We, like many, are big fans of Figma. Once you find and download a logo you love, simply upload your high-quality, transparent logo files and brand colors to your Figma project. Get a brand, not just a logo. be your logo's width or height, is at least 1000px. for use in Figma designs.
Icon: Include an icon or symbol that represents your brand or product. Colors: Choose colors that align with your brand personality and message. Typography: Pick a font that matches your brand's style and is easy to read. Simplicity: Keep your design simple and clean. Scalability: Your logo should look great at any size. Uniqueness: Aim for a logo that stands out and sets your brand apart. A memorable logo can make all the difference in today’s visually driven world.
Every element-from the color palette to typography and illustrations-shapes how people perceive and remember your brand. The most enduring logos capture something essential about a brand. Think of Paul Rand’s work for NeXT Computer or the instant recognition of the Coca-Cola script. These designs work because they distill complex brand identities into clear, memorable marks. Ready to discover how to design a logo that will leave a lasting impression? Read on to learn:
The five steps to designing a logo
The logo design process begins with understanding a brand identity and brainstorming ideas that align with it. Here’s how to tackle the early stages of logo design.
Understand your brand identity
Your logo translates your brand’s entire identity into a single mark. The FedEx logo doesn’t just catch an eye - it reinforces the company’s promise of swift delivery. To start, ask yourself the following questions: Who is my target audience and what are their demographics and shared interests? What is my brand’s core mission and message? What fundamental values guide my business decisions? What adjectives describe my company? What symbols, icons, colors, or typography resonate with my brand’s personality?
In his article with Graphis Magazine, Graphic designer Paul Rand says it best: “Graphic designers are really silent salesmen.” Your logo, your silent salesperson, should speak volumes about your brand. Once you have a deep understanding of your brand identity, it will be easier to brainstorm design ideas that match.
Brainstorm ideas
The best ideas emerge from brainstorming sessions-taking even the wildest ideas and transforming them into creative concepts. Bring your team together to: Create a mood board to help visualize your logo’s desired look and feel. Think of it as a visual roadmap to guide your logo design process. Study competitors to spot opportunities to stand out. Use mind mapping to explore connections between concepts. Pro tip: FigJam’s mind map template includes drawing tools to help you sketch initial concepts and ideas.
Determine the type of logo
The next step in the logo design process is to match your brand identity to the right logo style. Each type serves different goals and creates distinct impressions. Explore types of logos: Wordmark: Also known as logotypes, wordmark logos only include your company name, with a strong emphasis on typography to convey your unique brand message. They use the initials of a brand’s name, like CNN, H&M, and IBM. Abstract: Abstract logos are best for brands looking for a modern and unique design style. These logos use abstract shapes and symbols, similar to Pepsi and Audi’s. Combination: Combination logos integrate text and symbols, perfect for brands looking to leverage the power of both. Companies like Doritos, Airbnb, and Dropbox are great examples of logos combining text and imagery. Emblem: Emblems are contained within a specific shape, like Starbucks or BMW, and are typically used for brands that want to evoke a traditional design style.
Choose your color palette and font
Color combinations and typography do more than add style. They shape how people feel about your brand. Be sure to pick elements that reflect your brand personality and evoke the emotions you intend. Consider color theory and color psychology. Color theory refers to how colors work together to create visually pleasing designs. It considers properties like contrast to ensure readability and grab attention, or color schemes like complementary and analogous to create a harmonious logo design. Color psychology refers to how colors make people feel. For example, UPS uses the color brown as a primary brand shade in its logo, evoking a sense of reliability and security-exactly what customers want from a shipping company.
Get creative with typography. Your font choice matters most when designing a wordmark, letterform, or monogram logo. The font should be both readable and reflective of your brand’s personality. Consider the following font types to determine the font family you align with most: Display fonts are common for logos because of their decorative and unique appearance. Serif fonts feature a decorative tail at the end of each stroke, offering a timeless and professional look. Sans serif fonts are modern and minimal, ideal for brands looking for a readable and simple typeface. Monospace fonts are blocky with proportional spacing, often evoking a retro or vintage vibe. Slab serif fonts are often considered powerful and authoritative due to their thick strokes, ideal for brands looking to grab attention. Script fonts mimic handwriting and offer an elegant and creative touch in logo designs.
Design initial iterations
After finalizing your colors and fonts, it’s time to begin your logo concepts to live through shapes and structure.
- Outline shapes: Basic shapes are traditional geometric shapes like circles, rectangles, squares, and triangles. Circles suggest unity or community. Squares and rectangles convey reliability and security. Organic shapes include flowing lines and curves, often representing movement, direction, and fluidity. Abstract shapes are more unconventional and unique, typically combining other shapes and lines to capture the brand’s essence.
- Create mockups: White space, visual hierarchy, and alignment are essential. You can fix elements to a common baseline and use a grid or auto layout in Figma to align text with other logo elements.
Step 4: Design initial iterations continues with outlining, arranging, and refining shapes to reflect the brand personality. Create mockups and test with proper spacing and alignment.
Test and refine
It’s time to gather feedback and put your logo designs in front of the people who matter most - your stakeholders and target audience. Conduct testing and gather feedback. First, gather team feedback by conducting a peer review to uncover strengths and improvements. Sometimes, having an outside opinion helps uncover tweaks you may not have identified on your own. A/B testing is also helpful in getting feedback. You can run a target audience survey with a small pool of customers to determine which design most resonates with your audience.
Finalize your logo by applying the input you received and preparing variations for different uses. Express your message through clean, essential elements. Timelessness, uniqueness, relevance, and readability should guide final decisions. Create a family of logos for different uses and export the best file formats for digital or print use.
Pro tips for designing a memorable logo
- Jumpstart the process with AI: use Figma’s AI features to move from concept to mockup faster.
- Refer to design principles: strong alignment, contrast, and proportion create logos that work.
- Document everything: a brand style guide is your truth source for usage across channels.
- Protect your work: check for trademark conflicts and register your logo when ready.
Start designing your logo with Figma
Now that you know the basics of how to design a logo, it’s time to start creating one that truly represents your brand. Here’s how to transform your logo concepts into reality with Figma's design tools:
- Use FigJam templates to brainstorm initial ideas and collaborate online to create sketches.
- Browse over 1,000 color palettes in Figma’s color palette library, then reference the color meaning library to learn more about your color choices.
- Open Figma’s design tool, bring your logo design to life, and use the collaboration features to gather real-time feedback on designs.
- Sign up for Figma today: with Figma you can create low or high fidelity designs for free.
Today’s tutorial highlights: combine shapes using Boolean operations, explore the Pen tool, discover the power of vector networks, design a logo for an app, and begin creating a set of icons. The lesson emphasizes creating a cohesive brand system that scales across devices and media.
In practice, you’ll begin with a frame, draw shapes for a camera-like logo, and use boolean operations to merge them into a single vector object. Then you can explore vector networks with the Pen tool to craft more complex shapes and a set of icons that complement the logo.
Master Figma Pen Tool in 6 Minutes (Beginner Tutorial)
Day 3 is done! Nice work. Now that we've created a few icons, we’re ready to build more of our app screens. Tune in again for tomorrow’s lesson, when we’ll be creating a nav bar, photo stream, and more.
Bonus resources include a sample file and a launch post explaining vector networks, plus a help article on vector networks to deepen your understanding.