Creating a perfect logo for your business involves many decisions, namely: colors, layouts, fonts and icons. But learning how to design a logo doesn’t have to be difficult—and you don’t have to be a designer!
To help you capture the essence of your brand identity and business in an iconic design, we’ve got created this logo design guide so you can confidently create the best logo for your business, side hustle, or passion project.
Reading: How to easily create a logo
We’ve broken down the process of designing a logo into five beginner-friendly steps:
- Investigate your brand
- Learn about logo design
- Get color , font and icon ideas
- Create a logo
- Test and finalize
If you want to play around with a new logo design right away, you can always jump into our logo maker – it’s free to try! But if you want a little more guidance and preparation, you’ve come to the right place.
We spoke to experienced branding and logo design agencies to give you the best logo design tips when you’re starting out with the Start creating your own logo Logo.
Follow our FREE WORKSHEET! Find all your market research and competitor analysis questions here, along with resources and suggestions for logo design inspiration.
What is a logo?
The term logo is used often used as a catch-all to define any emblem a company uses to visually represent its brand. Your logo is not your brand, visual identity, or indicator of success. It’s just the first step in creating your visual identity!
How to design a logo in 5 easy steps
Get pen and paper ready, we’ll dive into logo design Logo for your business!
Step 1: Research your brand identity
Most of us don’t like to do research – why can’t I just start?! – but it is an important step in any big project. To make your logo successful and long-lasting, you need to lay a solid foundation. And to lay a solid foundation, you need to do research.
Creating a strong brand identity will help your business gain credibility and become recognizable as you grow. Before you dive into your logo design, take some time to think about these questions:
Who is my ideal customer? What brands do they like?
Finding out your ideal customer and target market will help you better understand your message and logo vision.
Start here:
Check out our logo design google doc and start answering the questions above! Imagine your ideal customer.
If you already have some clients (or friends who match the person you’re targeting), don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and talk to them about their lifestyle, purchasing decisions, favorite brands, and insights related to your product or service.
What is my competition doing?
A great way to get logo design ideas for your business is to divide some of your competitors’ logos and websites into styles you like and styles you don’t like.
Start Here:
Research your competitors and create a mood board with all their logos to become familiar with the colors, icons, fonts and layouts they use . This will help you understand how you can visually stand out from the crowd while still being associated with your industry.
Go to your logo design worksheet and fill out the following information:
This will help you understand which direction you want to go when you learn how to design a logo.
What 3-5 adjectives describe my brand?
The next step in your journey is to create a list of your brand’s persona attributes. This list can also include specific attributes, values, and benefits that you want your company to be known for. Here are a few examples:
- Innovative, friendly, easy to use
- Compassionate with great customer service
- Witty/clever marketing and # killit on social
Write these into your logo design worksheet and use them to bring your brand to life.
What is my company name? Am I going to use a tagline?
If you haven’t already, it’s time to decide on your business name and decide if you want a tagline that can be a description of what your business is does (e.g. gluten-free cookies) or a catchy phrase (e.g. cookies for healthy nuts).
Using a business name generator is a fun and easy way to come up with business name ideas.Looka’s business name generator helps you find an exact match for your brand name while checking domain availability and creating logo designs!
Once you’ve found a few good business name options, jot them down All your ideas in your logo design worksheet and ask yourself these five questions:
If the answer to each of these questions is “YES!” then you are one step closer to starting your logo design journey !
Where will I use my logo most often?
Where you choose to place your logo directly affects your design. Maybe you own a construction company and plan to use your logo on t-shirts, truck decals, and signs.
Or maybe you’re a consulting firm that uses your logo primarily online—on your website, landing pages, and social media channels. Think about which applications are most important and what type of logo will stand out.
In almost all cases, a simple logo design with a clean layout will help it look good anywhere. Here are some common places to use a logo:
- Online: website headers and favicons, email signatures, invoices and receipts
- Social media: profile photos , Covers , Photo posts, Ads
- Print: business cards, brochures, posters, bumper stickers, apparel, branded packaging
You may need multiple logo variations to adapt to different media — but more on that later.
Step 2: Learn about logo design
Contrary to popular belief, designing a company logo yourself is totally doable! You don’t need fancy editing software or years of design experience. You can create a logo yourself in five minutes with an online logo maker!
But before you start your logo design journey, here’s what you need to know to feel confident about the process.
What makes a good logo?
Although the quality of a logo is subjective, there are certain elements that make a logo either good or bad.
A good logo is:
They should also be easily recognizable and clearly represent the brand!
By comparison, bad logos are trend-led (or copy other famous logos), complicated and confusing, leading to bad ones Brand awareness and versatility. They can also be boring or generic (not to be confused with simple).
If you look at the examples below, the left clearly conveys what the company is and what is simple to read and remember.
The right is creative and fun, but it’s extremely hard to figure out what the company even does!
The Three Main Types of Logos
Logo design can be roughly divided into two categories: logos that consist of only text (denoting a company’s name or initials) and those that contain both text and an icon.
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Here’s a breakdown of the three most common types of logos – there are a few more, but let’s keep it simple!
1. Wordmark Logo
The most classic form of logo is the wordmark, sometimes referred to as a “logotype” by designers.
Wordmarks only use your company name – no symbols or monograms – in an existing or custom font. This type of logo works best if you have a short, distinctive business name and no tagline.
2. Monogram Logo
A monogram is a logo that contains one to three letters, usually the initials or first letter of a company. The monogram can act as a symbol in the logo with the company Name below.
The word mark is omitted for well-known brands: for example P&G for Procter and Gamble, VW for Volkswagen or LV for Louis Vuitton. But most new businesses would leave the company name below or next to the monogram to build recognition!
3. Combo Logo
Combo logos are exactly what they sound like: a combination of a wordmark and a symbol.
This type of logo gives your brand that extra edge easily recognizable as it uses two design elements that represent your brand together (and they can be used separately if needed). Not surprisingly, this is the most common type of logo.
If these options don’t seem right to you, check out some other popular logo design styles:
- Emblem -Logos
- Mascot logos
- Brand logos
Logo shapes and layout options
Shape plays an important role in aesthetics Your logo because they have certain associations in the human brain. This allows brands to use shapes to convey a message or emotion to an audience.
Shapes can be used both as containers and symbols in logo design.
What is a container?
A container keeps your logo confined to one place and neatly packaged for visual consumption. It’s important to note that while containers make your logo more visually interesting, they can sometimes present scalability challenges as the logo fits into a smaller space.
Make sure your company name is inside the container as well still legible after scaling to different sizes.
Here are some values associated with some of the most common logo shapes, as well as design considerations for each:
Other logo layout options
There are a few other ways to think about arranging your logo that aren’t related to shapes. These include:
Stacked Text
One way to add intrigue to a more classic logo is to use stacked text. Words can be stacked vertically to draw your attention, although this layout is sometimes paired with horizontal text to create more design options. Note that it’s best to use stacked text when the words in your logo are nearly the same length.
Icon placement
The placement of a Symbols can change the entire look of a logo. Is it in the middle? On the side? Above the word mark? Incorporation into the word mark? When using an icon in your logo, consider all the options and find what placement feels best for your brand and logo usage.
Slogan Placement
If your logo has a tagline, it will almost always appear below your company name. But will it be centered or left justified? In a different font than your wordmark? Depending on the length of your slogan, you can test different options to see what looks best.
Step 3: Collect color, font, and icon ideas
It’s finally time to delve into creating your logo!
With all the logo research and ideas in your logo design worksheet, you should want to have a solid idea of your target market and brand attributes, as well as your logo’s style and layout. Let’s move on to colors, fonts, and icons!
Logo Colors
Choosing a color for your logo design isn’t just about what looks good on you. Think about how your audience will perceive it and where it will appear. Your logo colors will be your brand colors, so imagine how they will look on all your company assets.
As you can see below, your logo colors have the power to convey whether your brand is sophisticated and luxurious or whimsical and fun. Use color to set the mood for how you want your brand to be perceived.
Different colors evoke different feelings and emotions, so choose them wisely. Do you see your brand in cool tones like blue, green and purple or in warm tones like red, orange and yellow? Or maybe you’re more inclined towards black, white and gray to fit your brand identity design.
Be aware of the colors your competitors are using, you want to stick with colors that are well known in your industry, but stand out from the competition at the same time.
To help you decide, here are some emotions and descriptions associated with some of the most popular colors:
- Black: Power and sophistication. It can also demonstrate elegance, formality, or mystery.
- Blue: Professionalism and success. Commonly used in company logos, but works across many industries.
- Orange: Joy and optimism. Leads to an enthusiastic and excited cognitive association and is also great at attracting attention.
- Green: Balance and serenity. Often used when brands want to emphasize a connection to the environment, well-being, health and tranquillity.
- Pink: Feminine and nourishing. Depending on the shade, it can have a gentle and calming effect and evoke a cognitive association with security and care. However, other shades evoke associations with love, flirting and femininity.
- Purple: Royal and spiritual. Throughout history, purple has been considered a royal color. Association with royalty has led to a cognitive association of purple with wealth, nobility, and luxury.
- Red: Confidence and ambition. Commonly used to represent masculine energy and has been found to stimulate appetite and energy.
- Yellow: Happiness and positivity. Often very bright and often an eye-catcher. Said to boost self-esteem and, like the color red, also stimulate appetite and increase energy.
- White: Plain and simple. Traditionally associated with purity, cleanliness, innocence and simplicity.
- Grey: Classic and serious. Gray is becoming increasingly popular and is a great color to use if you want to achieve a mature look.
When you’re finalizing your new logo, be sure to also have a black and white version for times where using a full color logo is not applicable (e.g. if you put it on top of an image). So you want a version of your logo that incorporates black into your design – so test this out before finalizing your logo!
How many colors should I use in my logo? h4>
Most brands use between 2 and 3 colors, with one of those colors being either black or white.Of course, there are some companies (like Google, eHarmony, and Slack) that use a range of colors in their logos.
Feel free to test other colors, but again, make sure your logo looks good All black or all white!
Logo Fonts
With thousands of fonts to choose from, choosing one for your logo is no easy task. Each font conveys something different and should match your brand attributes and identity.
Let’s take a look at different types of fonts and what their visual differences mean for branding and communication.
1 Serif fonts
Serif fonts are fonts that have small “feet” at the edges. They are timeless, high quality, classic typefaces associated with tradition and decency. The most popular serif font is Times New Roman. Because of its timelessness, it is often used to attract a more mature demographic.
2. Sans-serif fonts
These fonts don’t have the small feet like serif fonts, so they typically look cleaner and more modern. They’re easy to read and work well across media.
3. Script Fonts
Handwritten and script fonts add a lot of personality to a logo and typically look formal, elegant, and feminine. This is one of the more difficult styles because script fonts are Harder to read at a glance – but when done right, they can make your logo distinctive and iconic.
4. Modern fonts
Modern fonts are sans serif fonts that have a certain sophistication and severity. This makes them most effective with younger demographics and popular with app and tech companies. p>
5. Display Fonts
Finally, display fonts are typically a broad category of unusual fonts that make a great visual impact. They can be bubbly and fun or quirky and futuristic – but beware of using ones that are super trendy or don’t match your brand personality.
You can also have custom fonts created specifically for your business , Make your logo 100% unique. Custom fonts are usually an additional cost when working with a designer to create your logo.
Logo Icons
Icons are another design element you can add to your logo, so people recognize your brand.
Symbols can be figurative and literal (like animals or lightbulbs) or geometric and abstract logos (like a hexagon or overlapping circles). Just make sure the icon you choose doesn’t confuse or mislead your audience. Below are two examples of how effective a logo icon can be in communicating your company and products.
If you’re a fitness trainer, there’s no point in using a shopping cart icon in your logo – like this something like a heart rate line might communicate your services more clearly.
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You’ll also want your icon to match the style of your font – so if you’re using a modern sans serif font, you probably don’t want it with a hand-drawn icon in the Combine a vintage look.
And, as discussed in the “Layout” section, you should experiment with positioning your icon to see what looks best. Try placing it to the left, right, top or bottom of your company name – you can even try it in the middle of a word.
Step 4: Design a logo
“You want to tell me that I can finally start designing my logo?”
Yes, yes, we are. Not sure how to get your design? Here are three DIY options:
Option #1: Design your own logo from scratch
If you already have design experience and have access to software like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop , then designing your own logo from scratch is an option.
Hiring a designer to create your logo from scratch can quickly get expensive! Using your own tools and expertise gives you total freedom over how your design looks while saving you money at the same time.
Option #2: Buy and customize a logo template
Another option is to use a template. There are some companies and websites that offer free or paid logo templates that you can customize by editing the company name, colors, and more.
Two potential problems with this method:
1) These templates may not be very customizable.
2) There could be hundreds (maybe even thousands) of other companies that have a nearly identical logo design to yours.
Just like people, logos should be unique. Every business should be recognizable and memorable.
If you still want to test this method, we recommend using an online logo maker as well, as they can be very similar Price, but logo makers give you a lot more flexibility with your design.
Option #3: Use an online logo maker
If you want a unique custom logo but don’t have the design experience or time to create it yourself, use an online logo maker is probably your best bet!
Rather than working from a template, these tools allow you to create your own designs using a much more intuitive and intelligent design platform.
Looka uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand your design preferences and create personalized logos, which you can then edit in the app until you’re happy with the design.
Step 5: Test and finalize
Once you’ve designed your own logo (or several!), it’s time to stress test it. Here are a few questions to ask yourself before finalizing your company’s new logo design:
Is my logo scalable?
A scalable logo means you can use it anywhere, anytime anywhere you want to show your desires (well, pretty much anywhere). Want to put it on a giant billboard? How about your business cards?
Having a scalable logo makes it look clean and crisp (not pixelated) while remaining easily readable and identifiable. Check that your logo works and stays readable in both large and small sizes.
Another must for a scalable logo: a vector file.
Vector files are necessary as they act as master files that you can scale indefinitely, edit or send to a designer or printer. They are created in programs like Adobe Illustrator and can then be converted to any other file format you need, such as . e.g. PNG or JPG. Examples of vector files are SVG, EPS, and PDF.
Does my logo look good in all black or all white?
An all black and an all white version of yours Logo with transparent background is essential. Why? Because it allows your logo to be more versatile and work in different visual environments.
If your logo’s background is transparent, you can place your logo on any colored background, including images and videos!
If your logo doesn’t translate well when changed to all black or all white, you should make some changes to it. Does it need a bolder font? , or a simpler symbol? Would a different layout make your logo more customizable?
Will my logo look good in the applications I use most?
Depending on your business , and where you interact and interact with your customers the most can affect your logo design.
Alternatively, you could plan to feature your logo primarily on prints such as bumper stickers, business cards, and posters. Does your logo look good scaled down on a card or enlarged on a large print? Does it contain complex elements that need to be simplified?
Think about how your logo will look across all your core applications and make changes accordingly to ensure optimal logo presence.
Do I have different logo variations for different uses?
This leads us to logo variations that make your logo more versatile and user-friendly. With a distinctive wordmark (the typography) as well as a unique icon (the image), you can use the elements together or separately to represent your brand. The brand below uses their rhino icon to represent their brand across all platforms.
So the logo you have as your Facebook profile picture can be an icon-only or monogram-only version , while it’s a logo you’re printing on a t-shirt, the “full” logo would be – although they’re different, they represent the same brand.
Once you’ve designed and tested your logo, it is it’s finally time to put it into action. After all, a nicely designed logo isn’t valuable if it’s not applied to something! Here are some great places to start, both online and offline:
- Social media profile picture and banner
- Website header and favicon
- Email signature
- Business cards
- Stickers
- Packaging
- Stationery
- Invoices and receipts
- T-shirts, hats, mugs and various swags
Remember: If you are going to have something printed with your logo, send a vector file ( EPS or SVG). If you work with a printer, they will usually ask for this. If not, send it anyway so they have everything they need to make sure your prints look crisp.
Do I have branding guidelines?
Finally, after You have completed a design, you I want to create brand guidelines.Brand guidelines are a set of rules for how to represent your brand across channels and assets, helping your business build credibility and recognition as you grow. Brand guidelines should include:
They can also include a mission statement, visual rules for images and icons, brand voice guidelines, and specifications for assets such as packaging, email marketing, and more.
(When you design a logo with Looka, you can instantly create branding guidelines to ensure your logo always looks its best.)
Let’s recap: when you’re learning how to design a logo designs, it’s a good idea to do some research about your brand, learn the basics of logo design, explore colors, fonts, and icons…then get creative!
If you have a or have two options to work with, test your logo in different sizes and more different mockups to make sure it fits your needs. Tweak it as needed, and show it to a few trusted people if you need help deciding.
After following these steps, you can be confident that you’re presenting a strong logo to the world can. You did!
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