If you’re planning to open up your own photography business, you’re going to need a great professional logo that'll tell potential clients who you are and what you do.
Creating your own photography logo will help you keep costs low, but if you don’t have graphic design skills the process can be quite intimidating. That’s why we’ve written this article, to teach you how to make a photography logo design quickly. It'll help you understand what goes into creating a successful logo and show you how to create your photography logo online quickly and easily using a photo logo maker.
Types of Logos
Before we get into the details of how to create a photography business logo, let's take some time to define what a logo is and to look at the key characteristics of great photography logo design.
A logo is essentially a symbol that helps identify and promote a business.
Logos come in three basic forms:
- the abstract symbol
- the illustrative symbol that indicates exactly what the company does
- the font-based logo
Most companies that use an abstract or illustrative symbol tend to combine their chosen symbol with a font-based logo that makes their logo much easier to remember, especially in the early days before their logo becomes recognisable on its own.
Key Characteristics of Great Photography Logo Design
With just three elements—symbol, text, and colour—you might think a logo is easy to create, but there are a few pitfalls that often trip up the novice logo designer. To help you avoid them, here are a few key characteristics every photography business logo should have.
- Simplicity. This makes a logo easy to recognise and remember, as well as easy to use in a variety of media.
- Memorability. Your photography business logo should capture your target audience’s attention and leave a positive and lasting impression.
- Relevance. Every photography logo design should reflect the image you want your company to convey through the use of colours, fonts, and graphics.
- Versatility. Photography business logos need to be versatile so that whether you scale them up and down, use them in print or on the web, they still look great.
- Timelessness. Though it’s good to pay attention to trends, a photography logo should avoid being so trendy that it looks dated 10 or 50 years from the day you create it.
Inspiration: 3 Awesome Photography Logo Design Ideas
Now that you've got a clear idea of the qualities your photography logo designs should have, let’s look at a few great photography logo examples.
1. Logo Maker for Freelance Photographers
Logo Maker for Freelance Photographers has an understated, clean and modern design that uses an eye with a camera shutter at the centre in place of the iris, a bold and simple font, and a monochromatic colour scheme.
2. Freelance Photographer Logo Maker
The Freelance Photographer Logo Maker is another example of a monochromatic colour scheme, this time using the neutral colours of brown and beige. The photography logo design features a text logo with the photographer's name in a distinct script font and a minimalist illustration of a camera as the logo symbol.
3. Logo Template for a Photographer
Another simple, clean logo, with Logo Template for a Photographer the logo symbol is subordinated to the text that dominates the design. Only one colour is used alongside neutral white, and that colour is bold and eye-catching.
These are just a few of the awesome logos to be found at Placeit. For more inspiration, see 20 Best Photography Logo Design Ideas (+Easy Online Logo Creator). In the next section, we'll look at look at how to create a photography logo.
How to Make a Photography Logo Design Quickly
Now we’re going to use the Placeit Logo Maker for photography to show you how to create a photography logo. The Placeit Logo Maker is a fun, hands-on, low-stress way for design novices to try out various logo ideas, get familiar with making design decisions, and understand how a logo is put together. Let me show you what I mean.
1. Access the Logo Maker
Navigate to Placeit and sign up for FREE!
Enter your business name in the bar at the top of the page and hit Apply to see all the photography business logos update with your name. For our example, I’ve called the business James Ryerson.
Next, use the drop-down menu to the right of the word "Photographer" and experiment with various shades of colours there to see which colour combination you’d like to use in your custom photography logo design. If you don’t know much about colour and need some pointers, read the 10 Best Logo Colour Schemes & Combinations and decide on a logo colour scheme.
2. Select a Photography Logo Design
Browse the entire catalogue of photography logos. Select the photography logo design you like the most by clicking on it. It'll open in the Placeit logo maker for photographs. For our example, I’m using the Online Logo Template for Professional Photographers.
To customise your logo, move to the left side of the template and start at the top. The first thing you'll work on is your text. You already added your business name in step one, but if you need to make any corrections or add more text, this is the time to do so.
Once you’ve entered your text, you can keep the default fonts or select different fonts from the drop-down menu. In the example, I’ve changed the font to Barlow. You could also change the colour of the font at this point, but I'll focus on colour in another step, so leave it as is for now.
3. Select a Photography Logo Graphic
Now we move to the right side of the photography logo creator. Starting at the bottom of the template, select the type of line you want to separate your symbol and text. For our example, I like the size of the default, so I’ll stick with it.
Moving to the setting above, you can swap your logo graphic for one of the 100+ graphics provided. I swapped the camera symbol the template came with for a graphic of photographs.
4. Apply the Colours
Now it’s time to customise the colours in your photography logo. You'll remember that each element we worked on—fonts, line, and graphic—has its own colour adjustments. If you’ve paused to read 10 Best Logo Colour Schemes & Combinations, you also know how important colour is in design, and you'll already have decided on your colour scheme.
Now go back through the photography logo creator and apply your colours to the fonts, graphics, line, and background. You may need to experiment with different shades of colour to get your combinations just right. In our example, I changed the background to a deep blue and used the complementary colour orange as an accent, as well as the neutral white.
5. Adjust the Logo Design
Our next step is to adjust the various elements in the photo logo maker so that they fit perfectly together. Click on each element of the design and move it around the design or click on the corners of an element to scale it up or down.
You should feel free to experiment as much as you like, knowing that you can hit the Reset Layout button in top right of the photo logo maker and everything will be reset to its original position.
Once you’re satisfied with your design, hit the Download button at the top of the screen and download your design for a small fee. Alternatively, if you regularly need to create cool logos, social media banners, flyers and other resources, then the monthly plan may be the better deal for you. And there you've got it. You’ve created your custom photography logo design in five steps.
If you want to see what your design would look like in a real-life scenario, upload it to any of the many wonderful mockups at Placeit.
Another Logo Design Option
If you know your way around Adobe Photoshop and/or Illustrator, Envato Elements is another great site for photography logo designs.
The logos comes in EPS, AI and PSD file formats, and once you've downloaded a template, you can easily edit the text, colours, and sometimes even modify shapes. What's more, you can download as many logos as you want for one low monthly price.
More Photography Logo Design Inspiration
And if you want to ready more about designing logos here are some great articles (including other photography logo tutorials) that you should take a look at:
What Makes a Good Logo? 7 Top Logo Design Tips & Guidelines
35 Creative Logo Design Ideas (Cool + Modern Inspiration)
30+ Best Logo Design Templates for Creative Business Branding
25 Best Modern Logos With Simple Designs (Creative Examples)
How to Use Placeit to Create a Logo Reveal Video (Animated Sting)
How to Design a Simple (Modern) Logo With an Online App (Fast)
How to Make Your Own Logo Design (Do It Yourself Guide)
Design Your Photography Logo Today
Learning how to make a photography business logo from scratch is quite challenging, but with the help of these logo guidelines and the tools at your disposal like the photo logo maker from Placeit and the ready-made templates at Envato Elements, you’ll never need to ponder how to come up with a good logo design again.
Follow these logo-making tips, check out the templates, use this photography logo tutorial to create your own logo for photography, and let us know in the comments below when you’ve made the perfect photography logo for your needs. We’d love to hear from you.
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