We all know that our logos are what define us and our
business. They are the most recognizable things about your business. Twitter’s
bird, Nike’s tick, McDonald’s golden arches and Apple’s apple are some of the
most famous examples of logos.
simple enough for the public to accept. But if you want your logo designs that
are engaging, attractive and everlasting, you need some unique tools in your arsenal
that will help you along the way.
Here are some of the best logo design tools that a good logo designer needs:
PENCILS
This is the most basic tool that every logo designer worth
for their needs and a most have. It is also something that most people nowadays
might overlook because of its simplicity, but it is one of the main tools
needed. You must have a pen or preferably a pencil of some kind. We will
suggest a mechanical pencil so that you can work without breaking your flow
every now and then to sharpen it.
In addition to a mechanical pencil, do carry colored pencils
in different colors like yellow, blue, red, and green so that you can easily
highlight your best logo design ideas. Also, color pencils are helpful as they
keep you engaged and keep your ideas separate. Otherwise, you might just mix up
all your work and later on wouldn’t be able to decide where you started and
where you ended.
PAPERS OR A SKETCHBOOK
Now we know that all the designing is done on a computer,
but you still need a pencil and papers in the initial stages. Some logo
designers prefer working entirely on the computer but that is not advisable.
The freedom and independence that you get with a paper and pen, not to mention
the speed, cannot be had with a computer. Especially when you are developing
ideas. Once you have found your best idea, you can transfer it to your computer
and work on it, but until that time, we suggest sticking to the paper.
you. The best designers get inspiration from anything and everything that they
observe. So keep a pocket-sized notebook and a pencil with it so that no matter
where you are, you can jot down your idea. Who knows? It might be the best logo design that you’ve come up with.
VECTOR GRAPHICS SOFTWARE
So, you have your idea on paper and you know that it’s the
one. Now you will need the right type of logo design software. For designing a logo you
will need what is called a vector graphics editor.
ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR
Adobe Illustrator is, without a doubt, an industry leader
when it comes to working on vector graphics. If you are serious about your
career as a logo designer, then you need to learn how to design a logo in
Illustrator.
It is rich in features, contains powerful tools and allows
you to draw your own elements or duplicate elements from other pictures and
scale and edit them at your will. You can draw anything that you can imagine by
using the Pen tool, that creates curves as well as straight lines, or the
pencil tool that is used to draw simple paths using freehand drawings. The best
part is perhaps the precision that these tools allow you to draw with. Another
tool that you will fall in love with is the Pathfinder tool. But that’s not
all. The Adobe Illustrator provides a lot of other tools and plugins for your
drawing pleasure.
You can purchase Adobe Illustrator individually or you can
get the entire Adobe Suite which will also include software like Photoshop and
InDesign.
Also Read: Essential Tools for Graphic Designers
INKSCAPE
Like we said, Adobe Illustrator is the most powerful tool
out there but it comes at a price. The software that is the closest to
Illustrator while being free is Inkscape.
This software is free of cost and it’s an open source. This
means that it is developed by a whole community. It is available for Windows,
Mac, and Linux. There are a lot of free resources online that will help you to
learn how to design a corporate logo.
Inkscape also has the pencil and pen tools that Illustrator
has along with tools to create text and color tools that will help you if you
want to learn how to design a logo in Inkscape.
FONTS
Some logos contain only symbols but most of the logos
contain either typography or a mixture of both. For the later ones, you have to
either create fonts or download and purchase them. You can find millions upon
millions of fonts if you just start looking. Just make sure that the font you
purchase or download for free matches the company’s overall image.
One excellent resource for fonts is the Google Fonts
library. All the font that it contains are open source and you can easily
download them and use them. You can even customize them for your purposes. The
only problem with freely available fonts is that since there are not many
high-quality free fonts out there, a lot of designers use them. That may prove to
be a problem as you are trying to make your logo design unique and creative.
Apart from all these tools, what you must have is the
knowledge. You can only get that by reading different literature and looking up
different types of logos and studying them. So read away, and use the above
mentioned tools to become a force to be reckoned with in the logo design
industry.