6 Things To Keep In Mind When Designing A Logo

Originally published 2014. Updated March 2026.

Logo design sits at the intersection of concept, craft, and constraint. A great logo does a lot of heavy lifting: it identifies a business, communicates something about its personality, and needs to work across a business card, a billboard, and a browser favicon — all at once.

These six principles were drawn from a widely shared article on logo creation and remain as useful in the AI era as they were a decade ago. If anything, as AI tools make it easier to generate a logo, understanding what makes a good logo becomes more important.

Before sketching a single line, you need to understand who the client is and what they do. A logo is not decoration — it is a symbol that identifies a company and communicates its product or service at a glance.

Start with research. Who is the audience? What values does the brand want to project? What does the competition look like, and where is the opportunity to stand apart?

When you have a clear concept, begin sketching. Working in black and white first forces you to focus on form and legibility — you cannot hide a weak idea behind colour. Once the form is strong, add colour, style, and type to bring character to the mark.

The checklist that every logo should meet: Simple. Memorable. Timeless. Versatile. Appropriate.

A logo lives in the world across dozens of surfaces and scales. If it doesn’t survive reproduction at small sizes, in single colour, on low-quality print, or embroidered on a cap, it isn’t finished yet.

Fine details — sharp pointed tails, hairline strokes, tiny enclosed shapes — are the first things to disappear under pressure. A logo that looks polished on screen can become an indistinct blob on a pen or a rubber stamp.

Draw with bold shapes and ample white space between elements. Use the minimum amount of detail needed to convey the idea. Flat, solid colours will survive almost any print process; gradients and fine outlines frequently will not.

Colour is powerful — and easily mishandled. Using too many colours makes a logo busy and harder to read. Using the wrong colours makes it feel cheap or inappropriate for the brand.

Start by choosing a small palette of two or three colours that work in harmony. Mix your own from the colour wheel rather than reaching for the default swatches in your software — those defaults look exactly like what they are.

Consider contrast carefully. Text needs to be legible against its background. Related colours in different parts of a mark can create visual interest and help the eye navigate — but only when the choices are deliberate.

Simplicity in logo design is not about using fewer elements because you couldn’t think of more. It’s about using exactly the right elements. The difference between a mark that feels spare and one that feels empty is intent.

Positive and negative space are tools of equal value. The classic example — the FedEx arrow hidden between the ‘E’ and ‘x’ — is built from just four shapes. The plate in the restaurant example above uses two arcs and lets the cutlery bleed off the edge. Nothing more is needed.

The test: can you describe the logo in a single sentence? If you need three, it’s probably not simple enough yet.

Typography is not an afterthought in logo design — it is often the mark itself. And even when a symbol carries the weight, the typeface you pair with it can make or break the result.

Hard-to-read lettering is one of the most common mistakes in logo design. Skinny outlines, tight kerning, excessive drop shadows, and decorative effects all work against legibility. A typeface that mimics the visual character of the symbol, with spacing and weight that feel intentional, will almost always outperform a fancier choice.

Ask yourself: does this typeface feel appropriate for this audience? A serif with classical proportions reads very differently from a geometric sans-serif — and both read differently from a hand-lettered script. Match the register of the type to the register of the brand.

A finished logo needs to work across every context it will inhabit — digital and print, large and small, colour and black and white, light backgrounds and dark. If it only looks good in one of those conditions, it is not quite finished.

This is also where the AI era introduces new considerations. Tools like Midjourney and Adobe Firefly can generate compelling-looking marks quickly — but many of those outputs are raster images, not vectors, and rely on photographic detail that is fundamentally incompatible with logo requirements. A logo must be scalable. Vector format is not optional.

Build versatility into your design process from the beginning. Design in black and white, check it at 16x16 pixels, print it at thumbnail size, and then build out the colour and scale variants. If you do this early, you will find the problems before the client does.

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The principles here are not new. What changes is the context in which you apply them — new screen resolutions, new media, new tools. But the fundamentals of concept, reproducibility, colour, simplicity, type, and versatility have governed effective logo design for decades.

For a deeper dive into logo history and how the world’s most iconic marks have evolved, read 26 Logos & Their Design Evolution. Or explore the work of David Airey — his book is reviewed in our Logo Design Love post and remains one of the best starting points for anyone serious about identity design.

If you want to develop these skills properly, our Certificate IV in Graphic Design covers logo and branding fundamentals as part of a full professional curriculum — with tutors who have worked in the industry and teach from that experience.