Whether you’re a beginner or just need a refresher, follow our logo design tips and tricks to help you create really great logos.
Logos are really important. They can be daunting to design, but they are a must for any business and are the cornerstone of any good business brand, or even personal brand. You want your logo to explain who you are and what you do, why you do it, and how you do it. You’ll include it in social posts, presentations, marketing materials, business cards, and more. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for a small graphic, right?
Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with a ton of tips, logo design tips and tutorials from a real graphic designer (meaning me). Whether you’re a beginner or just need a refresher, follow these tips and tricks to help you get started and create a really great logo today.
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A good logo should:
- Be eye-catching
- Be timeless
- Be memorable
- Work well big or small
- Embrace your brand vibe
What the heck is a brand vibe and how do I find mine?
A brand vibe is how you want your brand to make people feel. Sometimes you may hear it called brand personality. It should be consistent in your logo and content, and clearly set out in your brand guidelines.
Just like we want our law firms to feel trustworthy and respectable, we want our yoga teachers to feel feel calm and friendly. and our party planners to keep you organized and fun.
With me so far?
Once you figure out your brand vibe, the logo creation process becomes 100 times easier* (*not scientifically proven). Spend five minutes right now writing down three or four words that encompass how you want your brand to make people feel. You got it? Okay, you can scroll down to logo design tips now.
More on branding:
Keep your brand vibe in mind as you read through the logo design tips and take some time to think about how each logo makes you feel. Based on our research, we know that consumers trust brands that are honest about who they are and what they do with their logo styles.
So I’ve included some of Venngage’s best logo templates. If it feels right, you can get started on your design right away! If you need more inspiration, check out the beautiful company logos of famous brands.
Top 10 Logo Design Tips and Tricks:
- A picture is worth a thousand words
- Use empty spaces to keep your logo design clean
- Use shapes to think inside the box
- Imagine your logo in situ
- Colour is key to good design
- Be literal with your logo
- Be authoritative with your logo
- Create visual prominence with a splash of color
- Don’t reinvent the wheel when designing your logo
- Don’t be afraid to retune the wheel
¿ Ready to start? Check out our top 10 logo design tips and tricks below:
1. A picture is worth a thousand words
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A logo is a visual representation of your brand, so why tell people what you do if you could just show them? Use simple icons to communicate who you are.
Remember that brand vibe we talked about earlier? The use of the plane and the sun here excites me and reminds me of warm and sunny vacations.
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Visual puns are also the A designer’s best friends – here Frost Bites have created a quirky ‘bite’ to show they’re a food company. This is very easily accomplished by overlapping two circles that are the same color as the background.
Video Tour: How to Customize This Logo
My Imaginary La Taco shop needs a new logo. I love the “bite” design in the Frost Bites logo, but we sell delicious Mexican food, not ice cream!
So instead of a circle, I used a cue graphic. See how I did it below:
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2. Use the empty space to keep your logo design clean
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Coco Chanel once said: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” . The same goes for design.
You want to make sure people can read your logo from a distance, or when it’s very small, by keeping it “clean” (designers talk about “lots of white space”). will achieve this. Here we can see how Savant Yoga has used white spaces to invoke a sense of calm.
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This logo for a photography company takes minimalism to a new level and creates a camera icon with two brackets and the letter “o”. This logo proves that you don’t always need a lot of colors or symbols to create a great logo.
Using white space in your logo design is also helpful when it comes to From brochure design, poster design, t-shirt printing and many other marketing materials, your logo is easier to integrate seamlessly into different designs and formats.
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3. Use shapes to think inside the box
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Shapes are a excellent mom way to make your logo stand out. In this logo for a law firm, we put the firm’s name inside the boxes for a professional look.
This also helps with cross-platform branding, as a “boxed” logo works well digitally, so such as letterheads, presentations, and products such as pens or lanyards.
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You can use shapes with interesting gradients or textures to take your design to the next level. Here, FX Technology Co. has used a blue to yellow gradient for a really classy look. They’ve used a laptop icon inside the circle, but this could easily be changed to a bouquet of flowers, a glass of wine, or a weight stack depending on your business.
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4. Imagine your logo in situ
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Wow, wouldn’t this logo look great on a coffee mug? When designing your logo, try to make sure you think about its intended uses – are you looking to use it on a uniform or will it just be for your website design? You can use a mockup generator to see what your logo will look like in situ.
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It’s also good to think about how you’ll market yourself when creating a logo. If you’re going to be doing a lot of networking, create a logo that looks good on business cards. This Bird View Photography coral logo is arranged horizontally and would look great on a card.
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5. Color is key to a good logo design
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Monochrome doesn’t always mean black and white! Sometimes black and white can seem harsh to our eyes, especially if we are trying to create a feeling of zen. You can use multiple shades of the same color to create subtle contrasts within your logo.
By using multiple shades of pink, Serenity has created a logo that is very relaxing, just like your spa should be. If Have you been searching for the answer to “what is good design?” well, you know.
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6. Be literal with your logo
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Your name is Electric Box Productions, huh? Have you considered… putting electricity inside a box? Sometimes it really is that easy.
If your name is a thing, make that thing your logo. Don’t be afraid to lean into the obvious—there’s a reason the Apple logo is, well, an apple.
Brewery logos are notorious for being literal, like this Cigar City logo Brewing:
Note that some brands had to protect themselves from competitors infringing on their trademark because the words in their logos were not translated into local languages or the logos literally stood for something that was not translated.
For example, South Africa-based Jordan Winery, which was using the image of a chameleon on its products, sued one of its competitors, Lovane, for featuring images of chameleons on its products. their products.
The problem was that the word “uluvane” meant “chameleon” in one of the country’s local languages, which could create associations between the two brands. The two brands spent significant time in court and paid thousands of dollars in legal fees, which could have been avoided if Jordan Winery had used trademark translation to protect their brand.
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Gold Spoon has been really clever with their logo design here, using their headline icon (the gold spoon) as a replacement for the letter “p”. This reminds me a lot of the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo and just goes to show that it doesn’t literally mean boring.
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7. Be authoritative with your logo
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Be literal, but make sure it fits your organization. Some businesses, such as non-profit organizations, demand a level of seriousness that a production company or ice cream parlor can do without.
Ask yourself: If you saw this logo for the first time, would you trust this company? Here Helping Hands has managed to create a logo that is both respectable but uses hands. Subdued colors and serif fonts are key here, and they keep the logo from feeling too cartoony.
A font can go a long way in creating the right logo; Fortunately, Venngage has a huge font library (we recently added 40 new fonts!) and we even have blog posts on font psychology to make sure you nail it.
Video Tour: Customizing This Logo
I like the feel of this logo and think it really fits my brand vibe, but my organization is called “Head Start” not “Helping Hands”.
So, instead of hands, I used arrows. See how I did it below:
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8. Create visual prominence with a splash of color
In our “How to Choose Colors” blog post we explained how color is the most valuable tool in a designer’s toolbox, and it’s no different when making a logo.
In design, we call this “visual salience”. It’s a great term to use in casual conversation to impress your designer friends, and also a great way to create a striking logo.
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An easy way to create visual prominence is using a ‘pop’ of color.
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In this Evergreen logo, the hover comes from a green leaf icon on top of the black text, but you can also do the first letter of their name a different color or even a whole word.
Adding this little pop of color keeps your design from feeling flat, and it’s a trick designers use all the time. The Amazon logo is a great example of this.
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9. Don’t reinvent the wheel when designing your logo
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If it works, it works. Sometimes your bakery just needs a logo with wheat. If it sounds good to you, go ahead and use it. Take a look at your competitors and see what their logos look like, are there any common themes or colors? Once you’ve finished reading these logo design tips, check out Venngage’s handy guide to creating a competitor analysis.
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10. Don’t be afraid to readjust the wheel
Source
Pepsi has been around for more than 120 years as a brand. The modern Pepsi logo we know is drastically different from how it started. But the transformation from then to now was gradual. That’s because Pepsi always built on the brand it had established, not swapping out its old brand for a shiny new one.
Also, a drastic change would have been confusing to its consumers. People may not have recognized the Pepsi brand or product as easily, in stores or in advertisements.
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It’s okay to be bold and try new things. Use patterns, overlapping shapes, and contrasting colors to create a modern logo. The layered “C” over the half circle helps take this design to the next level, and the contrasting blue and purple tells us that this company is bold and forward-thinking.
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Modernization doesn’t have to be “in your face” to work. For this logo, Discovery Education chose to use an overlay box effect. The subtle geometric pattern on the top case really helps bring the logo right into 2019, helping the brand feel fresh. Also, they have used a sans serif font which keeps the logo from feeling stuffy and dated.
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To recap our logo Top Design Tips:
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If you’ve ever worked with a designer professionally, I’ll know that they never only present one option. Try out a couple of different logos and ask your friends, family, co-workers, and communities for their opinions on which one feels best for your brand.
Check out Venngage’s full library of logo templates here.
A Venngage Business account comes with the ability to create a Brand Kit. You can upload your logos and company colors and apply them to different templates with the click of a button.
If you have any other logo design tips or just want to share your process, please leave a comment below. !
More Brand Design Studies from Venngage:
Everything you need to know about choosing and using brand colors
Which logo styles do consumers trust the most? [Study + Infographic]
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