7 Logo Design Trends and How to Incorporate Them

Your logo is a small visual representation of your brand. It may be the first thing the customer notices about your company on a sign, business card, ad, website or product packaging.

A logo needs to stand out and convey important information about the brand to the customer. If you can get the right logo in place, it will be memorable and appealing to your audience.

What kind of logo trends should you incorporate into your logo design?

These seven design trends are exciting and catchy. However, you won’t be able to use all of these ideas since they are sometimes contradictory. So, consider your brand characteristics and which of the following trending logo styles might work best for you.

7 Logo Trends and How to Use Them

It can be tricky to pinpoint the perfect design for your brand. Some companies use too many elements and end up with an amateur-looking logo design. A logo should be concise and communicate clearly.

When it comes to current logo trends, you should only pick design styles that will speak to your audience and tell the story of your brand. All visual elements hold a subconscious meaning that makes us feel a certain way, and you need to use that concept when choosing the perfect design trends to follow for your brand.

Simplicity and Minimalism

Sometimes, simple is a much more powerful approach to branding. Too many details and your brand can get lost in the design clutter. Think about brands like Nike, McDonald’s, Apple or Target. Their emblems are incredibly simple and easy to recognize at first glance. Fashion brands like Dolce and Gabbana or Michael Kors may go with simplicity through font and monochromatic color schemes.

Minimalism means cutting out everything except the most essential parts of the design. If you can pare your logo down to just one simplified shape with one or two colors, then you will be on the path towards a minimalistic design.

These simple designs work well for companies that are highly focused and know exactly who they are. The minimalistic logo design trend tends to create an understated and bold logo. It has a timeless but classic twist when boiled down to just the most important aspects.

Geometric Shapes

Every shape has meaning. When you first see a shape in a logo, it creates a certain inexplicable feeling about the design. If you know what shapes are instantly communicating, you can use them to display your brand’s meaning.

Circles: The circle represents unity and wholeness. It captures the viewer’s eye as a gentle and reassuring shape with no edges or angles. We use the circle to represent the sun, our Earth, cycles, ripple effects, containment and more.

Triangles: The triangle shape in logo design can be stable when sitting on a flat side and provocative or adventurous when standing on a corner. Triangles logos show power make natural mountains and arrows in logo illustrations.

Rectangles: The rectangle is a much more stable shape, representing consistency and conformity. For example, you might use a rectangle to illustrate building blocks or steps.

Bright Colors

Bright colors are a trend popular among many of the brands targeting youth. Bright colors tend to stand out and hold a natural energy. If your brand has a pep in its step, then bright colors may be right for you.

You might choose one or two colors, or you may utilize the whole rainbow. Colors can blend as a gradient or form distinct shapes within the design. Whatever colors you choose, consider their meaning. Colors will also convey a feeling.

While blue will give off peaceful vibes, red tends to be passionate. Yellow is a friendly and warm color. White is powerful and innocent, while black is also powerful and edgy. Orange and purple are both colors that show creativity and uniqueness. Brown is often tied to nature and safety, while green is growth and healing.

Monograms

You don’t need your whole brand name in your logo. Try going with just a letter or two. Brands like McDonalds, YMCA, EA Sports, Motorola and Pinterest have all used this trend. Monograms are great if you aren’t sure you want an illustration but do want an icon for things like apps or easy branding.

Monograms don’t have to be boring. You can use negative space to create your monogram, like Adobe. You can use the shape to illustrate something, like the Pinterest “P” creating the pushpin viewed from above.

Feel free to get creative with a monogram to show your youthful appeal through this timeless logo style.

Hand-Drawn Elements

If you want your business to appear more personalized and crafted, then explore your hand-drawn logo design options. For example, you can write out your brand name for a handwritten font (or use one that looks handwritten). You could also use illustrations or letters that look like they have been painted, drawn or screen printed.

The hand-drawn element helps a brand look friendlier and more down-to-earth. Vans used their original hand-drawn logo for a long time before switching to a slightly neater font. If you look at your local brewery or winery labels, you are likely to see some hand-drawn elements.

3D

Using highlights and shadows, you can make your logo look like it is popping off the page. In some situations, this can look cheap or like a throwback to the ’90s. However, the right amount will have it look modernized and flashy. The X-Box logo looks 3D just because of its curving rectangular shapes. AT&T also has a flat shape that looks 3D because of the curves in the lines.

ABC went from a very shiny, button-like logo to a much more subtle 3D logo with a satin shine. Internet Explorer is another brand that uses a 3D logo to express its modern connectivity focus. Instagram has another 3D logo style, though their old camera icon used to be much more realistic in its shading and highlighting.

The 3D trend will likely make your brand look modern and techy. A 3D logo takes more effort to get just right because it has a lot more color elements. However, it isn’t right for all brands and may look out of place in certain industries.

Animation

Can you think of a cool way for your logo to come together or move? In video content, making your logo active can be extremely eye catching. Movement is already something we naturally notice. When your logo is illustrated for a very brief amount of time, it holds our attention. Some brands will even create more dynamic, long-length animations to tell a story with their logo.

It takes work to make a logo move, so not everyone can do it. If your brand is cutting-edge and you want your audience to know it, consider a logo animation.

Most graphic designers are able to take an existing logo and make it move or create that option when they are designing your logo. However, this is not in the typical scope of logo design, so you should ask a designer if they can do logo animation before hiring them to work on your logo.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the right logo is going to be the one that your target audience remembers. Spend time getting this just right so that your brand is well represented.