Creating your own logo is a great way to cut costs or speed things along.
But it requires you to actually know how to create a logo. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be really expensive. That’s why we created Freelancebazar. We’ve got the knowledge and experience that lets us provide our clients with exactly what they need: quality logos at affordable prices.
We know that when you’re starting out, creating your own logo can be intimidating—but with our help, you will be able to create the perfect logo for your business in no time.
In the world of branding, a logo is the first thing people see when they Google your company name. It’s what they associate with your company and its products or services. If you don’t have one yet, it’s time to start thinking about how you want yours to look. And we’re here to help!
Freelancebazar has put together six simple steps to help you create your own logo. We’ll outline the process, identify your best options for design software (free or paid), and link to more detailed guides so you can learn the individual aspects of typography and color theory at your own pace.
Logo design is a process. It’s not enough to just slap a logo onto your business card and call it done. You need to think about how your logo will look across different devices, in different sizes, and on different backgrounds.
Why create your own logo?
Having your own logo is one of the best things you can do for your business. It’s something that sets you apart from other companies, and it can give your company an identity that people recognize. However, there are many different methods for how to create a logo, and doing it yourself without prior design experience isn’t going to produce the best results. However, the choice isn’t always up to you: external circumstances like time or money constraints often make creating your own logo the most practical option.
If you’re designing a logo, it’s important to know what you want.
You can’t just throw something together on a whim and expect it to work. You need to know what you want your brand to represent, and how you want it to come across.
Even if you are working with a professional designer, though, designing an amateur logo can help you express your creative ideas better than talking to the designer. You can hand them a basic logo or sketch and make them perfect in professional quality.
If you’re going this route, however, it’s important that the designer has experience in graphic design. That way they can take your original idea and make it look like something more refined than what you had originally envisioned.
It’s true that a professionally designed logo is usually a good investment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In fact, if you’re not sure what kind of logo to get, or how much it will cost, there’s no reason to rush out and spend $500 on a logo from a design agency.
In our experience, the DIY route can be an uphill battle at times with figuring out logo basics and learning software. Nevertheless, if you are up for the challenge, you can build your own logo from scratch at a fraction of the cost of using an outside designer.
1. Know what makes your brand unique.
When you’re building your brand, you want to make sure that you’re creating a consistent look and feel across all of your marketing materials. This helps ensure that customers can easily identify your brand and remember it over time, which is important for maintaining strong customer loyalty and brand recognition.
Your brand’s design should reflect the specifics of your business: industry, market openings, target consumers, business model, and any other relevant factors like reputation. In the following section, you will see that design choices like colors and shapes can advance your goals.
Branding is the process of creating a unique identity for your company or product that allows it to stand out from the competition. This guide explains the fundamentals of branding so you can understand why branding choices matter and know precisely what choices you need to make.
If you already have a sense of what kind of brand you want, refine your idea further by asking yourself questions about the style, image, and target audience. Our logo questionnaire presents questions to ask yourself about your brand to help you design your logo later.
A good way to create a brand identity is by creating symbols, such as logos and phrases. One exercise that can help any company is to list 30 adjectives that describe their ideal brand.
2. Choose the right logo elements for your brand.
The three main elements of every logo—colors, shapes, and typography—each have a complicated history and experience behind them, which is why skilled designers aren’t cheap.
The color of your logo should be chosen according to the color theory, in which certain colors are associated with different feelings. For example, red is associated with passion or urgency, and blue is associated with trust and comfort.
Logo shapes can have different emotional connotations. Basic shapes such as circles or squares are worth learning about if you want to create a logo with visual appeal.
Font style and psychology are crucial for the wordmark and lettermark logos, or logos that are only a word or letters respectively. In these designs, the font is used for more than just text. Additional visuals are used to complement the letters. Choosing a font that matches your branding is essential for this type of logo design.
3. Understand the fundamentals of design
Choosing your logo design is a big decision, and there are a lot of different types to choose from. Here’s what you need to know about each type:
Abstract logos are simple and clean but don’t have much personality or character. They’re often used for products that don’t represent any idea or concept, like a logo for a company that sells unbranded office supplies.
Mascot logos are fun and playful—they’re designed to be recognizable by the public as well as their intended audience, so they’ll be effective at drawing attention to products. These are typically used in marketing campaigns aimed at children or teenagers: think mascots like Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega) or Mario (Nintendo).
Combination logos use two or more types of images in one design.
The most common combination is combining two different types of images together—for example, a red apple with the letter “A” inside it. This can add depth and emotion to an otherwise bland design, making it more memorable than other options on this list. You can also combine two images that are different colors but both have something in common—for example, a purple circle inside of another purple circle would create something unique without being too busy!
FreelanceBazar is a marketplace for freelance talent. Our emblem is a simple image that represents your business or brand. It’s often used in conjunction with the text to create the visual identity of your company. The name of your company or product should be placed above the emblem in large letters (or as much as it can fit). If you want something simple, but memorable, an emblem is a great choice.
Pictorial logos bring together images and colors from your brand into a cohesive whole. Pictorial logos tend to be larger than other types of logos because they include artistry within their design elements as well as color schemes that match up with each other across platforms like print ads, packaging materials, and more.
Wordmarks are the most common type of logo because they’re easy to create and inexpensive to produce. Wordmarks are also easier for people who aren’t designers or artists to create themselves because they don’t require complicated artwork programs like vector art (which requires pixel-perfect precision).
4. Explore the current logo trends that appeal to you.
Another key aspect of logo design is staying current with design trends. Because aesthetic tastes change over time, it’s important to stay current with design trends to appear modern, or at least avoid looking outdated.
In order to stay current, you need to keep up with what’s happening in the world of graphics and branding. Join a few online forums where you can read about new trends and learn how to apply them in your own work. You can also get inspiration from other designers who post their work on social media pages or other online forums. If you don’t know where to start, try posting a few images or clips of your work on Instagram or Twitter and see what kind of feedback you get from viewers who appreciate your creativity!
Logo trends have a way of revolving around what kind of visuals are popular at a given time. Certain colors come in and out of fashion, as do certain styles, such as hand-drawn illustrations or futuristic grids. The thing about trends, however, is that they don’t always apply to every brand. When choosing trends for your logo, be sure to think about which ones you might want to incorporate and which ones you shouldn’t. For example, a business could use an animal head on its logo to convey the idea that it is a wildlife photographer rather than an image of an actual animal—or if its tagline was something like “wildlife photographer” instead of “photographer of wildlife.”
Make sure to familiarize yourself with the controls of the software you plan to use before beginning a logo project. Play around with different options and look for features you may have been unaware of before; your logo will be more effective.
From here, you can show it to a professional designer for an upgrade, or keep it in circulation for a few years until you’re more skilled at logo design.
