- Welcome back to our Branding Your Business series.
I'm Jess, a design educator here at Canva.
In this episode,
we are getting into logo design.
How can you ensure your logo
is representative of your brand?
Let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
Okay, we've explored how to identify your brand purpose,
values, and personality.
We know what colors, fonts, and imagery we want to use.
Let's translate that into a logo,
a visual simplification of your brand identity.
Erring on the side of simplicity and clarity is important.
It's tempting to cram so many ideas into your logo
that it becomes overwhelming and messy.
It's better to focus on communicating one idea really well.
First up, let's hear from our design school experts.
(light music)
- Let's take a walk back in time
to the ancient Egyptians.
They created hieroglyphics,
a system of storytelling that used symbols instead of words.
Modern day logos serve a similar purpose.
They are symbols that tell a greater story for your brand.
- The logo will always be one
of the most important parts of your brand.
It clarifies and codifies everything you stand for,
everything you want to be,
and everything you want to communicate.
It's about connecting with your audience immediately,
clearly, and confidently.
And I think the danger in creating an identity
which is over complex
is that you can alienate a lot of people.
So, my advice would always be to err on the side
of clarity and simplicity,
and you can use other parts of your branded experience
to communicate other facets of who you are
and what you want to say.
- A logo is made up of two parts,
the symbol and the wordmark.
Apple's logo is a symbol,
eBay's logo is a wordmark.
FedEx's logo is both,
a wordmark with a symbol hidden within.
Your logo should tell the story of your brand
in the simplest possible way.
In Greek mythology,
Nike is the winged goddess of victory.
The famous Nike logo is a simplified wing.
It represents motion and speed.
The word swoosh is the sound you hear
as Michael Jordan speeds towards a slam dunk.
When designing your logo,
the font shapes and colors you choose will work together
to communicate your brand's promise.
So get sketching,
aim for a solution that is simple, unique, and timeless.
If our ancestors could do it, so can you.
- So your logo is a vessel
that you have to put meaning into.
It takes a lot of time to build a connection
with your audience with that logo,
millions of impressions.
The average consumer takes at least seven exposures
to even remember it.
We asked Steph to show us how we might design a logo
for our imaginary bakery brand, BakeIt.
Click the link in the description
or scan the QR code on the screen
to access the workbook,
where you can design along with Steph.
- [Steph] The great thing about Canva
is we already have thousands of templates of logos
for you to use.
So, just go to your search bar here
and I'm gonna type in bakery logo.
We have all of these beautiful logos
already designed for us to use.
You can be really specific with the filters here.
So, I really would like this bakery logo to be super simple.
So, in Style, I'm just gonna select Simple,
and as you can see,
it's filtered out some of the busier ones.
So, I really like this one here,
I'm gonna select it,
and it's opening up a new file for me.
So, first thing's first,
let's choose our brand name.
So, the bakery that I'm branding is called BakeIt.
And it's really great also to have a bit of a tagline
for your company.
So, for this, I'm going to write artisan bakery.
Now, I'm really liking this curve effect
and that's something I can go into soon,
but I don't think we need these other elements here.
So, I'm going to make the name of the brand a lot bigger.
I'm also going to update the fonts.
So, remember that we've used our primary font,
and our secondary font.
And you can really play around with the layout as well.
So, I was drawn to this curve here
and what's really effective
is you can actually tighten or expand the curve.
So, I'm just gonna tighten it slightly,
just so it has a lot of balance.
I think also at the moment,
this primary font here is looking a little bit spaced.
So I'd like to tighten the lettering as well.
So, you can go up here and edit and drag,
and I'm just going to make it a little bit tighter together.
And I think that's looking great.
So, that's our logo.
And what you can also do is duplicate the page,
and then have an option with color,
an option with just black and white.
So I'll just delete this background,
so we've got a nice clean, working space.
So, I'm going to use our primary red, the burgundy.
So I'll just go back to my workbook
and go to my Colors page
and just copy/paste this hex code.
And this is going to make sure that our brand
is using consistent colors.
So I'm just going to copy/paste that into the color section.
And I think I'd also like this
to be using our secondary colors.
So I'm gonna gonna use this gray
and just copy that hex code over.
I'm just gonna paste that in there.
And if you are using different tones,
you can just...
I'd like it to be a tiny bit darker here,
just so it's a little bit more legible
against a lighter background,
but it's still within the same tone range.
So, I just tweaked that over slightly.
So I'll just replace and change that to black.
And now you can see,
as you flick between,
you've got a black and white version
and you've got a colored version,
and I'd like to do one more of just white.
So, I'm gonna duplicate this page again.
I'm going to make the background darker
just so we can see when we change it.
And I'm just gonna create a white version.
So now what you can do in Canva
is go to Share and Download.
And I recommend using SVG.
And click Transparent Background here.
What's really great about SVG
is it creates a vector file,
and when you re-upload this into Canva,
you're able to change the colors.
So, I'm just going to go
and select Page 2 for now,
but feel free to upload all your other color variations,
and Download.
I'll go back to my workbook,
and I'm just gonna drag and drop this in.
And if you go to your Logos page,
you can just delete this here
and place in your logo.
And then you can resize
just so it's all there and visible.
So now we have our logo all finalized.
I just wanna test to see what it looks like
when we apply it to different types of media.
So we've got an Is it scalable sheet on our workbook.
And first up,
I'm just going to test the white version
on this business card
and just resize it to fit.
And the main thing here is just to make sure
that it's still legible at a smaller scale.
So, I'm just going to see if now this works in the pen,
and it might even be a better option for the T-shirt.
You could almost have two versions,
depending how small you wanna make it
or if you just wanted it to be quite small
on the chest of the T-shirt.
Yeah, that's looking much more legible
and it seems to be working across all these mediums here.
So, yes, it is scalable.
And there you have it.
- Thanks for that, Steph.
You can test out your own logo design in your workbook.
Try it on a T-shirt,
a business card, and a pen,
and see what it looks like at a smaller scale.
You can always design a secondary logo
if you need one that is more legible
on a really small scale.
So that wraps up our episode on designing your logo,
but we're not done yet.
Next, we're going to ensure you know
how to easily apply your logo to designs
by creating a brand kit in Canva.
Subscribe below so you don't miss the next episode.
See you there.
(upbeat music)