Logo for a Brand
Designing a logo for a brand is more than picking pretty shapes or fonts—it’s about capturing the heart of your business in a single, memorable image. A good logo reflects your brand values, connects with your audience, and stays consistent across everything from product packaging to social media.
In this chapter, I’ll walk you through the different types of logos, tips for creating one that stands out, and tools to help you design with confidence—even if you’re doing it yourself.
How to Design a Good Logo ?
A logo typically combines unique shapes and typography. Before you dive in, look at a few types of logos and choose the one that fits your brand best:
Image Logo: This uses a simple icon to represent your brand. It’s effective when the image clearly connects to your product or service. But many companies use abstract images (like Pepsi, Nike, or Target). These can be open to interpretation, but repetition builds recognition—no one looks at Apple’s logo today and thinks of an orchard, right?
Text Logo: Also called a wordmark or lettermark, this uses typography to turn your brand name into the logo. It’s ideal for short or unique names. If your name is long, consider using initials or an acronym.
Combination Logo: This includes both an icon and your brand name. It offers clear messaging but needs to be carefully designed to avoid becoming cluttered or hard to scale.
Choose the logo type based on where you’ll use it most—on product labels, print materials, or online. Each platform has different size and design needs. Start with the version that fits your most common use, but include variations in your brand guidelines for different applications.
Brainstorming
Before opening your Adobe Illustrator or Canva, go back to your brand strategy. Revisit your brand story and vision—these define the emotions your logo should express.
Creating a logo is challenging, and mistakes are part of the process. Explore, experiment, and get feedback. Remember: Your logo doesn’t have to say everything about your brand. It just needs to express your brand’s spirit clearly and professionally.
QUICK TIP: Logos often work alongside taglines. Do you remember the one sentence that describes your brand I talk about in the “Mission Statement” chapter? Having it in mind may help guide your logo design. Later, this tagline will appear in all your marketing, so make it simple, positive, and catchy. Think of Nike’s “Just do it” or Home Depot’s “How doers get more done.”
Brainstorm keywords that describe your brand and sketch ideas based on those words.
The Best Practice in the Logo Design
- Keep it Simple. Go for a clean, uncluttered image. The goal is instant recognition and easy recall.
- Design for your audience. Think about your ideal customer. Are they older or younger? What are their interests? Your design should reflect what appeals to them.
- Be original. In a crowded market, originality is key. Avoid overused symbols and cliché designs. (Check the VistaPrint link above for great insights.)
- Be timeless. Choose classic design elements that won’t look dated in a few years—just like with font choices, aim for smart over trendy.
- Choose a Unique Font. Logo font does more than display your name—it sets the tone. Consider custom lettering for your logo, and avoid default system fonts. They make your logo forgettable.
- Prioritize versatility. Start your design in black and white. Your logo should work on any background. A good logo is just as effective in two colors as it is in full color. Note: black and white are also colors. The two-color aspect is also vital if you plan to use many printing materials in the future. Printing in two colors is always cost-effective.
- Ensure scalability. Your logo must look sharp from favicon size to billboard size. Avoid detailed images that lose clarity when scaled. Use vector graphics, not pixel-based images, for best results.
Finally, once you have a few ideas, test them with your target audience.
Logo Variations
One logo won’t fit every application. Create logo variations to maintain a consistent look across different formats.
Start with a primary logo (usually icon + name), then design secondary versions. These might be used in tight spaces or on different backgrounds. Plan for instances when the full version is too complex or small to work well.
See an example below:
From Logo Sketch to Digital
If you’ve been sketching by hand, now’s the time to go digital. Your logo must be vector-based.
Vector graphics are made from lines and shapes, not pixels, so they scale up and down without losing quality. This flexibility is essential for both print and digital use
What software to use? Adobe Illustrator is the industry-leading, vector-based graphics software I love. It is a part of Adobe Creative Cloud and easily integrates with its other popular tools like Photoshop and InDesign. It’s powerful but has a learning curve and, therefore, is usually not a first choice for DIY entrepreneurs.
DIY LOGO Design Tools
Use what you know! Many online tools offer templates and design features. Choose one and learn its full capabilities to streamline your process. Just be cautious: Avoid relying only on pre-made elements. You risk ending up with a generic design that looks like many others.
CANVA is one of the easy-to-use and popular online design platforms. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface is easy to learn and contains an extensive library of templates and design assets. I used it before in the mood board design. Now, it is time to show you the CANVA Logo Hub, a free tool for all who subscribe to CANVA.
Canva Logo Hub includes thousands of patterns and templates. Use them as an inspiration and a starting point for your drawings. The Hub also contains additional information about the logo-creating process, very helpful. Beware of a few rules:
Important: Don’t use Canva’s premade templates for your final professional logo. You can’t trademark or copyright them. Instead, build your logo from scratch using Canva’s tools and elements.
Creative Fabrica recently introduced a space for DIY creators: Creative Fabrica Studio. The Studio is free with a basic Creative Fabrica subscription, and it allows you to use millions of predesigned elements and fonts helpful for designing your logo.
Hatchful by Shopify. A fast, simple tool for creating a logo if you’re launching a Shopify store. It asks questions about your brand and creates customizable logo options.
Squarespace Logo Creator. Good for minimal, modern logos that match the Squarespace aesthetic. It has clean fonts and vector icons, perfect for startups and small businesses.
AI Logo Design
Most logo tools now offer AI help. Be careful here—AI often pulls from existing designs, so it’s hard to get something truly original. Unless you’re skilled at writing very specific prompts, the results may be very generic.
Your brand deserves something distinct. Use AI for ideas or inspiration—but define your final logo based on your mission, values, fonts, and colors.
With your mission, values, color palette, fonts, and logo ready, they need to be organized and saved. Now it’s time to view them all together, make final changes, and when ready, record them in your company’s Brand Guidelines.