Designing A Logo That Doesn’t Suck

Every blog needs a logo! It’s the simplest way for readers to identify with your blog while helping you build a brand image. It’ll make you look more professional – which is handy when securing sponsorships to monetise your work. Ironically, this creates one of the biggest issues; you assume any logo will do. 

You take the easiest way out and find a random logo online or use AI to make one from scratch. Who cares what it looks like as long as it exists, right? 

Wrong! 

Bad logo design is arguably worse than having no logo at all. You need to create something that aligns with your brand image and can be something people recognise for all the right reasons. That’s why we’re bringing you the logo design fundamentals every blogger or creative should know. You’ll soon see the basics of what makes a good logo – alongside examples of bad logo design and what to avoid. 

We’ve got links to loads of free tools to help you create your logo too! By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly how to make a good logo for your blog. 

Logo Design Basics – What Makes A Good Logo?

How do you know if a logo is good? You likely see hundreds of logos every day and many will stick with you more than others. What’s even crazier is that some of the logos you enjoy the most look entirely different from one another. At first glance, it makes you wonder what makes a good logo as loads of different ones all seem amazing. 

However, dig a tiny bit deeper and you uncover the secrets to excellent logo design. It’s not rocket science or overly complex – the best logos will follow these fundamental rules: 

• Simplicity is key
• Originality sets you apart
• It’s all about being memorable
• Timelessness ensures longevity
• Be aware of colour psychology 
• Must have versatility
• Needs the right typography
• Keep things balanced
• Should be relevant to your brand

Simplicity is key

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, simplicity is key when designing a logo. The more convoluted a logo is, the worse it will look. Think of all the iconic logos you can muster in your brain – a few that spring to mind are McDonald’s, Apple and Google. They’re all as simple as can be. 

You don’t need to be super creative here, as backwards as that sounds! The simplest logos are often the best because they’re easier to process and recognise. There’s not a lot to take in, so audiences quickly identify with the logo and recognise the brand. 

Less is more – remember that! If you find yourself adding too many elements to a logo, you’ve lost it. It becomes too confusing and visually cluttered. Think about where you’re using this logo too. It’s likely going to feature at the top of your blog and on any emails you send out – while also being on your media kit. It’s not supposed to dominate and draw attention away from the rest of your content, which is why simplicity is key. 

Originality sets you apart

You’re creating a logo for your brand/blog so it must be original. This goes hand in hand with the point below about making your logo memorable. Originality helps your logo stand out from the crowd, so it’s instantly easier to remember and notice. 

More to the point, designing an original logo avoids any brand confusion. I know we’ve mentioned McDonalds already but I’m bringing it up again because it features the best example of originality I can think of. Everyone knows the McDonald’s logo, everyone. You see the iconic typography of the yellow “M” on a red background and your mind instantly clicks and thinks of this brand. I used to have an app on my iPad for a word game I can’t even remember. But, its logo was a yellow “W” on a red background. Every time I saw it on my screen when scrolling through apps, I assumed it was the McDonald’s logo. It’s all I could think of because the design so closely resembled an iconic one. 

The fact I can’t even remember the name of the game shows how important originality is! Yes, you want to draw inspiration from existing logos – especially when they’re good ones – but you can’t take it too far. You don’t want people to confuse your logo with someone else’s as it can mess up your brand identity and brand awareness. Make something that follows the key logo design fundamentals (like all the best logos) yet ensure it is completely original and stands out on its own. 

It’s all about being memorable

As mentioned, originality bleeds into memorability. The more original your logo is, the more it stands out from the crowd and sticks in people’s heads. This is where you must combine creativity with simplicity. Try to make a simple logo with some key creative elements that make it more memorable than others. 

This is easier said than done, but you could try to make a design more memorable by using certain colours or incorporating a specific shape. Google and Samsung do this incredibly well. Both logos are simply the name of each company. And yet, they’re instantly recognisable and memorable. 

How? In Google’s case, it’s a combination of the typography and the colours. It uses all of its main brand colours across the letters, so we immediately start identifying with it and it lodges into our brains. Typography is again key in the Samsung logo as it’s fairly unique to this brand. There’s also one slight alteration to the “A” – it doesn’t have the little line across, almost looking like an upside-down “V”. A small change like this immediately makes the logo more memorable despite being one of the simplest ones around. 

Timelessness ensures longevity

I’d say one of the biggest mistakes you can make is using trends to inspire logo design. Don’t do this as your logo will quickly become outdated. Instead, you need to make your design as timeless as can be. It should stand the test of time and look great as the years go by. 

We keep banging on about simplicity, but it’s here again! The more simplistic the design, the more timeless it’ll end up being. When you over-complicate things and incorporate modern trends, you end up with a logo that doesn’t look right in a year or two’s time. 

Sure, you can redesign the logo and most companies go through a re-branding period at some point, but you don’t want to do this every couple of years! Especially when you run a blog as it means altering the entire aesthetic and branding of every page, your email content, social media, etc. Sticking to a timeless logo design gives you something to rely on throughout your career. 

Be aware of colour psychology 

Have you ever wondered why some logos contain different colours from others? The better question is why do so many logos contain the same colours? Intel, HP, Samsung, IBM, Dell, Windows, PayPal, American Express and many other tech/finance companies all incorporate similar shades of blue in their logos. 

Why? Because of colour psychology. 

Colour psychology looks at how colours influence us and our emotions. Our eyes see a colour and our brain processes this and releases hormones to influence how we feel. Colours like red, for example, are associated with passion or anger. In the examples above, blue is the chosen colour as it’s symbolic of trust, stability and competence. That’s why loads of tech/finance companies opt for it to show they’re trustworthy, intelligent and highly professional. 

You need to be aware of this when designing a logo that doesn’t suck. The colours you choose should give the emotional response you’re after. They should also align with the tone of your blog/brand. For instance, if your blog is about fitness, you may wish to use colours like yellow or orange that convey feelings of happiness, optimism, confidence and friendliness. A blog about eco-friendly tips or the environment is best served with a green colourway. 

Must have versatility

Versatility is a crucial part of the logo design fundamentals. Think about how your logo will be used: 

• On your blog/website
• As a header/footer for emails
• Potentially on any merchandise you sell
• As the profile icon for your social media platforms
• In your media kit

You’ll use it everywhere – and all of these examples require different formats! Your logo will be at its biggest on your website, but it also needs to be in smaller formats for emails or social media. Therefore, it has to be scalable and versatile; it must work in all sorts of formats. 

Again – and I’m banging the same drum again and again – simplicity is key! Simple logos are versatile because they’re easy to scale. Think about the Nike logo. It’s a simple swoosh but it can be made big, small and fits all formats. You ideally want a logo that works like this but you can also consider making a logo that’s easily condensed. 

Car logos are the perfect example of this – the main logo usually includes the brand’s name, but they use the logo without typography as a symbol. This is perfect when you need to use a smaller version of your logo for email footers, press release headers or as a cool symbol on some branded merch for your blog. 

Needs the right typography

As you should be aware, typography refers to the font used in your logo. Some of you might not need typography at all as your logo may be a symbol. Realistically, as this is the logo for your blog, it will be heavily based on typography. 

You’ve got to pick a good font depending on the brand image you wish to convey. Very shart and straight typography is usually the best for serious tones. It’s a fine choice if you’ve got something like a finance or business blog. For travel blogs, you’d want something entirely different. The typography should be more free-flowing – cursive fonts work well here to convey a sense of wanderlust and adventure. 

Think about the message you want to get across from your blog logo and this determines the typography you use. It’s amazing how different a logo can feel if you tweak the typography and nothing else. 

Keep things balanced

Logo design is at its best when things are balanced and fairly symmetrical. You don’t need everything to be perfectly even on both sides – but you want to avoid a sense of imbalance. We’ll show you a few examples of this in the section on good vs. bad logo design so it makes more sense. The best way to describe this is to imagine a logo with loads of things happening on one side and hardly anything on the other. 

Take the Coca-Cola logo – it’s relatively balanced with the same font sizing for Coca and Cola. An imbalanced version of this logo would see Coca in tiny font with barely any spacing and Cola a lot larger with more spaces between the letters. It throws everything into disarray and makes you hate the logo. 

Symmetrical logos do tend to look the best and be the easiest to identify, but it’s not essential. As long as you look at the logo and feel like it’s balanced, you’ll be fine. 

Should be relevant to your brand

Lastly, all of the previous points are pointless if the logo doesn’t reflect your brand. You can use the advice above to make amazing logos – but they’re useless if they aren’t relevant to your brand image. 

There must be synergy between everything so your logo aligns with your blog and the style of content you produce. At the same time, it should appeal to your target audience. Logos create first impressions; an improper reflection of your brand can put people off your blog before they read any content. They see the logo and automatically assume this blog isn’t for them. As a result, you miss out on viewership! 

Good vs. Bad Logo Design

We’ve seen examples of good and bad logo design throughout the history of the world. You’ve also seen a few examples of good logos mentioned throughout the points above. Some of these include: 

• Nike
• Google
• Samsung
• Coca Cola
• IBM
• McDonald’s
• Apple

All of these logos have the same things in common; they tick the boxes for the fundamentals of logo design. They’re simple, use colours well, are unique & memorable, utilise typography to convey the right messages and so on. 

We’re now delighted to show you some pretty poor logo designs that didn’t go down well (and most resulted in complete redesigns after backlash). 

Gap

You’re all aware of the traditional Gap logo, right? It features simple white text on a dark blue background. The text is very smart and conveys the brand as being a quality clothing provider. Use of the dark blue adds to the trustworthiness and there’s a general sense of nostalgia with the whole design. You look at it and think of a company that’s been around for ages and is easily dependable. 

This is the logo redesign they almost went for in 2011: 

Yup, you can already see why this was received. The new font is too curvacious and relaxed – it goes against the entire brand image Gap cultivated over many years. You stop seeing a trusted and dependable fashion brand and start seeing the logo for a tech startup. It removed people’s emotional connection with Gap and the switch in typography and colour was a massive error. They never went ahead with the rebrand!

 

London 2012 Olympics

Another iconic logo for all the wrong reasons. If you don’t remember this, here it is in all its “glory”: 

A genuinely horrendous logo that nobody can figure out how it got approved. The colours here are terrible – what has neon pink got to do with London or the Olympics? It’s terribly balanced too with so much going on at the top, almost making it look like the 1 and 2 are being squashed.

And let’s not forget about the golden rule of logo design; keep it simple! They’ve taken “2012” and made it almost impossible to visualise. Everything is too jagged and the shapes are far too convoluted. 

It’s genuinely the perfect example of how not to design a logo. The only thing we’ll give it credit for is being memorable, though that’s for all the wrong reasons! 

National Safe Place

We talk about good logo design conveying the right messages – and that’s the exact opposite of what this design from the National Safe Place Network did. 

First of all, the purpose of this organisation is to provide safe places for youths or children who are in crisis. Perhaps they’re running away from abusive situations at home or have been made homeless. A very honourable thing to do, but unfortunately the logo didn’t represent this at all. 

The design above has since been changed, largely because it looks very intimidating. It’s supposed to show two people hugging (we think) but it looks like someone being inappropriately grabbed from behind. The yellow colouring and diamond design also make it look too much like a warning sign, conveying feelings of danger. 

In fairness, the typography is okay. It’s soft and soothing, showing that this company is caring and inviting. A redesign was necessary to get rid of the very inappropriate figures on the front. 

PwC

As you can see from this logo, a lot is going wrong. PwC is one of the most recognised brands in the world, offering a massive range of services. As such, you’d think it would focus on a logo to demonstrate its professionalism and trust. For me, the typography doesn’t do that – and the choice of colours is bizarre. 

They’ve gone for reds, oranges and yellows – with a random touch of pink. It’s giving more “passionate” and “firey” vibes, rather than the professionalism and trustworthiness you’re hoping for from a company like this. The logo also uses negative space poorly. There’s so much going on in the top right, but you’re left with space in the top left. It’s incredibly strange – and that’s before we talk about how unbalanced the weird fiery symbol is. Surely this logo would look a lot better if the symbol was more symmetrical and placed above the “w”, or am I crazy? 

It’s a poor choice – and the wildest thing is that it’s still being used and hasn’t been changed in decades! 

Best Free Tools For Logo Design

You know what makes a good logo, but how can you put your ideas in motion? Thankfully, you don’t need to be an incredible graphic designer to conjure up an excellent logo for your blog. You’ll find loads of great tools out there to assist you with this – and here are some of my favourites: 

•  Adobe Express – One of the best tools around and it comes with a free AI logo maker. This is a good tool to get some inspiration if you don’t fully enjoy what the AI app throws out. 
• Canva – Another classic tool to help create custom logos for your brand. Canva is very easy to use, comes with loads of templates and icons and provides tips on how to make yours stand out. 
• Wix – Known more for website creation than anything else, Wix has a handly logo design tool that also uses AI to create something in seconds. You can tell the tool about your brand, set a style and then fully customise the finished logo to meet all your needs. 

Final Thoughts On Good Logo Design

Take everything from this guide to help you learn how to make a good logo that doesn’t completely suck. Remember, it should be simple, versatile, have good colour psychology and reflect your brand image. It’s not as difficult as it seems – and feel free to download and use the free tools above to bring your ideas to life.