The logo for your photography business is a major part of your online and offline identity, displayed on the watermarks of your images, your website, your business cards and maybe even on your storefront. A great photography logo not only communicates your brand identity, but also makes a lasting impression on customers and industry partners. In this article, we’ll give your our recommendations for the best photography logo design options for your photography or other creative business. We’ll cover the following topics:
- Free or paid: Should you pay for a creative photography logo?
- Ordering a Custom Logo From 99 Designs
- Using Creative Market Templates
- DIY Photography Logo Options
- Free Photography Logo Options
Free or paid: Should you pay for a creative photography logo?
While you can find free logo options from logo generators, which we list at the end of the article, the quality and uniqueness of the designs will generally not suffice for a professional photography business.
A photography logo is worth investing time and money into, even if you’re just starting out. Because while you can “penny pinch now and upgrade later” for most aspects of your business, like your website, your proofing galleries, your business cards, and more, changing logos presents issues of branding confusion and website consistency. You’ll have images with your old logo floating around on other websites, on social media, and on your blog, which decreases the effectiveness of all of those previous marketing efforts.
Photography Logo Design by 99 Designs
If you have a budget of $299 USD or more, then you should consider professional design communities like 99designs.com. With 99Designs, you start a “contest” for your photography logo design. Their community of designers submit their ideas and you pick your favorite. The quality of their designers, even in their lowest package tier, is high; and in fact, we’ve used them for multiple logo designs. Here are a few actual logos that we created with them: Line and Roots, a family photography brand, Visual Flow, a Lightroom Presets brand, and Wedding Maps, our new Wedding Directory project.
Pros of 99 Designs:
- Access to multiple designers
- Professional Results
- Money Back Guarantee
- Cost (compared to hiring a professional designer)
- Proven System that avoids confusion and miscommunication
Cons of 99 Designs:
- Cost (compared to cheaper or free options)
Recommendation
This is our recommended option if you can afford $299 USD. Since writing this article, 99designs reached out to offer a $20 discount. This did not affect our recommendation, but is a great bonus for our readers. Access the discount here.
Photo Logo Design by with CreativeMarket Templates
If you’re somewhat familiar with Adobe Illustrator and design principles, then we also recommend the logo design option of modifying an existing logo template on Creative Market. With these templates, you simply browse the options, purchase your favorite, and modify the logo to fit your photography business name and style.
Here are a few of our favorite logo templates that you can get for $25 to $50 USD:
Recommended Logo Pack 1 – Line Art Bundle
Recommended Logo Pack 2 –Logo and Icon Creator Pack
Recommended Logo Pack 3 – 300 Premade Logos Bundle
Pros of using Logo Templates
- Cheaper than a custom design
- Lots of options
- Good starting point if you are unsure of what style you’re looking for
Cons of using Logo Templates
- Other business may have a similar logo
- Requires basic Adobe Illustrator skills
- Requires your time
- Final logo may lack polish if you are not design proficient
Recommendation
This is our recommended option if you can’t afford 99designs, but you can afford $30.
Other Paid Logo Design Options for Photography Businesses
DIY Logo Design – When we first started our photography business, like most photographers out there, we penny pinched and did everything ourselves. With a background in simple web design, we created our own logo for Lin and Jirsa. While the logo does its job, we would likely opt for a professionally designed logo if we could do it all over again. However, at this point, a shift would create too much brand confusion. That said, the cheapest way, in terms of actual money (but maybe not in terms of the cost of your time), is to do it yourself.
Hiring Freelance Designers – Another option for logo design would be to find a freelance designer. You can browse reputable sites like Behance or Upwork. You may even consider rolling the dice with cheap options like fiverr.com. Or you can use your personal network to find a designer.
We’ve explored these options but have found that the results vary widely. In addition, you’re working with a single designer instead of a community of designers like in 99designs. So you may be limited by the skillset and versatility of that individual.
Free Logo Design Options
We recommend using free logo design generators for inspiration, but we have yet to see a truly creative, unique, and professional design from these options. Here are a few options to explore if you’d like to consider this route:
- Canva – Canva is a great option for anything design related, including photography logos
- LogoMaker – https://www.logomaker.com/
- Free Logo Design – https://www.freelogodesign.org/
- Shopify https://hatchful.shopify.com/
- Tailor Brands – https://www.tailorbrands.com/logo-maker
Of course, there may be other options out there that we have not tried. What do you think? How did you design your logo? What are your favorite options?
(Also, if you’re interested in learning more about “What Makes a Good Logo,” consider reading Pye’s article: Pye Reacts to Your Logos and Branding.)
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