So, you want to learn a thing or two about the best software for logo making. This is a very good thing. In fact, I think it’s great! If you’re trying to find free logo design software then I can help. I’ll show you some of the best graphic design software for creating logos and show you how to use them all.
Have you ever gone to get a logo for a business but didn’t know how to make a logo? Well, you aren’t alone. Many people don’t know about awesome free logo design software that is available for them to use. This article will walk through a few of the best free software programs that are available for anyone looking to create a logo design of their very own.
Adobe Illustrator
First launched in 1987, Adobe Illustrator remains the leading vector editing software in the market, allowing users to create drawings that can be scaled to any size.1 We chose it as the best overall because it makes it easy to control every aspect of logo design with shape-building tools, brushes, perspective grids, gradients, and more.
One of Illustrator’s most powerful features is the ability to import a scanned image. This is great for users who’ve sketched a few ideas on paper but don’t want to start from scratch on the computer. Geometric shapes can then be laid over the drawing and manipulated with ease. Illustrator also offers a variety of templates and vector logo objects to help get users started.
Of course, words are a part of any good logo, and Illustrator provides access to over 16,000 font types, from fun to professional. When it comes time to add or modify colors, users can design with Pantone or CMYK palettes for precise color matching on printed material like business cards and show banners. Finally, because Illustrator is vector-based, drawing won’t become pixelated when enlarged, meaning users can scale their logo to any size.
Adobe Illustrator is available for Mac and Windows computers and can be purchased for a subscription price of $31.49 per month. The subscription comes with a 30-day free trial; free updates; 100GB of cloud storage; access to Adobe Portfolio, Adobe Fonts, and Adobe Spark; and an Adobe Stock 30-day free trial with access to up to 10 images.
Sketch
Finding the best graphic design software often means picking a package that’s most appropriate to your requirements. While there’s no doubt that Illustrator and Affinity Designer are powerful and versatile apps, they might be overkill if you’re after something for work such as UI design, prototyping or simply making icons. In which case Sketch may suit you much better (as long as you use a Mac).
Sketch features a streamlined set of tools that are easy to get to grips with than more full-featured design apps. And you’ll get on with it much better if you need to design a website rather than create detailed vector illustrations.
Setka Editor
Setka bills itself as “everything you need to create content that converts.” This graphic design software is primarily focused on delivering enhanced content branding across your website, ad campaigns, and social media posts — and works from within your current CMS or in the cloud.
The caveat? Although the Setka Editor is free to try for two weeks, companies will need to select a plan — Starter, Pro, or Enterprise — to unlock the full feature set and keep using Setka.
Vectr
Vectr is a free graphics software that lets you create vector graphics using a simple platform. Vectr is available as a downloadable program, or you can use the software online in your web browser.
The website includes a variety of helpful tutorials ranging from how to get started to creating beautiful professional presentations. You can also use the software to create business cards, typographic logos, social media headers, memes, resumes and more. In addition to the tutorials, you can also check out Vectr’s user guide for a more comprehensive description of how to use the software.
Perhaps one of the best features that Vectr provides is real-time URL sharing. You can send anyone a Vectr document for real-time collaboration online. You can create and edit designs live from both the web app or the desktop version. This makes it a great tool for collaborating with others on projects.
Gravit Designer
From the people behind Corel Draw, Gravit Designer is the free best graphic design software you’ll find today.
Even if it doesn’t have the mass appeal of Illustrator or Affinity Designer, Gravit Designer has a clean and intuitive interface that can be reconfigured to suit your needs, and pretty much all the tools you’re going to need for creating vector graphics, including non-destructive booleans, a knife tool and path graphs, plus multiple fills and blending modes, and a powerful text engine. It should easily cope with most design jobs, from icon design and prototyping to vector illustration and animation.
You can use Gravit Designer online or download a copy to your computer. Note that you automatically start out on a (free) trial of Gravit Designer Pro when you sign up, and once your trial is over, you transition to the free version, but lose the Pro features – unless you pay for a subscription of course.
However, Gravit Designer’s free version is still excellent. You can export as PDF, SVG or bitmap, and you get access to the Gravit Cloud service that enables you to get to your work wherever you are. See the full comparison between the Pro and free versions here.
Adobe Spark
Adobe is the biggest name in graphic design, so it’s no surprise they have an app designed for making social media and web graphics. Adobe Spark (or Adobe Spark Post on mobile for the tools you want) isn’t as well known as Photoshop or Illustrator, but it’s better for most people. And it’s free to get started.
As I write this, Spark claims to have more than 34,000 templates for you to work from. A good chunk of them are Premium templates, only available to subscribers, but there are still thousands available for free. (To me, it looks like it’s a roughly 50/50 split between free and Premium).
Search isn’t as good with Spark as it is with Canva. The simplest way to get started is to select the kind of post you want to make from the home screen, then use the Templates search in the left sidebar to find the one you want, rather than to just search everything from the home screen. You can also create your own design using the Icons, Design Assets, and Backgrounds tabs in the sidebar, and, of course, adding your own photos (or pulling them from Pixabay) and text with the appropriate tools.
One great feature of Spark is how easy it is to resize and reformat your posts for different social media platforms. In the right sidebar, click Resize, and then select the different post style or design. Spark will then make a best guess at reformatting everything to fit. It normally does a pretty good job, and it should only take you a few seconds with the admittedly lovely-to-work-with editor to fix any quirks.
Spark is an excellent standalone editor, but it’s hard to overlook its integration with the rest of Adobe’s Creative Suite. If you plan to scale your business to the point where you need to use (and pay for) Adobe’s more powerful tools, Spark is the way to go. You can create libraries (in the Libraries tab of the sidebar) that are available across all your Adobe apps, pull in photos from Lightroom, and use Adobe Stock images.
Beyond the Post (graphic) design type, Spark also provides two other project types: Pages and Videos (available as separate apps on iOS). With Pages, you can build a simple, sleek web page that you can then share via a direct link. Videos is just what it sounds like: a basic video editing app that works as smoothly as Spark’s graphic design tool. You can even start with a template that will help guide you through ideal video structures for presentations, ads, and more.
The main downside of Spark’s free plan is that Adobe adds a logo to the bottom corner of your design. If you click on this logo, it will say Remove Once, but, after lots of testing, the logo appears to be removable in all designs—you’ll just have to deal with that upgrade pop-up each time.
Adobe Spark Price: Free for basic features; from $9.99/mo for premium features, such as logo upload and placement, branded templates and tools. (These premium features also come with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, starting with the $19.99/mo plan.)
Conclusion:
Graphic design software for logos is being used by both individuals and professionals to make a big impression on their audience. In the modern world of technology advanced logo designing software has become a must have softwares in order to compete as a graphic designer.