Startup Logo Creation Tools
I’m not a designer, and I’ve never been great at coming up with branding or logos. That said, a company with a distinct and creative logo will always look more reputable than one without.
How Much Should You Invest in a Logo?
While you’ll probably want to invest in custom design once you raise funding, many early-stage startups would do better to save their cash and use one of the low-cost services here. Every company’s brand is different. If high-quality design is a cornerstone of your image, you might invest more in your logo earlier than other competitors.
Since plenty of you are like me and don’t have the greatest logo design skills, I’ve collected several great low-cost resources for designing and improving your startup’s logo. This list should give you enough options to get started and hopefully improve your project’s branding on a tight budget.
Logo Creation and Design Tools
FlatIcon ($0) - Free vector graphics and icons for use with attribution. Lots of great full-color logo elements here will be good for your startup’s icon or on-page styles.
Canva ($0) - I’ve fallen heavily into using Canva for designing social media and other design content. It’s a great tool and the free tier is well worth trying.
Looka Logo Maker ($20) - Looka uses artificial intelligence to instantly generate beautiful, unique logo ideas for your business. Once you narrow down the ones you like, you can tweak the design to your ideal preferences.
Logo Rank ($0) - See how well your logo stacks up against well-known logos and best practices. This will help you evaluate logos generated by some of the tools here.
Fiverr ($5) - I love using Fiverr for small graphic design jobs, logo creation, and tweaking images. The freelancers here vary in skill and specialty, so hold on to the ones you like.
Bootstrap Logos ($7.99) - Limited run logos that are affordable enough for startups or side projects. They post new items daily and let you customize the designs and colors.
Design Wizard ($0) - Create highly visual content in minutes with over 17,000 templates and 1.2 million images. This tool makes it easy to create your own custom designs and logos.
Free Gaming Logo ($0) - Free gaming concept logo designs under CC BY 4.0 license. Great for building online games, eSports, or sprucing up your gaming clan.
Google Fonts ($0) - Free fonts and typography tools for the web. While easy to use and free, it may be hard to stand out as they’re widely used on the internet.
Logo Foundry ($0) - A free professional logo design option for use on your mobile phone. Share your completed logos or browse ones created by others.
LogoDust ($0) - Download free logos or purchase a unique mark for your project with exclusive use rights.
Noun Project ($0) - New icons are added daily and they’re free with attribution. They have more than 3 million designs in their library already.
Logocreator.io ($0) - is a logo design app that’s 100% free. Not only can you create your own brand for free but instantly download at no cost as well.
FreeLogoDesign ($0) - You can use their logo templates (they have more than 2000) to create a logo. Start by choosing a template, then customize it so it meets your needs.
Did I miss a logo creation tool that you love? Email me to suggest new additions to this list.
By Karl Hughes
Karl is a former startup CTO and the founder of Draft.dev. He writes about technical blogging and content management.
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