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Create a Professional Blog Logo on a Budget

Posted By Guest Blogger 28th of September 2012 Blog Design 0 Comments

This guest post is by Samuel of Internet Dreams.

I am a logo hunter! What that means is I almost always stop and look at a new site’s logo. Almost like shooting at it, but with my eyes!

Believe it or not, this now has a profound influence on whether or not I feel I am going to enjoy reading the new blog, or want to check out this new site.

The logo of a site is like the cover image on that new blockbuster movie on the block. As the design of a blog is important in a visitor’s eyes, the logo is that cherry to the top of the ice cream.

Because a logo can have a profound effect on a user, I decided to create beautiful looking logo for my blog. It was tough to think about how I was going to create it, though.

I thought of creating the logo myself, but I kept telling myself I wasn’t going to be able to create one I liked.

But that thought changed down the road, as you will read later on.

A novel solution

Many times, your creations, such as a new design or a new article, you won’t really like. This is fine, since the sense others get from seeing our creative projects is different from ours.

To solve the problem, I decided to hire a designer to design a new logo for me. Nope, the logo didn’t cost me a million bucks. All I did was get a design idea for only five dollars from fiverr.com.

I am not going to lie to you: I did not get a fully done, professional logo out of the box, just for five dollars! But I got the idea and the design layout from Fiverr, and it was worth every single penny.

I will show you step by step how to get this done, and how you can do this yourself without another designer’s help. Note that you will need to have some sort of knowledge of Photoshop to use this technique—but if you don’t, I’ve included some resources to help below.

1. Find a graphic designer using the reviews

This step could be the hardest part of the process. It’s important to make sure you hire a credible designer who gets the job done.

When I look for designers on Fiverr, I usually first send a message to the designer to gauge their interest. If they respond pretty quickly, I know the communication is going to be fine.

My designer

As you’re reviewing designers on Fiverr, look for the designer’s rating, and look at the reviews of that individual at the bottom of their profile.

2. Tell the designer what you are looking for.

You need to tell the designer what you want. Try to be as accurate as tell them as much as you can.

Tell them your ideas, because they will definitely need those ideas for their outline. But also tell them the colors and size you want, and give them some concept for the design—such as “excitement” or an object related to your blog.

This is the message I sent to the logo designer to explain what I was looking for:

Name: Internet Dreams

There will be no description for the logo. I prefer it be a text logo that is creative in a way. I really like a minimal design with the letters being the main focus. Design it dreamy in a way, but not too light either.

The color blue is the primary option. Experiment with different colors if you want. This is the website it is going on. Please try to make it stand out from that greybackground.

Message me with any questions, and thank you for doing this! :)

3. Don’t expect it to look perfect, since you’ll finish the design yourself.

You are paying this designer only five dollars. Don’t expect them to do the whole work and make a design worth hundreds like the other top logos out there. Remember, you get what you pay for on Fiverr.

I worked with the designer till the outline was exactly how I wanted it to be. This is how I received my “finished” logo from my Fiverr designer:

The first logo

There’s not much color or texture in the initial design. But the concept of the design is what I really liked. So I took it from there myself!

4. Make the logo look professional with limited Photoshop skills

After receiving your initial design, always thank the designer for his fine job. A designer has certain skills in first thinking up the outline of a certain logo. So, thank him and give him a good review of his work.

Now, it’s your job to finalize the logo!

The final logo

Don’t freak out, or think you have to be a Photoshop guru. All you are going to do from here is select a font that you like, and add it anywhere on your logo.

The cloud in my logo is what I added to make it more “dreamy.” Also I enhanced the look of the bubbles by using a free PSD created by a graphic artist.

If you don’t have great Photoshop skills, have a look at PsdTuts+. This is the website that I have learned many Photoshop skills from.

How’s your logo looking?

Nothing about this is hard. I am no expert in Photoshop, but I did learn some techniques along the way. Trust me: having a few basic skills in the use of Photoshop is worth it.

Your logo is the brand image of your blog. Many people will recognize your site by the logo you have on it. Not only the logo will be created by you, but also other aspects of the design of your blog will need to be enhanced, and you can do it with those basic skills.

If you do run into some problems on your end and do not feel comfortable to use Photoshop yourself, then that isn’t a problem either. There plenty of places on the internet where graphic designers are waiting to finish your work.

Or, just hire the same designer again from Fiverr, and let them finish the job. It’s your choice!

Have you done any designing yourself for your own blog? If you did, tell us how it went in the comments.

The online world can be a very complicated place. There is too much information all over! My name is Samuel and I own Internet Dreams. Internet Dreams is a place where you can engage and learn how to set up and succeed with your blog or site. Internet Dreams talks about SEO, blogging, social media, and much more….. Follow Internet Dreams on Facebook!

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Comments
  1. A very powerful logo can make people easily sketching the design on a piece of paper without having any difficulties to remember the tone and so on.

  2. If you don’t have Photoshop (which most people don’t) and/or time to waste sifting through profiles, then you should crowdsource your logo on DesignCrowd.com ;)

  3. What a simple idea yet so genius. Let them do the leg work and then touch it up – I love it!

  4. I have to admit that as a professional graphic designer with 10+ years of experience, this makes me cringe a little inside.

    If you have photoshop and want to do your own work, don’t waste your time on fiverr. Either take the time to learn photoshop and study logo design (which you can do for free by looking on google) or hire someone who will work with you until your design is perfect.

    It irritates me that so many people are willing to throw together junk work for $5 and call themselves designers. Why? Because it takes work away from people who have spent their entire lives in graphic design, have stunning portfolios, and can’t make a living because of kids (and adults!) who think microsoft word is a design program and $5 is a fair rate.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for doing design yourself if you can’t afford a professional. But I’d rather see someone take the time to learn to do it right themselves than purchase cheap design.

    To me it’s like buying a knock-off purse. You may get it cheap, but you’re hurting a designer’s business. And while it may look good to you, most people in the business will be able to spot the difference.

    Make the purse yourself, or buy a good one.

  5. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but the initial design, while fairly weak in itself is much better than the version you updated in photoshop. It does not look professional, it looks painfully amateur with extreme gradients, harsh shadows, cluttered elements, and disjointed fonts. Scroll to the top of the page and take a look at the problogger logo to compare what an actual professional logo looks like.

    A strong logo design is built to make brand recognition easy. This means that it is easily recognizable even when obscured. For example you could take the problogger logo and recolor it to any color or shade and print it on a t-shirt or poster or whatnot and it would still be easily recognizable and meaningful. If you did this to your logo it would just look like the word internet (or intemet because of amateur font spacing) with an odd shaped cloud beside it.

    Sorry to be harsh but as a whole you should at least know something about what a professional logo looks like before writing a guest post on how to make one.

    • I have to agree with you there Ryan.

      The two logos look like to me like a ‘before’ and ‘after’ makeover – with the gradients and overly-busy cloud combo being the ‘before’ and the cleaner, more streamlined (but not /quite/ there yet) version being the professional ‘after’ version.

      Comparing the design brief (“I really like a minimal design with the letters being the main focus. Design it dreamy in a way, but not too light either”) with the final outcome reminded me just what I liked least about working with clients.

    • Carolyn says: 09/28/2012 at 7:24 pm

      I agree that the initial design was better than the Photoshopped version. The simpler, cleaner lines looked much more professional, more cohesive.

    • Rick Healey says: 09/29/2012 at 4:19 am

      I also agree, first design looked much better.

  6. Tabitha Romana says: 09/28/2012 at 1:54 am

    I don’t get it. Is this a parody article? Is that final logo really intended to be an example of what people should do?

  7. Logo should be PROFESSIONAL just by running after creative design isn’t good for your brand unless you are on some creative kind off website like graphic design. Just take a example of ProBlogger they have a very unique but professional design which is more appealing than the too much creative one.

    Being a Professional LOGO designer I know what & how to present a logo design for various clients. If someone is from branding purpose then he/she needs a professional design but if someone is from creative field they need a creative icon with a unique design concept.

    Hiring a good professional designer also matters. If you hire someone who hasn’t any experience or who has less experience can only waste your precious time. But hiring someone PROFESSIONAL like me can give more than clients expectation.

  8. Thanks for this important topic. The logo design is right up there with the domain name.

    I did wrestle with mine for quite awhile, but finally came up with my owl by rotating around my site’s key letters, M-B-S.

    I thought it came out kinda cool! Hopefully, once I hit 6-figures, I’ll sell t-shirts.

    If you go to my site, you can read the story on my ‘About’ page.

    Cheers!

  9. I am using “aaa logo maker” and I think this is the best software to create a logo if you are not technical. There are various various inbuilt images in it which can be used in logo by just drag and drop. Last sunday I have create logo for my site by in 30 min.

  10. Hey Samuel, I’ll also need to hire a professional from Fiverr to design a logo for my next project. It’ll even give an idea of the logo and as you said the only idea worth $5.

  11. Hello!!

    Internet marketing is a complicated thing and you need to know much information and having the knowledge you simply need to implement this knowledge and start to make real money online!! But to tell you the truth Internet marketers are not super people who know everything about what they are doing!! If I can pay money for a designer to creat a great logo for me and if this guy do this work better than me then I simply will hire this person!! Now according to logo, sometimes and even more a logo or generally speaking a website design can definitely make the change!! If you know a little about Photoshop then you can also make some changes to your ready logo and make it better or more likely to your preference…!

    Thank you,
    Zouras

  12. That’s a nice little tip for getting a cheap logo done Samuel, Thanks :)

    Hope you don’t mind if I point this out but the “r” and the “n” on your Internet dreams logo are touching making the word read more like “Intemet”.

    Just a friendly observation.

  13. Samuel

    your internet dreams logo is pretty sharp being that its low budget man. Plus it has blue my favorite color

  14. Frankly I’m inclined to agree with Joanna and Ryan here. This article suggests that anybody can throw together a logo and that is completely untrue. This practice really undermines the amount of thought and effort that goes into building a real brand mark.

    I’m certainly not here to criticise your approach, but as a general observation the design community is getting increasingly frustrated with the undermining of a skilled trade. I’m not a logo designer but the way I approach a new logo now is going through the reams of templates available online. There are countless failed entries for design contests, and almost infinite logo templates available on GraphicRiver, and if you are going to take the time to learn Photoshop it would be much better spent by starting from one of those templates. Time and thought has legitimately gone into making them, and there are at least some rewards given to the designer.

  15. I love simple uncomplicated logos. Business logos should look professional and easy to figure out what the business is all about. Nice post!

  16. Nice procedures on logo creation. I love the way you lay the foundation of the logo design; simple but professional.

  17. This is really amazing site. Just a change of blog logo can attract many traffics within no time; it is attention grabbing and I can agree wit you people like new things and can easily get bored with one logo they always are used of! I like your tips; are actually inspiring. Thank you!

  18. I love fiverr but not sure it is the best source for logo creation. I have had luck using digital point and other similar sites. The cost is higher but so are the results.

    **note to Darren – what happened to your editorial standards? Very weak articles lately. #justsayin

  19. Logo is one of the toughest thing to make. Over the time, even big companies keep changing the logos. Coke the best example

  20. Logo is one of the toughest thing to make. Over the time, even big companies keep changing the logos. Coke the best example

  21. Samuel great way to use some creative skills. I have used Fiverr before also and you get a decent design but that is usually a good starting like you said.

  22. Really diggin’ this blog post … it is exactly what I was looking for.

    I am just about to update my header

  23. Todd Turner says: 10/02/2012 at 7:12 am

    More power to you if you’re designing a logo yourself. Just don’t listen to this author. This is the worst post I’ve seen on ProBlogger. I’m not going to get into the “you should hire a professional” argument because I understand bootstrapping when you first start out. But at least educate yourself on decent typography. Everything about the above example is wrong. Poor kerning. Inappropriate typefaces. Thinking that using Photoshop filters means good design. Here are some better quality resources for the DIYer:
    1. Check out typographyforlawyers dot com for some basic lessons in typography.
    2. Avoid dafont dot com for free fonts
    3. Try losttype dot com (although these are starting to be overused) or tendollarfonts dot com for decent typefaces put together with at least a semi-professional level of craft.
    4. Browse logopond dot com for some decent (and some not-so-decent) examples. Don’t copy. Just use it as inspiration.

    I’m trying not to be too negative here. It just makes me sad when poor design keeps permeating our culture and everyone accepts it because no one knows better.

  24. So agree with Todd — This is a terrible post that bastardizes what it means to have a logo. Very good content generally but this post must have been a juicy SEO category.

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