How to Make a Logo for Free Online [%currentyear%]

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Okay, so you’ve got your online business idea figured out. After hours of word-crunching, you’ve got a pretty rad name, you’ve bought the domain name and maybe you’ve even started to build your WordPress website.

But in the back of your mind, that little spot in the top left corner of the page bugs you; there’s supposed to be a logo there. How the heck do I make a logo?

Oh and since you’re just starting the process of building your business, you definitely don’t have the resources to hire a designer to make one for you.

No worries friends, we’ve got your back.

In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to whip up a logo for your online business. For free. In 5 minutes.

Because you’ve got a lot of great ideas to get out there and one heck of a business to build!

Let’s begin…

A logo works a lot like your name (your personal name, not your business’).

When you were born your parents gave you a name and over time, you brought a ton of personality to that noise people make with their mouths to identify you.

So when people hear your name, they think of you with a few heart eyes emojis.

Logos work in the same vein as a symbolic representation of your business, giving people something they can easily recognize and come to feel something (hopefully good) about your business.

And more than most people names (sorry “John”), they can also share information about what your business is all about and how you rock the world.

A good logo:

• Helps you stand out from the competition.
• Shares key information about your business.
• And builds brand recognition for your business.

To do that can take a lot of work. And you already have a lot of work to do getting your business off the ground.

Thankfully, we have some words of wisdom to help you stay calm: your first logo doesn’t really matter that much.

That’s right. We said it.

Yes, it’s important to have a logo that says something about your company, and it shouldn’t look like complete crap.

But the reality of online business is that what really matters is the content you put out there and the value you provide for your audience and (eventually) customers.

Great content can make a “good” logo great, too.

And making a good logo isn’t that hard or expensive, as we’ll show you a little further on.

First, let’s go over the different types of logo you can create.

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When it comes down to logos for online businesses, really there are three basic types:

• Text: A lot of people think logos have to have some sort of image and many do, but they don’t have to. Some really famous logos are just words (Hershey’s) and yours could be too.
• Symbolic: In contrast, some logos are just an image that taps into the power of people’s image recognition system to build a connection and make the logo memorable (Apple. Enough said.)
• Combined: Naturally, our third type of logo is a combination of words and text (Adidas). We find these work well for online businesses because you can connect with people visually, explain what your business is about with your name/words, and you can always make image or text only versions off of the main logo later.

Within those three main types of logo, there are a few elements you can play with to make something really awesome and unique.

Typography

This is just a fancy way of saying “font.” If your logo uses words, you’ll have a ton of font options to choose from to match your style and let people know what kind of business you are.

Imagery

Naturally, if your logo includes non-word pieces, there are nearly an infinite amount of “pictures” you can create and use. These could include symbols, icons, abstract geometric shapes, decorations like boxes or lines, shapes – whatever you think is best to help your logo look good, tell people what you do, and stand out from the competition.

Color

Whether you just use words, just imagery, or both you’ll always have options when it comes to color. Simple black and white can work for a more refined feel, a few variations of one color to really drive one feel home, or a multicolored palate that catches attention and lets people know you’re business is a ton of fun (just please make sure the colors look good together; Adobe’s color palette tool can help with that).

Whatever kind of logo you decide to make, it’s really important to not overcomplicate it.

Simple colors and shapes without a ton of little details not only makes it easier for you to create, but will make it easy to use your logo all over your website, social media, t-shirts, posters, etc without losing details or ending up with a jumbled mess when your logo scales to different sizes.

If you fancy yourself an especially creative person, you can learn even more about the types of logos in this awesome post over at 99designs.

Cool, so you’ve got an idea of what kind of logo you want to create, but we hooked you on the idea that making your logo would be free and fast.

Getting a professionally designed logo for your website used to cost a lot (like hundreds or thousands of dollars).

These days you can get a logo for less than a hundred bucks on Fiverr, but do you really need to spend even that much?

The answer: Nah fam, we’ve got a big ole list of the best free online logo makers (no special software required) for you right here!

Canva

Canva is an amazing free design tool with a beginner friendly interface and tons of free templates for creating anything from social media images, flyers, invitations, business cards and, of course, logos.

They make creating a logo easy by letting you start with one of their free templates, then you can use their super simple drag and drop editor to change fonts, colors, add a bit of visual flair, and even upload your own custom graphics if you have any (thank you graphic designer friends who will work for free coffee and lots of gratitude!).

Shopify’s Logo Maker (Hatchful)

Shopify’s had a logo maker for a while now but it was so wildly popular that they recently gave it a real name, Hatchful. All grown up, #soproud.

And while Shopify’s badass ecommerce platform does cost a pretty penny, Hatchful is just as badass and you can save the penny (it’s free)!

Again, it’s super easy to use – just type in your business name, choose an icon, edit colors, sizes, etc. to your heart’s content, then get that bad boy sent to your email in seconds.

Wix Logo Maker

Wix’ free logo maker combines some pretty sweet automagic with the ability to add your own personal touches to make a free logo that’s truly yours.

Answer a few simple questions and up pops a logo template. From there you can customize pretty much everything to your liking – colors, font, text, sizing, design elements, etc.

AND unlike a lot of other free logo design software, you get no watermarks, full usage rights, and can download your files in SVG format so you’ve got full resolution – for flippin free.

You will have to create a free Wix account which is a minor hassle – especially when that also gets you access to their business name generator and other free website tools.

Squarespace Logo Creator

Squarespace, like Wix, knows it’s best for them to offer their potential customers a ton of free online business tools to convince you to sign up for a paid subscription.

Their free logo maker software is one such tool.

Browse icons and customize your design for a solid combo of inspiration and make-it-your own.

They fall a step behind Wix, though, in that you’ve gotta drop $10 to get the high-resolution version of your creation. Obviously not as good as free but still not too shabby.

Oberlo Logo Maker

Oberlo’s got one of the best logo makers around and yes, it’s another free one.

User friendly with plenty of options, enter your business name and choose between a huge selection of icons to get started.

Then, as you should expect by now, you’ve got color, size, frame, position – all the customization options you need to create a badass logo for your online biz.

Like Wix and Squarespace, they’re using their free logo software as a way to get you hooked and interested in buying their dropshipping software, so you’ll have to enter an email address to get your design.

That’s still free enough in our book!

Free Logo Design

Free Logo Design (.org) is another solid choice for your best online logo maker needs.

Enter your online business name and choose the category that best matches your site to get started.

You’ll then be shown some relevant options from their collection of free logo templates to choose one that you like as a starting point.

From there you know the game: customize color, shape, fonts, etc then smash that “Save” button to download your baby when ready.

The 200 x 200 px PNG version is free (def enough for your website logo needs). $39 gets you the high res version.

Vectr

Vectr is a smidge different than the other free logo creation software we’ve been covering as it’s a more advanced editor for making vector graphics online (or you can download the software if you want).

What this means: you’ve got a lot more power under the hood to create anything you can imagine.

But it’s not quite as straightforward; there aren’t any logo templates, you’ll have to spend a bit more time learning the tool, and you’ll probably need a bit more graphic design skill to use it.

But it’s 100% free AND you can upload images – so maybe the move for you is to create your free website logo with another logo maker then upload it to Vectr to create higher resolution versions (what a great hack!).

Online Logo Maker

Online Logo Maker is a fast and easy tool for whipping up a most excellent logo creation for your website.

Tons of templates and fonts, pre-designed symbols, customization out the proverbial wazoo.

Snag a free account to save your design and get unlimited low res downloads of any and all logos you craft.

$29 gets you their premium version in high-resolution formats and customer support if you need it.

Ucraft Logo Maker

Ucraft’s free logo design software is v simple and v excellent.

Here you’ll find just enough tools (shapes, icons, color and font options) to put together a unique and simple logo lickety-split.

The actual editor is really user friendly and fun to use, but you won’t find any templates to get you started – there are over 220k icons and such so you’ve got a lot of options, just no pre-built combinations of shapes/icons/text as a launch point.

They really went for a simple/clean canvas approach. Solid work though if you want a little something to start with another one of our best online logo creator options will be better for you.

PNG version is free, $12 for the SVG.

LogoMakr

LogoMakr might just be the easiest to use of the bunch. They keep it so simple and to the point – there’s not even a home page to their website! Just hit up logomakr.com and you’re sent right to their free online logo maker and off to the races in seconds.

And of course, they offer tons of drag and drop shapes and icons with all the text, color, sizing, and position changing goodness you need to create a logo that just works.

LogoMakr’s our favorite for sure, so that’s what we’ll be using to show you how easy it is to make a good logo for your online business.

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Alright, the main course, let’s make a logo!

Before we get into the step by step for how to make a logo with LogoMakr, here’s the general process to follow (if you don’t want to just jump right into it):

• Research your competition to see what colors, styles, fonts, etc. they’re using to get some inspiration/figure out how to come up with something unique.
• Get some more inspiration by doing some Google searching for “best logo designs,” checking out Canva’s logo design trends or taking a deeper look at the logos on your favorite websites.
• Brainstorm some ideas by making notes on what you like/don’t like about the logos you found in the first two steps.
• Make your logo (see below for how to do that)!
• Get some feedback from your friends and family then make any changes you think are good (everyone’s got an opinion – doesn’t mean they’re right).

Alright, now into the step by step – follow along with the video if that’s your style or keep reading below for the written guide version!

The first thing you’re gonna want to do is head over to logomakr.com. Go ahead and skip the tutorial (because ours is better) and you’ll see their very simple interface that gives you everything you need but isn’t daunting to look at.

From there you can browse all their logo images/icons or search for something specific. So if you wanted something to do with a tree you can type in “tree” and it’ll give you a ton of options.

Or you can search by categories if there’s not one “thing” you know you’re looking for.

For this tutorial let’s head back to the canvas and make a logo for a game company.

We’ll start by inputting some text using the little “T” on the left. Let’s call it “Oldskool Games” (yes, we know that’s not how you spell “school” but this way is way cooler).

Next, let’s go in and get a game related image by typing “game” into the search bar.

Boom, we’ve got all these game controllers to choose from, let’s go with the colorful one (because it’s poppin’).

When making a quick and easy logo like this there are two main things we should customize and that’s the font and color.

First up, focusing on the font, a gaming company should be really fun. LogMakr has a ton of font categories to choose from but for this logo Fun and Funky is the obvious choice.

Then we can go through and select one of the Fun and Funky fonts, Luckiest Guy is definitely the move here.

And that, friends, is a logo right there.

If we wanted to play with it some more, we could move the text off to the side to create a longer logo.

We can also make the image and text smaller by just dragging and resizing.

And to change the colors we can select any color on the wheel in the top right corner and adjust things like saturation and brightness.

And to be sure your colors are consistent throughout all of your branding be sure to copy the color code, in this case, “ff8d00,” and save it somewhere so you can use that exact color for other things like buttons on your website.

LogoMakr also lets you add shapes like circles, triangles, and squares.

And if you need to remove something (this blue circle was definitely a mistake), just select it and hit the trash can in the bottom right.

They also let you do lines so if you want to underline something you can. Plus you can adjust the line width depending on whether you want something super subtle or nice and phat (also not how you spell “fat”).

And if you want to have shapes/text/images overlap you can switch the order they appear in to put one thing on top of the other using the layer’s button down at the bottom. Just open that up and drag the piece to whatever level you want it at.

So let’s just say we were right the first time but, you know, we wanted to play with it to really be sure. So now we’re really done. For real for real.

To export our new logo we just go up to the Save icon at the top right and click it.

That will bring up a pop up that gives you the option to buy which you totally can, it’s only $20 and you’ll get vector files which will let you scale this logo to any size without it getting all blurry.

But option two is free and all you have to do is credit LogoMakr.

Oh and before you click one of those be sure to save your logo’s URL there on the bottom so you can come back and make changes later if you need to.

Alright guys, that’s it for our text-based LogoMakr tutorial but in the video we covered a few more logo designs so if you want to get some ideas or just see more of the action, check them out here:

• Health and Welness Logo
• Fashion and Beauty Logo
• Corporate Logo

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Before we head off, we’ll leave you with a few logo design tips. Really, for your first logo there’s no need to overcomplicate things. Whatever you make will probably be fine and if your business takes off but you don’t love the logo you can always change it later.

But we also know us saying that might not be enough to help you just get after it, so here are a few things you can keep in mind to let your inner concern troll relax a bit.

Research Your Target Audience

Your logo needs to look good, sure, but it also needs to communicate effectively with your target audience.

Think about who they are, what they like, and if you know anyone who your business could help talk to them about your business and what they think and feel about businesses like yours for ideas on what your logo should “say” about it.

Research Ideas and Competitors

From looking at and talking to your target audience, along with ideas you already have, online research can be really helpful for finding inspiration too.

Look for competitor’s logos, look up keywords associated with your business, and see if you can find your target audience on Reddit or other places to get more leads on ideas and competitors.

You want to make sure your logo is unique and clearly recognizable, but starting a business is hard enough without trying to reinvent the wheel too. Find some things that work, put your own spin on them, logo = done.

Create a Mind Maps and/or Mood Board

Mind maps are a great way to get ideas out of your head for your logo or for your online research to find inspiration for your logo. Just write your business name or a word that describes it in the middle of a piece of paper, circle it, then draw out other things that come to mind to find logo idea gold.

Mood boards are another idea creation/inspiration finding technique that super fancy designers use to create logos.

You and I would call it a “collage.”

Basically, you find a bunch of images (logos, pictures, graphics, etc) that you think are interesting and related to your business, paste them all up on a poster board or a free online collage maker and keep it handy when you’re working on your logo ideas.

Keep. It. Simple.

Again, we can’t stress enough how much your first logo doesn’t need to be perfect.

But in addition to your peace of mind (that thing you’ll get when you finally just make the flipping thing), simplicity is also a really important part of good logos to make them easy to remember, recognizable, and useable everywhere. Think Nike or Apple.

Mirror Your Business’ Personality

You might come up with a logo that looks great but is totally wrong for your business. An example would be using rainbow colors and Comic Sans for a law firm. That lawyer isn’t getting you out of sh*t.

If your business is fun, use crazier fonts and colors (but don’t overdo it). If your business is health-focused, stick to blues and greens and browns. If you’re building a fashion advice blog, fit the style of your logo to the style of fashion you like talking about the most.

Be sure to nail the color scheme

Your logo is definitely a big part of your overall brand and website design.

Just as important is making sure you use a color scheme for it that communicates the messages you want your brand to stand for AND matches your website.

Since your website is a bit more complicated, check out our website color schemes guide to learn more about picking a baller set of colors for your site first.

Then take those colors you choose and incorporate one or two (don’t go overboard – logos should be simple!!) to use in your log.

Is all this too much work? Fiverr’s got you

Hey, this post is all about making a logo for free so we know money’s probably tight.

But if, after reading all this, you’re feeling like “man, this seems like a lot of work,” head over to your friendly neighborhood Fiverr – you can definitely get some solid logos made there (maybe not for $5, but for sure less than $100).

Can I really make my logo online for free?

FOR SURE FAM.

Will you know how to design logos as well as the team at Nike or Google without a lot of learning and practice? No.

Are there limitations to the best free logo makers we covered above?

Yeah – the people who made them gotta eat too.

BUT not having tons of experience or money shouldn’t stop you!

Maybe the first free online logo maker you try doesn’t have something you want, just dive back into our list and try the next one.

For sure you’ll be able to get something that’s at least “good enough to not keep holding up the rest of my website building adventure.”

If not something that’s totally killer. 🙂

What makes a logo design good?

The purpose of a logo is to stand out in the mind of your target audience/customers and give them a visual reminder of your website and what you stand for.

A few qualities you’ll find in good logo designs:

• Simplicity
• Look good at small and large scales
• Distinct
• Sync with the rest of your website/brand (the images and colors match your message)

Taking a look at our logo as an example, it’s simple: Blue and white, a circle with a mouse cursor, our site name.

The blue and white combo signifies simplicity, learning, and trust.

The mouse cursor is obviously related to what we talk about (lots of clicking buttons around here!)

And our name is… our name. So don’t you forget it!

How do I make my logo with a transparent background?

Depending on the free online logo maker you may or may not have that option.

If you do you should have the option to make your background transparent while you’re creating, then be able to download your logo as a “.png” file.

PNGs are a type of image file you’ll see a lot on the web, along with “.jpg” (“jay peg”).

JPG images have smaller file sizes BUT can’t have transparent backgrounds, while PNGs can.

What is a vector graphic?

Without getting too technical, basically vector graphics are a type of image file that incorporates mathemagic to be able to scale to any size without getting pixelated.

If you use a logo maker (or give up and hire someone from Fiverr – no shade we get it your busy), you might have the option to get vector “.svg” files.

And they can be good to have because you might find yourself in a situation where the PNG/JPG files you have (that are a fixed size) don’t scale well for a particular use (eg your logo looks great in your website header but when you try to use it in an Instagram post it becomes unreadable).

But, you’ll have to convert them into JPG/PNGs in order to use them on your WordPress (or website builder) website as they don’t support vector graphics (plus vector image file sizes are way bigger which isn’t good for site speed).

That’s all we have for you today folks, time to jump to it! And yes, we know that’s not the right spelling of “wrap.”

Hopefully we’ve helped you get unstuck with this whole logo making thing; it’s important, but not worth stressing about. Really if you just fire up the free logo maker, play with a few ideas for a few minutes, you’ll probably come up with something awesome.

Then you can get back to the website building stuff.

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