Having a professional looking logo is central to your branding, both online and offline. A badly designed logo can do serious damage to your credibility and professional image. If you want a professional logo but cannot afford to pay a graphic designer, there is always one option: create your own logo.

Here are some few tips to help you create your own logo for free.

Get inspiration from an online logo creator

Using and online logo creator is generally not a good idea because they either charge you or leave you with an overly generic design. Just because you want to create your own logo, doesn’t mean you should settle for something generic or even plagiarized.

However, logo creators are a great way for you to get some ideas on what kind of images, fonts or graphics you want to use when you create your own logo.

Find the right image

Generally speaking, a logo consists in an image or icon, paired with your company or brand name. Finding the right image can be hard, but it is made a lot easier if you know what to look for. Once you have decided what you want the image or icon in your logo to be (bottle of wine, a tooth, a globe, etc.), go onto Google image search and search for it. Next, click on settings and choose ‘transparent’ under color, ‘clip art’ under type and ‘labeled for reuse’ under usage. The reason for this is simple. If you want to create your own logo, you need to legally be allowed to use the icon you find. You also want the icon to be the right size and transparent so that you can easily use it when creating your logo. By searching with the above filters, you will have the best images for creating your own logo.

Keep it simple

The best logos are always simple. If you’re not a pro, it might be wise to stay away from Photoshop and just work with paint or preview. If you are only positioning text next to an icon, these programs should be more than enough.

Make sure you play around with the sizes a bit to find the best design. When choosing your icon, make sure you make it big enough; it’s always better to have a bigger logo that you can make smaller than the other way around.

Always go pro!

These tips are great if you want to create your own logo, but it is important to remember that they are only good depending on how you will need to use them.

While your own logo might be good for Facebook and your website, you should really consider using a professional if you intend to use your logo for big banners, posters and other objects. A professional can give you a great and original design with all the file formats you will ever need.