15 Excellent Logo Design Tutorials Using Illustrator
When creating a logo design, it’s good practice to use a vector-based application to construct it so that you’ll have a flexible logo design that can be used in numerous print and web-based mediums. Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard when it comes to creating vector-based logo designs.
In this collection, you will find 15 hand-picked tutorials from a variety of talented graphic designers and illustrators that discuss the logo creation process using Illustrator.
1. Logo Design Project Step by Step
In this tutorial, UK-based graphic and web designer Chris Spooner walks learners through the process of creating a logo design for a company called myNiteLife. He discusses his process of sketching, typeface selection, all the way to digital illustration and production in Adobe Illustrator.
2. Create a Fly Logo Design Part 1 and Part 2
In this two-part series, Sean Hodge takes us through the construction of a logo design for Webfly, a company that develops .NET applications for businesses. Part 1 of his tutorial discusses visual research, sketching, and illustrating the initial mockup in Illustrator. Part 2 goes over the revision process based on the client’s feedback, typical of graphic design gigs.
3. Silhouette Logo for a Steak House Restaurant in Adobe Illustrator
This tutorial goes through the methods behind producing a logo for a steak house restaurant. It discusses some common mistakes when designing a logo, and then goes through the preliminary sketching process, setting up your Illustrator document with a stock photo reference, all the way through the completion of the logo.
4. 3D logo Tutorial
You’ll read step-by-step instructions on how to create a three-dimensional iconic logo for the web in this tutorial. It goes over the initial construction of the shapes in Illustrator, and then finishing and refining the logo in Photoshop.
5. Web 2.0 Logo Reflection in Vector format with Illustrator
Talented designer and blogger Jay Hilgert teaches readers how to create a vector-based logo design. Since most "Web 2.0"-styled logos are created for the web and thus usually constructed in a raster-based application like Photoshop, companies that want to translate the logo onto print mediums (such as business cards or billboards) often run into trouble when scaling the dimensions of their logo. This tutorial shows designers how to create a more flexible vector-based logo.
6. Creating a crazy cool logo
This logo design tutorial by Brazilian graphic/web designer and blogger, Fabio Sasso, shows us how he designed the logo for a company called Zagora. The technique involves creative use of the Ellipse tool, the Direct Selection tool to merge and delete anchor points, and using effects and the Gradient tool to add the finishing touches.
7. Roundtrip Logo from Illustrator to Photoshop
You’ll see the process of utilizing both Illustrator and Photoshop to create a grungy logo design in this video tutorial by Dave Cross (well-known Photoshop expert and author).
8. How to Design a Logotype from Conception to Completion
In this tutorial, you’ll read about creating a simple logotype from scratch. You’ll also read about some general rules when designing a logo, including the number one rule for logos: creating them in vector applications for flexibility.
9. 3D Logo
Nick La, a Toronto-based freelance illustrator and web designer, shows us a technique for creating a three-dimensional logo that involves a couple of Illustrator effects, the Pathfinder tool for merging shapes, and the Gradient tool.
10. Design a Grungy Circular Logo
In this logo design tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a circular logo with the company name wrapped around the outer perimeter (a popular logo design style).
11. Glossy Vector Web 2.0 Logo Text in 5 Easy Steps
In this tutorial, you’ll discover a very simple technique for creating a vector-based, glossy logo style popularized by Web 2.0 startups.
12. How to Create a Trendy Retro Type Treatment
Illustrator and designer Ryan Putnam shows us the techniques involved in creating a retro-styled logotype design in this thorough step-by-step Illustrator tutorial. The tutorial uses the very popular (and free) fontface called Museo.
13. Environmentally Friendly Green Type Treatment
This text treatment Illustrator tutorial shares a technique for achieving a nature-inspired logotype design. You’ll observe a variety of techniques employed in the tutorial, including using the Pen tool to illustrate the leaves to be used in the text treatment.
14. Simple Logo Vector Tutorial
This tutorial goes over how to create an iconic logo design that uses folders. You’ll learn an assortment of illustration techniques such as using the Shape tool and direct selection to create simple objects.
15. Make a Logo Flow in Illustrator
This tutorial goes over how Innosanto Nagara (of Design Action) met the onslaught of requirements in creating a flexible logo design for a conference in Thailand using Adobe Illustrator. The piece was constructed in two components.
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84 Comments
Matt
February 4th, 2009
Great stuff here. Thanks!
Sneh
February 4th, 2009
This is really really useful! Awesome! Thnx :-)
Pliggs
February 4th, 2009
Great list, this is one area I know very little about and really need to learn, these should help.
Justin
February 4th, 2009
Thanks for the tools!
iDevelopThings
February 4th, 2009
Great collection.!
Torley
February 5th, 2009
“Fontface”; I like that. It’s a cross between “font” and “typeface”. Some of these tuts look so elegant.
Big Porch
February 5th, 2009
Meh..
Ruchi
February 5th, 2009
Hey this is really awe-inspiring. I am new to photoshop and illustrator and this was really helpful for me.Thanks.
Television Spy
February 5th, 2009
Wow some really nice tutorials here, thanks.
Maria
February 5th, 2009
Very useful! You left out one of the best, though: Von Glitschka, who shares in detail his illustrative logo process at http://www.illustrationclass.com — you can do a search for “logo” and see quite a few top notch logos created in Illustrator, including a few he’s done for ad agencies across the country.
Mark Kaigwa
February 5th, 2009
Wow, talk about timing…I just got this from the Smashing Mag twitter feed just in time, I needed some tutes to refresh myself and here we are, thanks 6Revisions, you rock.
—Greetings from Africa—-
f055
February 5th, 2009
1, 4 and 13 rocks. Very useful indeed. Thanks :)
noyfb
February 5th, 2009
um Illustrator is not the industry standard. If you are a designer of logos you most likely use CorelDraw. It is far far far superior to Illustrator and way more powerful and friendly to use. In fact Illustrator sucks major ass and is only used in publishing because so many art agencys use Macs which suck ass too.
usd6
February 5th, 2009
Looks very good indeed, thank you for the article!
Thanks!
Daniel
February 5th, 2009
Great stuff! The first one, i think that i’ll use today! :D
Thanks \o/
Patternhead
February 5th, 2009
Great list. Thanks for sharing. Some of these are better than others but at least they’re not all web 2 stylie.
brtak
February 5th, 2009
Nice collection!!! Thanks!
Andrew Houle
February 5th, 2009
Fantastic roundup! Thanks for the MyInkBlog inclusion :)
panah
February 5th, 2009
Awesome stuff. Good god :)
Rick Savage
February 5th, 2009
Thanks for the excellent Information!!!
Nice Logo’s
Timothy
February 5th, 2009
Really good list. del.icio.used!
alika
February 5th, 2009
Nice collection!!! Thanks!
Online Hry
February 5th, 2009
I like 1, 4 and six. It´s easy with these tutorials. Thank you very much, man.
Naruto
February 5th, 2009
great roundup
insic
February 5th, 2009
nice design tutorial. very useful.
david
February 5th, 2009
Coreldraw, LMAO
Mraz
February 5th, 2009
For that guy who says Coreldraw is better.
You lack of experience at this, illustrator cs4 is years beyond than the last ‘draw. Then you talk about Mac sucking, common everyone knows macs do better at designing/editing. Its not a saying. Im thinkin you are probably 12. Grow then talk.
nandorocker
February 5th, 2009
Great collection, but #11… for reals? :)
Rose
February 5th, 2009
Great collection. Thx!
ImageCo
February 5th, 2009
Tutorials might be good but most of those logo aren’t.
Illustrator is the industry standard but I use Corel and it works quite well. It doesn’t matter what program a designer uses; the only thing that matters is the end result.
Jacob Gube
February 5th, 2009
Just to put in my two cents about Illustrator vs. CorelDRAW. I want to say that I didn’t mean to imply that Illustrator is always better than CorelDRAW; they’re both very capable applications when it comes to illustration and each individual has his or her preference. Personally, I use Illustrator (been using it since version 8 or 9, can’t remember) and in my personal opinion it is much better than CorelDRAW, especially compared to the Adobe CS versions. But again, to each his/her own – and I’m not saying you should use an application that you’re not comfortable with, but what I am saying is that, to me, Illustrator smokes CorelDRAW.
Jacob Gube
February 5th, 2009
@Torley: Ah, you caught me! “fontface” must’ve been a subconscious offshoot from the deprecated HTML tag
<font>which had an attribute calledface(the CSS equivalent isfont-family)Dietmar
February 6th, 2009
There are a few good tutorials along with a lot rather useless tutorials, because most of them cover the topic of so called “web 2.0″-Logos which aren’t real logo in my opinion. Maybe I am a traditionalist, but I believe that good logos don’t need/have gradients, fancy 3d effects or any glossy look at all.
Vectordiary
February 6th, 2009
Here is one more logo tutorial on creating a bee logo: http://www.vectordiary.com/illustrator/designing-a-logo/
Mediumjones
February 6th, 2009
Sadly many people will miss the fact that these logos are strictly for the web.
When any of these techniques are transferred to print, the average start-up designer will be in for an unfortunate surprise.
Please keep in mind that many readers do not all have a professional education with the proper fundamentals of design.
Pablinho
February 6th, 2009
Very useful tuts.
Love # 6 especially.
Thanks !!
Martin Lewis
February 7th, 2009
Great work. Thanks for this, very helpful.
Aloke Pillai
February 8th, 2009
Great Roundup of tutorials!
kumar
February 8th, 2009
its nice iwant this logos
daniel cmx
February 8th, 2009
Excellent ¡¡¡ Really nice and of course helpfull tutorials, amazing creations. Thanks
Dainis Graveris
February 10th, 2009
loving this kind of share – thanks!
Seattle Building Inspector
February 10th, 2009
CorelDraw is my choice as well. Just what I grew up playing with…and LOVE it. Just bought CS4 Collection and am getting involved but learning new stuff takes up sooo much time!
crusher
February 11th, 2009
There are a few good tutorials along with a lot rather useless tutorials, because most of them cover the topic of so called “web 2.0″-Logos which aren’t real logo in my opinion. Maybe I am a traditionalist, but I believe that good logos don’t need/have gradients, fancy 3d effects or any glossy look at all.
Jack
February 13th, 2009
Great list! These are cool and useful. Thanks a lot.
Kashish
February 16th, 2009
great tuts!! hope to see a lot more useful stuff from you guys!! gr8 work!!
Atong
February 20th, 2009
they are all nice. hmmmm i think the least details on a logo make it become the best one… a logo is not only a picture or a name but it has a lot of meaning. anyone who wanna create a logo, well best of luck with the writtings, pictures and colors.
the fifth and the tenth one is sooooooooo cooooooool
joe madden
March 3rd, 2009
i love bitu:)
recession
March 4th, 2009
Pretty nice, well most of them anyway
Dave Kelly
May 7th, 2009
These tutorials rock! Mad props to all who made them.
teddy
May 8th, 2009
love the tutorial. this is just what i need to know bout design
Jeremy Tuber
May 11th, 2009
Great resource – especially liked Nick La’s simple but cool tutorial. Sweet.
@JeremyTuber
Nightstalk
May 12th, 2009
Thanks for sharing! These tutorials are great indeed!
Cylber
May 27th, 2009
I love the tutorials..tnx so much :)
Mohsin Khan
June 3rd, 2009
Thanks man
Allan De Ramos
June 5th, 2009
Thanks! These are truly enlightening!
Metuzalem
June 18th, 2009
great article, thank you!
Guilherme Morais
June 30th, 2009
Great article :)
And here’s another one to the list: http://blog.goplanapp.com/2009/06/29/goplan-20-logo-creation-process/
Phaoloo
July 7th, 2009
Awesome tutorials, thanks!
Peter Mikhael
July 10th, 2009
thx for the tutorials :). I have a tutorial 3d logo design – Logo Design behind the Scenes. I use Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe after Effects, Adobe Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver. so the final logo ready for printing, TV production and Web Publishing.
http://www.petermikhael.com/tutorials_3d_logo_design.html
Veep
July 16th, 2009
Hi there. Looks like the link to the Simple Vector Logo Tutorial won’t get me there — do you have a fresh link? I was dying for this kind of instruction!
Luiz Tolledo
July 20th, 2009
Nice logos! Great article!
Cat
July 20th, 2009
Found my evening entertainment :) Cheers!
Ashley Adams
August 25th, 2009
Hey, thanks so much for such a comprehensive tutorial on logo design using illustrator.. I was really looking for something like this to help me out.. I am glad to find to find this tutorial containing so much information on logo designing.. This will give me a boost in my career.. Thanks again..I believe anyone who is newly introduced to photoshop and illustrator will find it useful.. I will strongly recommend this site to my friends..
Jeevan | GFO
September 17th, 2009
Great list of tutorials. The WebFly one was pretty detailed.
Luis
September 21st, 2009
I will definitively tweet this, thank you so much guys ;)
David
November 9th, 2009
Great tuts… No. 4 is not working for me… (http://www.good-walls.com/2008/06/20/3d-logo-tutorial/) so sad, because it is the only one that really looks like 3d :-(
Ajay
November 9th, 2009
This kind of tips and all logo it’s very very good.
helpfull for the other work and good Creativity Knowledge
also develop
Thank you
Lauryn
November 10th, 2009
Awesome, I loved the Purple Lemon logo the best.
Sanjay Kumar
November 11th, 2009
An awesome collection of tuitorials…. Really nice for switching to illustrator.
subagio
November 20th, 2009
Great resource for new student of illustrator, thanks
Staniel
December 4th, 2009
I went from using Fireworks to create web graphics to Illustrator because of the need to work in the CMYK format. Tutorials made the transition very smooth. That and the fact that Adobe purchased Macromedia (Fireworks former owner).
hlamalani
December 17th, 2009
i feel as i left behind im learning new thing everyday
wendy
January 5th, 2010
Those are really good pictures.
Imran
January 19th, 2010
This is really useful…
Eddie G
January 20th, 2010
I really appreciated this!
Maxence
January 26th, 2010
Great work. Thanks for this, very helpful.
Brad
January 28th, 2010
While these are decent “technique” tutorials, they are far from “design” tutorials. It’s these kind of assumptions – that if you know how to use Illustrator or, help us, Photoshop – that make clients gravitate towards logo mills instead of talented, skilled, strategic designers.
Design is not a function of clicking, it is a thought, an idea.
Please, if you are learning to design from a website, never, ever call yourself a designer. At least not in public.
Shnene
February 5th, 2010
wow this does nothing for anyone k thanks
Arun
February 7th, 2010
used the tutorials to the extent….
Thanks a lot…..
Matt
February 8th, 2010
I work for a small charity with no budget for design/marketing so EVERYTHING has to be done in house – these tutorials are a GREAT HELP. To all those ‘designers, out there that rubbished them sounds like sour grapes to me Is it that sharing this knowledge maybe takes away some of your work..? Anyyone remember the London Olympic logo design ? Loads of public money spent on ‘professional design’ and quite frankly it was crap!
diseño web
February 10th, 2010
All the very well worked logos, thanks for the examples
Travis
February 18th, 2010
Great stuff. Your tutorials helped me improve my own logo. Thanks a ton!
Kevin
March 13th, 2010
Thanks guy! 1st time using AI.. and ur topic help me alot for my assignment. Cheers
Dani
March 14th, 2010
It is the industry standard of DESIGN period
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