How to Design a Logo: Complete Step-by-Step Guide (2026)

Your logo is the face of your brand.

It will appear on your website, products, marketing, in-store signage—just about any place where people interact with your brand. A logo might seem like a small asset, but there’s a lot of significance packed into it. Your brand values, products, audience, industry, background, and personality are all tied to your logo.

According to a study from the University of Loyola Maryland, "color increases brand recognition by up to 80%." And, according to a study from Custom Neon, 25% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a business whose logo they recognize.

This in-depth guide walks you through the branding and logo design process. By the end, you’ll be able to create a business logo from scratch—everything from choosing a color to making the design itself.

How to design a logo from scratch

1. Define your brand identity
2. Seek design inspiration
3. Determine logo style
4. Choose a logo type
5. Decide on a color scheme
6. Pick a font
7. Outline a logo shape
8. Fine-tune your logo design
9. Choose the best option
10. Integrate the logo into your business

1. Define your brand identity

Brand identity design is a catch-all term for the visual elements of your brand, including your brand colors, your logo, and the way elements of your brand are designed. These elements work together to distinguish your visual identity in the minds of your customers.

Skin care brand OSEA established brand consistency by staying true to its original vision.

"The brand identity of OSEA hasn’t changed since 1996. We’ve had the same name, the same logo, the same mission. What has changed is how that brand and identity lives in the world," says Melissa Palmer, cofounder and CEO of OSEA.

Your brand’s distinguishing features should be what’s most important to you and what will be most recognizable to your customers, with the goal of ultimately increasing brand awareness and recognition in the market.

Before putting your pen to paper and choosing your logo colors and aesthetics, here are steps you can take to nail your brand identity and bring it to life:

• Create a mind map of your brand values and/or brand pillars. Start with a central idea, and diagram your thoughts by connecting keywords and related concepts.
• Reflect on your "why." Ask yourself why you started your business, what values are important to your brand, and what sets you apart from the competition.
• Come together. Join forces with your team to go over your mind map and values. It helps to get a second (and third) opinion to help identify patterns and engage with a variety of perspectives.
• Start conceptualizing. You don’t need to come up with a polished online store logo straight away. This brainstorming process can get your creative juices flowing so you can start to visualize the perfect logo.

Recommended reading: Storytelling in Branding: How To Craft a Story That Sells

2. Seek design inspiration

Getting started is often the hardest part of any creative activity. It’s good to have an idea, but sometimes the problem is having too many ideas at once. It can help to see what other brands are doing and get a feel for the kind of logos you like best.

Here are some places to get inspiration for your logo design project:

• Logo repositories: Get logo design ideas from libraries like Logoed, Logospire, and Logo Design Love. Create a file of your favorites.
• Check out the competition: What are similar brands doing with their logos? It can help to see if there’s a common theme in your industry.
• Hashtags: Scroll design-related hashtags on Instagram. Try #logo, #logodesigns, and #logodesigner to get started.

3. Determine logo style

The style of your own logo should go hand-in-hand with the overall feel of your brand. It helps to think about what kind of experience you want customers to have: Do you want them to feel nostalgic? Relaxed? Inspired? Warm and cozy?

🎨 TOOL: Create free professional logos in seconds.

Here are some design aesthetics you can use in your new logo:

Classic

Classic logos stand the test of time. They bypass trends and help you reach a broader audience. The colors are usually simple and elegant, which makes your business appear reliable and professional.

Vintage

Vintage (or retro) logos inspire a sense of nostalgia. They often feature worn-looking text, illustrations, and a muted color palette.

Modern

Modern logos are fresh and minimalist. They often feature a lot of white space, minimal details, and simple lines, creating a trendy, cool feel around your brand.

Fun

If your brand sells quirky products to a young audience, consider a fun logo style. They’re characterized by colorful illustrations and unconventional fonts, and have a positive feel to them.

Handmade

Handmade logos insinuate your brand is independent and leans heavily toward handcrafted goods. These logos often feature handwritten fonts, organic shapes, and line-drawn illustrations.

Dynamic and adaptive variations

Dynamic and adaptive logos change based on theme or context. Aside from being a whole lot of fun, dynamic logo variations allow flexibility for modern multichannel branding and help maintain brand recognition while staying relevant.

Classic television network Nickelodeon is a great example, adapting its orange "splat" to take on many forms, like a film strip or howling wolf as seen below.

Another example is Google Doodles, which changes the standard Google logo to highlight or honor different people or events in history.

4. Choose a logo type

Whether you’re designing your own custom logo from scratch or using a logo template, it’s a good idea to understand the different types of logos.

Monogram logos

Also known as lettermarks, monogram logos are made up of letters, often the brand’s initials. Think NBC, GE, HBO, NASA. Monogram logos are simple, but help people remember the company behind the logo.

For example, IBM is easier to remember and say than International Business Machines.

Wordmarks

A wordmark logo (or logotype) is a font-based logo that shows the company name. Think Visa, Disney, and Jeep.

Wordmark logos work best for companies with catchy names. The memorable name and expressive typography create a strong brand association. They are also adaptable and can be used across different marketing and advertising materials while representing your business.

Pictorial marks

Pictorial marks are graphic-based logos. Whenever you see one, you immediately recognize it as the logo of a company. The Apple logo, Instagram’s camera logo, and Target’s bull’s-eye logo are all examples of this.

Abstract logo marks

An abstract logo mark is conceptual. It consists of a symbol that’s made just for your company. Your logo doesn’t relate to anything that exists in the world, like a bird or an apple. It’s designed to express the uniqueness of your brand. Think Airbnb, Microsoft, and Pepsi.

Abstract logos are hard to create if you have no design experience. It’s best to hire a professional logo design consultant who can translate colors and shapes into meaningful marks for your business.

Mascots

A mascot logo represents your business through a character. Often, they are colorful, cartoonish, and fun. A mascot logo humanizes your brand and acts as an ambassador for it.

Companies selling to kids and families, as well as sports teams, are best suited to these designs. Popular mascot logos you’d likely recognize are Mr. Peanut by Planters, Disney’s Mickey Mouse, or M&M’s candy characters.

Combination marks

A combination logo combines a wordmark or lettermark with a pictorial mark, abstract logo, or mascot. You then integrate them together to create the logo.

The combination mark helps people associate your company name with a picture or icon immediately. Widely recognized combination marks include Ralph Lauren, Burger King, and Converse.

5. Decide on a color scheme

Color plays an important role in decision-making and brand identity. Your logo’s colors will end up on your website, in-store signage, social media feeds, marketing emails, and every other place where a user interacts with your brand. There’s no color that’s universally "better," but each color does say something different.

You want to make sure you’re saying the right thing for your unique brand. Color psychology can help you achieve that. Using color psychology in logo design helps you evoke certain product or corporate traits with specific colors.

Let’s go over the psychological effects of certain colors:

Brown

Brown is often associated with all-natural ingredients, homemade goods, and freshly baked treats. It’s also the color of tree bark, sticks, autumn leaves, and rich soil, so it can give an outdoorsy aura to your brand.

Orange

Like a roaring fire, orange radiates warmth, energy, and passion. It also tends to evoke summer—especially when paired with lighter blues and soft greens.

Yellow

Orange’s high-saturation sister, yellow, also gives off light, energy, and warmth. But if orange’s warmth is a glowing fireplace, yellow’s is the intense heat of a midday sun. It brings fun, positive vibes to your brand.

Green

Green can invoke an organic aura that brings to mind lush rainforests, eco-awareness, and a sense of calm.

Pink

Pink is a soft gentle color often associated with femininity. It has broader connotations of kindness, romance, and love.

Red

Red is bold and unforgiving. It stands out, which is why it’s become such a dependable color in branding. Like pink, red tends to invoke romance. But whereas pink’s romance is tender and gracious, red’s romance is passionate and loud.

Purple

Purple is a shadowy, mysterious stranger with an almost magical magnetism. Given that purple dyes historically have had a reputation for being rare and expensive, there’s no mystery how purple has come to be associated with wealth, excess, mysticism, magic, and indulgence.

Blue

Blue tends to invoke feelings of trust, ease, and peace. That said, blue has also been shown to be the least appetizing color. Try to avoid it if you’re selling food.

Black, gray, and white

Sometimes the best color for your brand is no color at all. Shades of black, white, and gray tend to invoke a sense of calmness, balance, or clarity.

Using multiple colors

Many logos are monochromatic. Single colors are easier to coordinate with, and using only one color will simplify your brand’s other graphic design elements. Monochrome logos also can be reimagined in different colors for different purposes.

The FedEx logo is typically displayed in blue and orange. However, the company has created alternative color logos for specific departments.

Here are some branding tools you can use to experiment with color palettes:

• Paletton : Paletton’s color wheel lets you create color schemes using easy, interactive sliders.
• Coolors : Coolors lets you generate random color harmonies, lock colors you want to hold in your palette, and adjust other colors collectively to create a fully customizable palette. You can also generate palettes from uploaded images.
• Colormind : Colormind is especially good for web designers because it includes an easy-to-use tool for achieving readability and color harmony on web pages by previewing colors on the same page in real time as adjustments to the palette are made.
• ColorSpace : ColorSpace is best for developers, as it automatically generates CSS code to include the color palette you’re creating on your webpage.
• Canva’s color palette generator : Canva generates color schemes randomly or from images. But what makes Canva’s tool unique is its ability to search for color palettes via keywords.

Color psychology by industry

One study surveyed almost 5,000 people across 30 nations and found that many color-emotion associations are universal. The results were as follows:

Colors evoke different emotions when associated with different industries. Research on color branding in psychology from one source found the following:

• Restaurants associate red with attention, green with health, and blue with sweetness.
• Airlines associate red with caring, yellow with cheerfulness, and blue with dependability.
• Communications companies associate gray with dependability, blue with communication, and black with confidence.
• Apparel and accessories brands associate red with passion, black with elegance, and orange with optimism.
• Auto manufacturers associate silver with quality, red with strength, and blue with reliability.
• Home improvementbrands associate blue with calm, orange with optimism, and red with motivation.
• Pharmaceutical companies associate blue with health, orange with optimism, and green with health.

To determine the best color palette for your brand, consider color theory, conduct competitor research, and choose the dominant and secondary colors that resonate most for your brand archetype.

6. Pick a font

Your logo may not include any text, but much of your graphic design will, including your web copy, signage, and a host of other branded materials. For the sake of consistency, it’s important to consider which typefaces your brand plans on using in the logo design process, even if you’re not using them in the logo itself.

Typeface vs. font

The terms "typeface" and "font" are used interchangeably in most contexts, so it’s common to assume they’re synonyms. However, there’s an important distinction: a typeface is a characteristically distinct set of typographical symbols and characters, often divided into variant sets, like italic and bold. Each of these variant sets is a font.

The four basic type styles and when to use them

Some logo fonts focus on style, some on historical significance, and some on endless splintered subcategories.

The most common system categorizes fonts into these four types:

1. Serif fonts: Serif is the oldest type style and dates back to the Latin alphabet. It’s characterized by the "feet" at the end of each stroke. Serif typefaces are associated with history and tradition and are often used by luxury brands to evoke a sense of elegance.
2. Sans serif fonts: Sans serif type is more modern and often used in a digital capacity because it’s easier to read on a screen. These typefaces are associated with simplicity and minimalism and are often used to convey a sense of innovation and modernity.
3. Script fonts: Script typefaces are derived from handwriting or calligraphy. They’re fluid and often used in whimsical contexts to portray a sense of personality, romance, and passion.
4. Decorative fonts: Decorative typefaces forego typographical conventions and can take on a wide variety of moods. They are stylistically diverse and should be used sparingly—too much of a good thing can quickly become tacky.

When choosing your font, also consider the line thickness, whether you’ll use italicized or regular, and the mood you want to convey.

Technical typography: kerning, weight, and readability

Technical typography adjustments affect logo legibility and brand feel.

Kerning is the distance between letters and can help create a clean and uncluttered design. Kerning makes a logo more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read.

GIF showing text ’Kerning’ with uneven spacing, then adjusted for balanced spacing.

Font weight is the boldness of different characters, which directly affects the vibe of text. For example, the below font looks very different at its 100 weight value versus its 950 weight value. Both weight and kerning affect the readability of your logo.

7. Outline a logo shape

The shape of your final logo design is just as important as the colors and fonts you use. We subconsciously respond in different ways to different shapes, whether it’s a circle or a square.

Here are some common logo shapes and what they might signify:

• Circles and ovals: Anything circular projects a positive message, usually related to community, friendship, and love.
• Squares: Squares signify practicality and stability. They also imply balance and strength—but be mindful that they can appear cold and uninviting if paired with a monochrome color palette.
• Triangles: Triangles are often associated with science and power.
• Vertical and horizontal lines: Who knew that lines could convey so much? We subconsciously associate vertical lines with strength, while horizontal lines often indicate community and calmness.

8. Fine-tune your logo design

The creative process is different for everybody. Some may start with sketches, while others might jump right into Adobe Illustrator. The drafting phase involves a lot of trial and error, so don’t get discouraged if things aren’t working.

A/B testing

A/B testing is a practical method for validating a logo design. A/B testing logo design ideas involves setting loose two different logo designs, comparing brand perception, and iterating the logo based on results.

Feedback loops

At a certain point, you might start to feel like you can’t even distinguish letters from shapes or good logos from bad. When this happens, it’s time to solicit feedback. This step is incredibly important to the creative process because getting feedback is the only method creators have of "testing" their branding ideas.

For the best feedback, ask specific questions about how each person perceives your brand based on the company logo. Being told your logo is "good" or "bad" won’t be helpful, but knowing how your brand comes across will be.

Here are some questions to ask when getting feedback:

• What’s the first thing that sticks out to you?
• How would you characterize my brand?
• What do you remember most about the logo?
• Is there anything you’re confused by?
• If you could remove one aspect of the design what would it be?

It’s hard for someone to be certain of how they’d react to your brand in real life, so avoid questions like "Would you buy this?" or "Is this interesting?" More specific questions will garner more specific answers and more useful feedback.

9. Choose the best option

Now you have your feedback and your initial designs, it’s time to decide on your final logo design.

When choosing the right design, think back to the elements that make a good logo and ask yourself:

• Is my chosen logo simple and memorable?
• Is my chosen logo versatile?
• Does my chosen logo reflect my brand values and brand positioning?
• Will my logo help create a recognizable brand identity?
• Does my chosen logo stand out against competitors and speak to my target audience?
• Will people be able to tell what my chosen logo is in less than five seconds?

10. Integrate the logo into your business

Ready to show the world your brand new ecommerce logo? Here are some tips for integrating it seamlessly throughout your business.

• Add it to your email signature.
• Use it as your profile picture on all social media accounts.
• Incorporate it into product packaging (both internal and external).
• Include it on business cards and any print materials.
• Splash it across the front of your brick-and-mortar store.
• Add it to invoices and transactional emails.

Logo file formats and technical specifications

Choosing the proper logo file format ensures that your logo always looks clean, crisp, and professional. Different file formats work best for different use cases, especially in multichannel branding. The most common file formats for logos include vector and raster.

An example of a file in vector format is an SVG file, while PNGs and JPEGs are raster files.

Vector files scale without loss in quality, while raster files show detail but lose quality with size or when going transparent. Here’s a quick guide to when to use each:

• Social media: Vector-based SVG files.
• Web and email: Transparent PNG files.
• Print: EPS or high resolution PDF files.

TIP: Include which file format you’ll use for different scenarios in your brand guidelines.

7 tips for designing a good logo

"Design is communication. It’s a conversation. It has the power to captivate an audience, convey information, and evoke emotions—all of which directly impacts consumer decision-making," says Sara Mote, cofounder of MOTE Agency.

Your logo design needs to do just that: reflect your brand values, resonate with your audience, and accurately describe your products in one simple, memorable graphic.

Designing a timeless logo requires creativity, research, and a clear understanding of what you want it to accomplish.

Here are seven tips for how to design a great logo.

1. Reduce cognitive load

Cognitive load, or the amount of work the brain has to do to process information, is an important consideration when it comes to psychological design. Keeping your logo design simple can help, as it minimizes the amount of information the brain has to parse through when thinking.

Avoid busy logos with tons of color and tiny details. An overwhelming logo can also reduce visibility, make scaling difficult, and be off-putting to potential customers.

2. Make it memorable

A memorable logo can help you stand out in a crowded market, whether it’s your use of bold colors or an eye-catching design.

Here are a couple of quick tips for logo memorability:

• Create a unique icon or graphic. Craft an icon or small graphic that’s totally bespoke to you.
• Get strategic about color. Create visual interest with bold or unexpected colors or keep it classy and elevated with muted tones.
• Choose distinct typography. Typeface matters. Select something that’s timeless and that sets your brand apart.
• Establish an emotional connection. A logo that sparks an emotional response is more likely to stick in people’s minds.

Tinned seafood company Fishwife’s logo embodies all four of these characteristics. Its unique illustration, bold––yet simple––color palette, visually interesting font, and warm vibe make it stand out on the internet and on the shelves of grocery stores.

3. Ensure it reflects your brand identity

Each part of a logo’s design, like its colors, typography, icons or graphics, and overall style, need to align with your brand identity and communicate its personality and values. For example, a vintage clothing brand might opt for a color scheme that reflects the eras of clothing it sells and use a retro-style typeface.

4. Future-proof it

There’s a reason that companies like Shopify and TikTok have made only minor tweaks to their logos since inception. Clean lines, simple iconography, attention to logo color psychology, and versatility have given these logos real staying power.

While it’s tempting to jump on current design trends, it can cause what’s a great logo today to look outdated tomorrow. A timeless logo ensures that you won’t have to redesign it every couple of years, which will help with brand recognition.

5. Craft something versatile

Consider: Would your logo look just as good as your profile picture on TikTok as it would on a billboard in Times Square?

You’ll use your logo in multiple places, from your website and emails to print collateral and packaging. That’s why it needs to be scalable and easily adaptable to different sizes, colors, and mediums without losing its quality or legibility. Make sure it also works in black and white and is easy to read on different surfaces.

6. Ask for feedback early on

Crafting your logo in a vacuum is a risky move: What looks great to you might not resonate with your prospective customers. Gather feedback from a diverse group, like people within your target audience, trusted coworkers, and social media followers. Fresh perspectives can help you identify what’s working and what’s not.

You can also pay an external research company to put your logo in front of your target demographic and get feedback in the form of polls and surveys.

7. Utilize visual hierarchy and negative space

Visual hierarchy in logo design draws the eye to the most important element first. For example, fragrance brand DedCool uses visual hierarchy to highlight its funky barcode logo. The eye then lands on the brand name, and finally either "Los Angeles, CA" or the product scent.

Visual hierarchy clarifies where the viewer’s eye should travel first, eliminating the need for the brain to make that decision.

DedCool also uses negative space in its logo to create balance and simplicity. Meal kit shop Spatula Foods, on the other hand, leverages negative space in a more playful way. The "U" represents a bowl or the rounded tip of a spatula.

Common mistakes to avoid in logo design

• Designing a logo without a defined brand identity
• Not exploring more than one design concept
• Ignoring the role of color psychology in design
• Using the wrong file format
• Overusing special effects
• Inconsistencies across platforms

As you’re designing your logo, be aware of some common design pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Designing a logo without a defined brand identity

Jumping straight into logo design without first establishing your brand identity is like decorating a house before laying the foundation.

Your logo should be a reflection of your brand strategy, values, mission, and personality. Before you start sketching ideas, ask yourself: What does my brand stand for? Who is my target audience? What emotions do I want my logo to evoke? Defining your brand identity first ensures that your logo aligns with your brand’s overall vision and resonates with your audience.

Not exploring more than one design concept

It’s highly unlikely the first design concept you see or come up with will be the best one. Relying on a single concept limits your creative possibilities and can result in a logo that doesn’t fully capture your brand’s essence.

Instead, explore your options. Experiment with different symbols, styles, fonts, and layouts. Then, get feedback, and refine the strongest elements.

Ignoring the role of color psychology in design

Color psychology is a real thing, and can influence mood and the way people perceive different things. If you ignore the psychological significance of different colors, you can send the wrong message to customers.

For example, if your product positioning focuses on promoting all-natural products, a bright color scheme of neon pink and orange could subconsciously deter shoppers seeking clean ingredients. Earth tones like sage, taupe, and chocolate send a more on-brand message.

Using the wrong file format

Using raster images (like JPEGs and PNGs) instead of vector files (like AI or SVG) can mean a blurry logo in larger contexts. Raster images lose quality when resized, while vector files maintain their crispness. Make sure you have a vector version of your logo to use across your website or in other circumstances where you need a larger format.

Overusing special effects

Remember WordArt? Gradients, shadows, and complex textures might look fun but can become problematic when it comes to scaling your design and staying relevant long term. Simple, clean designs tend to age better and are more versatile across different mediums.

Inconsistencies across platforms

Ensure your logo is used in the same way across all branding materials and that the design remains consistent. This increases brand recognition and builds trust with customers.

How to protect your logo design

Once you finalize your logo, legally protect its design with a trademark, a type of intellectual property protection. Here’s the process to register your logo as a trademark:

1. Search the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database . Determine if there are similar logos to yours already trademarked within your industry.
2. Enlist help for a more thorough search. Once you complete your preliminary search within the USPTO database, you may want to hire either an attorney or an intellectual property consultant (with common costs of around 1,000ドル to 2,000ドル) to research further.
3. Put together your application. Necessary items include: your proposed trademark, description of goods and services, first or proposed first date of use, 350ドル filing fee per class.
4. File. Submit your application online to (USPTO) via its trademark electronic application system, called Trademark Center.
5. Monitor status and reply to any actions. Respond to any issues or provide additional information if requested.
6. Publish, register, and maintain your trademark. Your trademark will get published in the Trademark Official Gazette for 30 days. If no one takes issue with your mark, you’ll get your registration certificate. File required maintenance documents between years five and six, and again after each decade following.

The estimated timeline is anywhere from 12 to 18 months (if no significant Office Actions are issued).

4 free logo design maker tools

If you can’t justify hiring someone to design your logo, you’re left with two options: design a logo yourself or use a free online logo generator.

If you’re short on time and need a professional logo designed, then a free logo generator is your best bet. There are plenty of adequate logo creators online, but beware—low-quality logo creators generally result in low-quality logos.

Here’s how to design a logo using free, professional-quality tools.

1. Shopify’s free logo maker

Shopify’s free logo-design tool caters specifically to ecommerce businesses. The tool starts by asking questions about your brand’s personality and industry. Based on your input, it then generates designs tailored specifically to your business.

From there, the free online logo maker allows you to customize logo fonts, colors, icons, and layouts.

Shopify’s free logo maker provides fully loaded brand identity packages that include high-resolution versions of your logo ready for business card templates, social media branding, website banners, branded swag, in-store signage, and more.

2. Canva

Canva’s free suite of graphic design tools includes lots of logo templates that can be customized using its intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

Canva is great for hands-on users⁠, especially ones looking for complete creative freedom. However, the limitless design options can be overwhelming for first-timers. If you have less design experience, a more accessible logo creator from this list might be better.

3. LogoMakr

LogoMakr has a streamlined step-by-step logo creation process that makes it easy for beginners to design a logo. It features a database of more than a million searchable graphics, customizable templates, a text toolbar, and a simplified, easy-to-arrange layering system akin to the Layers tool in Photoshop and other more complex design software.

4. MarkMaker

MarkMaker’s logo generator has very limited customization options, but it makes up for this by being one of the easiest logo generators for beginners to use. Its unique process is sort of like having an AI-powered graphic design robot. MarkMaker feeds you an endless scroll of instantly generated logos, asks you which logos you like, and then creates more designs based on your preferences.

How to design a logo with AI

Designing a logo with AI is fast and simple. Logo generator tools like Shopify’s free AI logo design tool will make quick work of turning your brand’s name and your ideal style into several logos for you to choose from.

The exact process will vary by AI tool, but here’s how to do it with Shopify’s AI logo marker:

1. Choose your industry.
2. Select your visual style. You can choose up to three styles, like "creative," "friendly," or "energetic."
3. Add your business name and brand slogan. These two steps are optional, but they’ll allow you to see how your name will appear within the different design options.
4. Determine where you’ll use the logo. Will this just be for a website and social media accounts, or will you use it on your packaging or at retail stores as well?
5. Choose your favorite logo. Edit and customize its fonts, layouts, colors, and icons.

Tip: If you’re looking for other AI tools to support you once you start to build out your online store, Shopify Magic is a great option. Shopify Magic can alter product image backgrounds, assist in writing product descriptions, and suggest personalized responses to FAQs.

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