Drawing Inspiration From Creative Logos
As designers, we are always in constant need of inpiration. Whether it be Web or graphic design, other work to fuel our creativity is essential. Logo design requires the most amount of inspiration, however.
Below we present a showcase of 50 beautiful, clever and creative logo designs that will hopefully inspire you. If you take a closer look at the showcase below, you will notice many trends. Some of these include the usage of simple shapes to create something complex, origami shapes, coloring and transparency trends, and many more.
Why are these logos so excellent? All of these logos use very creative methods to represent the brand through color, shapes, and shape typography. Look at how each of these logos can tell you something about the company that it is supposed to represent. Also note the brilliant color palletes and unique patterns used in many of these. Finally, pay attention to the typography, especially font selection and coloring.
Showcase Of Creative Logo Designs
Further Resources
You may want to take a look at the following related posts:
- Logo Design Trends 2009 (logoorange.com)
- Logo Design Trends 2009 (1stwebdesigner.com)
totocaster
April 2nd, 2009 2:05 pmWow, our designed ATC Research logo on smashinmagazine, feels good. :D Thank you.
Jaime V
April 2nd, 2009 2:06 pmI think they’re all pretty much from logopond. A collection from across different sites would’ve had more impact.
Benjamin
April 2nd, 2009 2:07 pmCastle Print is the best.
Agnes
April 2nd, 2009 3:24 pmvery nice collection, my favs are the clinica dentaria and the princes street
overall though i think it’s time to start making more modern logos, a lot tend to come from the same brain cell, if you know what i mean..
youngdesign
April 2nd, 2009 4:03 pmCreative, yes.
Practical, some.
John Boerckel
April 2nd, 2009 4:30 pmThanks for featuring one of my logos! It’s awesome to see it up with so many other great marks. CastlePrint might just be my favorite out of the bunch.
Ryan Lascano
April 2nd, 2009 8:14 pmNot adding anything new here, but if you strip the colors and effects from most of these logos they fall apart, and a logo shouldn’t need any “modifications”, as some say, to work. It’s not about faxes or small sizes or whatever – a strong mark should retain its integrity when rendered in black and white, without any Photoshop effects.
Look beyond Logopond, look at Logo Lounge books or any logo book from Rockport and you’ll find plenty of beautiful, inspiring logos.
This “inspiring” collection should at least be taken with a grain of salt.
Sabu George
April 2nd, 2009 9:09 pmCoooooooooooooooooool!!llll
Omer Yaqub
April 3rd, 2009 1:54 amBeautiful, some of them are full of colors. I love it.
Steve Yankee
April 3rd, 2009 4:25 ammik
April 3rd, 2009 5:01 amcafemelody logo , perfect !!
Denis Olenik
April 3rd, 2009 5:06 amHey thanks for adding one of my logos.
You can always check my full portfolio here: http://www.denisolenik.com
joão
April 3rd, 2009 5:35 amwow great article, must bookmark this! ^^,
Marco
April 3rd, 2009 7:00 amYou forgot logopond
Dave
April 3rd, 2009 7:41 amSome solid choices, notably Hawaii, Castle Print, Bananas Films and Studio 8. The rest are largely forgettable.
Eduardo Ascencio
April 3rd, 2009 8:51 amme encantan estos logos.
Hired Guns Creative
April 3rd, 2009 2:31 pmThanks you so much for showing the Alliance For Arts and Culture logo here! We’re quite proud of it.
There seems to be a bit of criticism of some of the logos and their respective “printability”. This was a concern for us when designing the logo as it had to work well on the client’s website as well as in all of their print media. We have written an article about some of our design challenges here:
The Alliance For Arts and Culture Logo
You guys rock!
Patrick McDarby
April 4th, 2009 6:47 amSome of the comments here are by extremely narrow minded people who think they are designers and only spit up what their teachers taught them. I have been designing logos for over 25 years and what I have learned is that branding has many shapes and forms. All these logos are viable within their marketplace. Some are web 2.0 and can be bought through elance for around $300, Others have slightly more value. This is not an inspiring collection. I’ve seen all this a 1000 times before. Show me something innovative. A mixture of styles that I never seen before.
I will say there are 2 that deserve credit. Twins for the clever use of the 2 but I’ve seen that idea before with 5ive. The other is the Modern (Monerd) logo for the interesting use of the D and N. Good logos are the ones that have thinking involved. Cleverness. A logo that works on more than one level is on its way to being a brand. It does not have to work in one color either if the business never uses it that way. If you can make make people think about your logo, you’ve won because they will retain the image thought in their brain and that is what a logo is supposed to do.
Pat
Patrick McDarby
April 4th, 2009 6:59 amWho said media Factory was a cool logo? That sunk with the Yellow Submarine over 30 years ago!
Gatu!
April 4th, 2009 12:05 pmawsome thanx!
Ksual
April 4th, 2009 4:28 pmLove the Shocked logo, is brilliant !!!
nicolaas
April 5th, 2009 9:05 pmthe traditionalist mantra that a logo should work monochrome is fantastic advise to give to a novice or training designer,[ this way it is made sure that the designer logos that are stong in form and thus not reliant on color to achieve it's impact.] however it reveals a naivety when giving such advise to fellow designers.
Intelligent execution of color and or texture, gradient etc can clearly still achieve high quality logos, even if the form of the logo is not brilliant.
The above logos are pretty much all exuding characteristics of last couple of years, [folding, multiply effect, unilever mosaic anyone?!] i dont really see any novel ideas, thats unfortunate, however even lacking this they are generally of a high standard.
srinufx
April 5th, 2009 9:33 pmThere no chance to make better logo for Studio 8.
It is very very special……..
Rgds,
srinu
+91.996.699.5356
Cristhian Bedon
April 6th, 2009 4:04 amNice list here.
Stephanie
April 6th, 2009 4:12 pmSome really good work here, some less so, but all attractive.
Without having read ALL of the comments, I feel it’s a bit hard to judge any logo out of context. The question is: is it a good fit for the company in question? Maybe it’s a trendy, Web 2.0 company and that approach is perfectly appropriate. Maybe it’s a bank, and it’s really not.
In any case, I agree that any logo needs to address the needs of being used in print collateral, letterhead, reversed, etc. Many of these logos would be very hard to use like that (tho admittedly, not as difficult as it would have been once upon a time) assuming that the designer didn’t also provide an alternate version for those uses. Having had to use difficult logos in design, both web and print, I know how important that kind of utility is, and it’s something that’s hard to judge until you actually see it in use.
matt
April 7th, 2009 11:30 amI love the Poseidon logo and Shocked. I think Poseidon is my favorite though. It’s a fish…and a TIE! GET IT?! (I’m not being sarcastic, I love it).
The Modern Nerd logo is great too, but reading these comments I can see that most people don’t realize that it is indeed “MODERN NERD.” Not MONERD or whatever. So I guess it fails in that sense.
Andreiu
April 8th, 2009 12:57 amWhat a surprise to see one of my logos here! [Saturn Electronics]
I am really happy to see it here in this great collection of logos!
Smashing Thanks! :)
Steve K
April 9th, 2009 3:53 amA lot of these logos do seem to have come from logopond.com.
Terre Dunivant
April 9th, 2009 2:51 pmVery nice!
Brandon Tavis
April 11th, 2009 3:16 pmTwins is fantastic.
The rest are adequate but not breath taking by any means. The ones that rely on color, I’m afraid, I’ll have to agree with the critical comments made by other people – they simply will not translate well in black and white. To me this is a must for any good, long lasting logo.
Casey
April 15th, 2009 7:36 amexpose (April 1st, 2009, 11:35 pm)
Font is bree
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/type-together/bree/
Joel Drapper
April 17th, 2009 2:43 amGreat works of art, but some over the top with gradients and different colours.
Raghav
April 29th, 2009 2:33 amdhanshu
Mona
May 1st, 2009 3:36 amInteresting, however I think they are rather plain, and I think thats what they probably want.
Kalyan
July 3rd, 2009 5:05 pmLove them, thanks :)
Harish
August 27th, 2009 12:20 amAwesome Collection………… :)
phar fetched
September 9th, 2009 5:22 amOne or two nice designs here no question but many seem to have taken a significant influence from already existing logos. While I do think that a truly great logo design should transcend any medium, I also feel that lower quality platforms (fax etc) are being phased out in place of high quality and high availability print sources.
Kit Peverley – Phar Fetched Designs
Tinh
October 18th, 2009 6:08 pmExcellent collection. I really love this
Marcelo
December 8th, 2009 9:16 amGreat collection. Indeed. It will certainly help me in the insiration process for my logo at “Onde Está O Dinheiro?”.
Thank you.
Xander
December 24th, 2009 12:27 pmAwesome collection :) Thank you for another great article for inspiration.
Web Design Company India
February 24th, 2010 7:45 amExcellent collection!! Logos are very expressive and brilliant!!
E. Serrano
March 9th, 2010 10:56 amMost of them are a really good mix of a good concept plus an eye-catching illustration. It is true that many of these logos are just conceptual exercises as they aren’t using real company names (which, unfortunately, are usually not as easily related to exciting concepts). And some others might seem overly complex for brand creation.
Nevertheless, it is true that modern logo design is moving towards more complex trends that remind of detailed illustrations. In a global market with so many brands out there, a little bit more of complexity is usually necessary to achieve some eye-catching, unique appeal to the logo itself.
So that’s why even I currently embrace that trend of modern logos, while I still recognize the power and deep meaning of simple and clean unique designs.
Juan Luis Díaz
March 16th, 2010 11:13 amBusco alguien con inspiración y talento que me regale un logotipo para usarlo como imagen en una revista con temas de Seguridad Pública. URGE juanluis_diaz@yahoo.com.mx
kutto
April 28th, 2010 3:40 amvery beautiful!!!
i love it.
Tushar Garg
March 24th, 2011 11:02 pmWow.. I have a couple of favourites here.. fold, hawai, shocked, twins, studio 8.. Cool stuff!!
Deanna
February 18th, 2012 5:38 pmEach of these designs, to me, Scream out LogoPond. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with LogoPond or the examples given here. Some are creative plays on words, colorful, clever, cute, etc. But, how many of these are real world logos for existing businesses? How many were created for an existing business name and market? How many were simply explorations of how the designer could creatively manipulate a word into a logo? I will grant that being able to take a word or word pairing and turning into something clever is fun to see and gives me some insight, but it is something different than being given a company name that may have nothing immediately tangible to the specific words used and create a logo for that company and industry that is unique.
I would love to see a collection of innovative logos for actual, real world companies. Sorry if I offend anyone, I do like many of the offered designs as for what they are.