of a logo is twofold:
- Create a memorable link to your business for brand recognition and recall.
- Visually represent your brand identity to engage your target customer group.
The details in a logo affect both memorability and marketing objective. You can generally divide the images in a logo into three areas: color, shape, and typography. Different colors, shapes, and writing styles evoke different emotions and appeal to different types of people; for example, circles reflect more casual and fun company, while less fun squares suggest strength, durability, and dexterity.
We don’t have time to go into all the details here; For now, it is enough to know the main components of a logo (color, shapes, typography) so that you can know them when generating logo ideas. You can also check out our interactive widget for logo color ideas on our Color Psychology page.
11 Places to Find Logo Inspiration:
Waiting for logo inspiration sounds like a good plan… until you check the deadline. If your company is bare without a logo, any delay is hurting your business. Take matters into your own hands with our top 11 sources for fast logo ideas.
1. Big Brands
Big brands hire only the best (or at least the most expensive) designers, so most of the time they have some of the highest quality logos. They’re also generally more aware of logo trends, so seeing how they update theirs can help keep your logo modern.
Pay attention to the logos of large corporations. Don’t worry, they are everywhere. Take a look at these famous logos or the logos of the world’s top companies. See if you can isolate which parts are working really well and where there is room for improvement. Pay attention to any similarities between the logos, such as common shapes or fonts, especially if they are in your industry. Chances are, if the big brand is your competitor, your logo is what customers will compare theirs to.
2. Discover 99designs
Want to see all kinds of original logos from top-tier professionals? Check out 99designs Discover, our search tool that gives you access to our entire database of logos from our expert designers, filtered by industry, skill level, or theme tag. With over a million professional graphic designers from around the world joining the 99designs community, you’ll find a wide range of design styles and techniques perfect for inspiration.
Use the Discover Filters menu to select the parameters you want, such as the industry you are in. The Advanced tab makes it easy to limit your search to “Top Tier” designers or specific languages. You can even enter your own keywords in the Search tab so you can find exactly what you’re looking for.
3. Your Own Brand Story
While we’re talking about places to go for logo inspiration, you might consider looking inward instead of outward.After all, logos should represent your brand, shouldn’t they build on your brand story?
Think about your brand identity and see if any visual cues pop right away. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help inspire logo ideas:
- What qualities and characteristics does your brand prioritize most? What icons represent those traits? For example, if you want to highlight your wisdom or experience, you could use an owl, a book, or a microscope.
- Are there puns or visual puns you can do with your child’s name? brand or slogan? These can do wonders for brand retention and recall.
- Which typeface matches your brand identity? Something classic and formal like serifs in blocky, or maybe something lively and carefree like crazy cursive?
- Is there an artist whose style would fit well with your brand? What is it about their particular style that suits you? your brand?
Dig into your brand identity and make lists of words, ideas, colors and more. Use it as a base to create a logo that fits your brand.
4. Your Competitors
It’s always worth keeping an eye on your competition, both to know what to do and what not to do. Your competitors typically have the same business objectives as you, so your logos will use many of the same elements that you need to be aware of.
For example, take a look at the prevalence of blue in bank logos. Blue is the color of trust, which is always a top priority for a company that asks people for their money.
It’s also worth reviewing your competitors’ logos to see how you can best stand out. Sometimes going in the opposite direction of your rivals is the best way to generate business, especially if you can steal a customer’s attention on store shelves.
5. Social Media
If you’re looking for a ton of ideas on any topic, social media can help. Visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest work best for logo inspiration because you can see multiple logo examples on your screen at the same time. That makes browsing and comparing much easier. Don’t forget to refine your logo search using hashtags or following specific Pinterest boards.
Just because of the unlimited number of designs, finding logo ideas on social media can be a great source of inspiration, but it also has some drawbacks. You will probably need to sort through a lot of hobbyist designs just to be able to find the gems. Of course, you can always find logo inspiration from non-professionals, but it can be challenging to filter out the lower quality designs.
6. Behance
Behance is like a social media platform for artists and designers where they can showcase their portfolio to the public. Although they don’t separate beginners from professionals like 99designs Discover, Behance lets you explore the work of serious designers in a variety of styles.
Behance covers a wide spectrum of visual arts, but you can easily find galleries of logos embedded in the Chart design category. Each card is its own gallery of logos, sometimes by the same designer, sometimes a collection built around a single theme.
7. Image Searches
Remove all branding and logos are images only. Take that photo of your dog that you love so much, give it to a freelance graphic designer to draw a stylized version along with your branding, and BAM! – suddenly she is a logo. Inspiration can come from any image, so the only tool you need is a search engine.
If you’ve already identified certain traits or elements that fit your brand, type them into Google image searches, Bing or DuckDuckGo You can search for just about anything, from abstract concepts like “strength” to more specific searches like “red logos for fashion brands.”
When you need quick inspiration, image searches are a great place. to get started. especially when you don’t have much to think about yet. Just be prepared to do a lot of scrolling.
8. Wandering around the shops
Don’t forget the “offline” logo inspiration galleries: store shelves. Each box or bag of product is an example of a logo, and the best place to see them all together is in a store.
If you don’t have logo ideas, walk through a mall, supermarket, or store for your logo. industry. They are like a smorgasbord of successful logos. You may even see them in their “natural habitat,” where you may notice that certain colors or fonts are more striking in person than on a screen.
The physical activity of getting up and moving around is also a great way to help to get your creative juices flowing (on a physiological level). In other words, walking through the store can inspire you just as much as the logos you look at.
9. Friends, Family, and Coworkers
Sure it helps, but you don’t need to be a professional designer to collect some great logo ideas; you can bring in a professional later when it comes to executing your idea. Sometimes the idea for the perfect logo comes from the most unlikely sources, but you never know until you ask. Ask around the office to see if anyone has any valuable ideas or thoughts on what your brand stands for, even if they need a little tweaking first. You can even ask your friends and family: there’s no penalty if they don’t have any great ideas, but if they do… your search is finally over!
Under certain circumstances, you can even leave the inspiration logo until Your clients. Running an official contest could bring in a new crop of logo ideas or even present you with the final product on a silver platter. After all, that’s how Mr. Peanut was born.
10. Art Museums
Although graphic design has only been applied to marketing for a few centuries, the artistic principles on which it is based have been around for as long as art itself. The perfect logo idea for your digital smartphone app could come from a Renaissance painting, a Buddhist statue, or a prehistoric African vase.
In some art museums, inspiration hangs in the air. You are surrounded by thousands of years of artistic mastery, wherever you look. And, like walking around the shops, you’ll get some exercise to boost your creativity.
11. Design Blogs and Magazines
Last but not least, design blogs and magazines know how difficult it can be to find logo inspiration, so they publish a lot of content specifically on “logo inspiration.” for logos”. Often these are logo galleries or image collections curated by design experts.
Take a look at our own blog, for example. You can find articles for logo ideas centered on any number of popular topics:
- Restaurant logos
- Colorful logos
- Hair salon and hairstylist logos
- Luxurious logos
- Modern logos
- Square logos
- Girly logos
- … and more.
Check out our full list of logo inspiration articles, or search online for other design industry blogs.
Creative logos always start with logo inspiration:
If you’re a taker Business-making, creative tasks like designing a logo can be an exciting change of pace from business as usual. You have all these options in front of you: colors, shapes, styles, fonts and more…
So gather as much inspiration and as many great ideas as you can, and you can collaborate. Work with a designer to come up with the perfect logo to fit your brand.
Want to learn more about logo design? Check out our article on how to design a logo.
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