The days of manually creating mockups using Photoshop are behind us. Now, there are a number of online mockup generator websites that do all the hard work for us. With that said, it can be hard to tell which mockup generator website is the best depending on what features you are looking for. How many templates they have, how much it cost to use, and how easy it is to learn, are a few of the questions we will be answering in this article.

Read on for thorough reviews of the best mockup generator websites and reasons you might want to pick them for your projects. By the end of this article, you should be able to tell which tool is right for your needs.

Why Use A Mockup Generator Website

There are quite a few reasons why you would consider using a mockup generator website to display your designs.

Mockup generators are powerful tools that help you bring your products and designs to life by inserting them into an image that shows what they would look like when being used in real life. Mockups take the guesswork out and help you and others visualize your product in a realistic setting.

You can use pricey and complex design tools, such as Adobe Photoshop, to make your mockups yourself from scratch. Another option is to use any number of free or paid mockup generator websites.

Benefits of Using a Mockup Generator

Here are the main reasons why someone would decide to take the route of using an online mockup generator instead of designing their own mockups:

• Design Testing: A mockup gives you a glimpse into what your product will look like in real life. To speed up your design process, quickly try out your designs using a mockup generator website that does most of the work for you.
• Save Time: The best part about a generator website is probably how much time it can save you in your mockup creation process. In general, creating the same mockup on your own will take more time than the few steps it would take on a mockup generator website.
• It’s Simple and Easy: Don’t have a design degree or extensive knowledge of design tools like Photoshop? This is where mockup generator websites save the day. It can be as simple as clicking a few buttons to create your very own mockups.
• Large Library: When showcasing your products, it’s probably in your best interest to match your brand and create quality images. Mockup generator websites typically have a large library of quality images to choose from, so there is something for every need.
• Affordable: Mockup generators are generally very affordable, and the benefits you get from them are often well worth paying the price.  You can easily decide how many designs to pay for or even consider annual subscriptions to the platforms.

These are the primary reasons why people without design skills, and even some design professionals, chose to use online mockup generators. Some of the generator tools are better than others in certain areas. The area that is of most importance to you can help you decide which tool to use, so we will make sure to walk you through each platform’s qualities.

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1. PlaceIt

PlaceIt is an online mockup generator that turns creating, displaying, and branding your designs into a super easy task. With an impressive library of templates that is constantly being updated and added to, you will most likely always find something to meet your exact needs.

Templates for Customization

There are over 90,000+ templates in the Placeit library, and they depict numerous different situations. You can customize your final images by:

• Adding Text and Graphics
• Changing Font
• Adjusting Colors
• Change the Layout
• Change the Background

Large Library of Ready-to-Use Mockups

Within their large library, PlaceIt has several categories of mockups that you can pick from. Here are some of the most popular ones:

• Activewear
• Android Devices
• App Store Screenshots
• App Videos
• Apparel
• Stationary
• Banners
• Books
• Business Cards
• Face Masks
• Facebook Ads
• Tote Bags
• Hats
• Home Décor
• Hoodies
• iMacs, iPads, and iPhones
• Beanies
• Mugs and Travel Mugs
• Musicians
• Onesies
• Packaging
• Phone Cases

Large Selection of Designs

Another one of PlaceIt’s great qualities is its large library of designs. You can also use PlaceIt to create designs for

• Pinterest Pins
• Album and Book Covers
• Flyers
• Instagram Posts and Stories
• T-Shirt Designs
• YouTube Templates

And many other designs that you might need as an individual or as a small business.

Video Templates

PlaceIt also boasts a decently sized collection of quality video templates that can help you create professional-looking advertisements and videos to show off your products and brands. Having this video mockup generator really makes a subscription to PlaceIt worth it when you think you’ll need both image and video for your product design mockups.

How Much PlaceIt Costs

With PlaceIt, you have a couple of different options when it comes to payment. This is definitely something the platform does well because there is a payment option for most budgets and needs.

Bonus: Placeit also offers an additional 15% off any plan with this coupon.

	What It Costs	Who It’s For
Free Trial	The free trial is a no-cost trial run when you first sign up for the platform.	This is a great way for you to get a feel for PlaceIt’s offerings prior to making any real commitments
Subscription	With the PlaceIt subscription, you pay one yearly fee for unlimited access to absolutely everything the tool has to offer. Pay Monthly: $14.95 per month Pay Annually: $89.69 per year	If you’re going to be making a lot of mockups, this is perfect for you.
Individual Purchases	You can also pay per mockup, and the price varies based on which file you download.   Mockups: $7.95 Video Mockups: $9.95 Design Templates: 42.95 Logos: $39.95	If you don’t want to, you don’t have to pay for an unlimited subscription to use Placeit, this is the way to go. Once you purchase a mockup via a single purchase fee or through your subscription, you are free to use that image for any purpose, commercial included.

PlaceIt Has Excellent Pricing And The Most Templates

PlaceIt has the 15% discount which makes it’s pricing hard to beat. It’s a great mockup generator website because of its extensive library and ability to make quick and easy mockups in a variety of formats. There is a learning curve, but it is truly minimal, and you won’t need much time to learn how to plug your customizations into each template.

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2. SmartMockups

SmartMockups is another popular online mockup generator tool. Introducing itself as “the fastest web-based mockup tool,” SmartMockups makes creating eye-catching product mockups quick and easy.

This tool has a decent collection of templates to choose from. The categories are simply displayed right on the homepage of the website, so you can be on your way to customizing a template you love in just a few clicks. They also continuously add to their collection of mockup templates, which is just over 1,400 templates.

Types of Mockups Available

The following categories of mockups generators that SmartMockups offers:

• Technology: This includes different computer types, TVs, watches, e-readers, phones, bundles of multiple technologies, and more.
• Print: Here, you will find anything from business cards and greeting cards to frames, outdoor signs, and phone cases.
• Packaging: Cosmetics, food, beverages, supplements, bags, and boxes
• Apparel: There is a wide range of apparel mockups to choose from, including face masks, accessories, hoodies, and t-shirts.
• Home & Living: Mugs, pillows, candles, and other household items.
• Social Media: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other formats for other websites.

Customizing mockups to meet your needs is easy with SmartMockups because of its advanced editing tools that are extremely user friendly. You can make designs that are unique to you, making results that match your brands and visions without having to spend too much time.

Time-Saving Features

Some features on SmartMockups that help speed up the creation process are:

• Exports and Sharing are made easy with SmartMockups because you can download high-quality images in many different formats.
• Third-party integrations with Marvel, Canva, Dropbox, and others to simplify your work across platforms.
• Using Smart Mockups Anywhere is simple because the program works on desktops, smartphones, and tablets.
• Many Upload Options, including uploading your own image, using a URL, or transferring from a third-party account integration, allow you to easily pull the images you need for your project.
• Customization and personalization are easy to achieve with this mockup generator because you can change colors, crops, image resolution, background color or transparency, and more.
• Gif Support for use in mockups is available.

How Much SmartMockups Costs

This tool has one of the best mockup generator website subscription offers. With many different levels to choose from, you can certainly find a plan that works best for your budget and your goals.

Subscription Level	What You Get	Price
Free	With this level, you can have one user account, you get 200 free mockups, and you have access to the most basic features.	$0 per month
Premium	This plan is perfect for individuals who will need many mockups. You get one user account, have access to all mockups, and can use advanced features like multiple upload options, unlimited exports, and integrations.	$9 per month
Pro	The pro plan is best for someone who creates mockups professionally all the time. At this level, you have one user account but more customization, access to video mockups and the premium templates, and the ability to make custom mockups.	$19 per month
Team	The team subscription is best for larger teams of marketing and creative professionals (up to 5 user accounts) who need access to the best mockups and customization tools. Share ideas between team members and have access to all of the best features that SmartMockups has to offer.	$69 per month

SmartMockup’s Is Easy But There Are Less Templates

SmartMockups can save you hours of time and a good deal of money. With a decently large library that continues to grow, advanced customization tools, and unlimited quality exports, the subscription plans offered with SmartMockups are an excellent value.

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3. Mockups Jar

Mockups Jar is a high-quality mockup generator that might be right for you if you need a mockup made quickly and want to have it done for free. It’s true, Mockups Jar is a mockup generator website that offers its services for free. You can click a free template, upload your image, and download the final product right away.

With that being considered, it is important to note that Mockups Jar’s template library is considerably smaller than other mockup generator websites.

And even then, some of the fancier mockup templates in the relatively small library do actually require you to make a paid account with the platform. All plans do allow you to cancel at any time that you would like to stop using the tool for mockups.

This is how much the paid subscriptions cost and a brief description of the features you get with each level:

Subscription Level	What You Get	Price
Espresso	This level is for professionals who need to create regular mockups. You get unlimited downloads, watermark removed, multiple format support, hidden ads, and the ability to capture full web page screenshots from Url or Figma.	€ 15 per year (about $18)
Mockups Generator API	With this level, you get API quick introduction, full documentation, and NPM package. You get 1,000 downloads and can contact Mockups Jar for extra features.	100 tasks free, then: € 45 ($55) per month for 1000 tasks/month € 99 ($120) per month for 10000 tasks/month € 249 ($302)per year for unlimited

Mockups Jar has the same categories as many other online mockup generator tools. Even though the library is smaller, with just over 800 templates available, they are likely to have something to meet your needs within their categories.

Template Library

If you need a quick design, the smaller template library can make the process of narrowing down your results even more simple than other platforms.

The categories on their site are listed as:

• Transparent Backgrounds
• iPhones and Androids
• MacBook
• Frames, which holds images of paper, wall frames, polaroid photos, and others
• Browsers
• Packaging, which includes things like business cards, tote bags, bottles, and boxes
• Apparel: sweatshirts, shirts, polos, and more
• Tablets
• Books

Despite an overall smaller number of templates, the category variety is still wide enough to find something you can use.

Use Mockups Jar for Very Quick, Cheap Mockup Designs

Mockups Jar might be your best bet for generating the quickest and easiest product mockups. The template library is somewhat smaller than other mockup generator tools, but the images are straightforward and easy to sort through. Simply pick an image, upload, and export the final product.

The Drawbacks of Mockups Jar

Downsides to this simple and straightforward process include:

• Limited customizations. This means that your final mockup images might not be as unique to you and your brand. They might not look as curated as another mockup generator platform could potentially make them.
• Fewer images to choose from. This makes the searching process quick and easy, but they might not have the exact situation or setup that you wish to place your product in.
• Fewer editing options for uploaded images. Your images must more or less be exactly how you want them in the mockup. You are able to drag the position and crop, but you can’t change much more about your design.

If you need a mockup generated here and there, MockUps Jar is a great option. Even with their newer pro subscription option, this is one of the most affordable generators out there.

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4. Magic Mockups

Magic Mockups is another one of the best mockup generators that can help you create quality mockups in a matter of minutes.

What makes Magic Mockups stand out the most is that it is completely free! However, the website is not very reliable.

Users can quickly place their photos and designs into one of the offered templates and download the mockup. The whole process just takes 3-4 clicks to complete.

Downsides to Using Magic Mockups Free Generator Tool

As with all free programs, the use of Magic Mockups comes with a few downsides. When deciding which tool to go with, you will have to weigh the benefits that Magic Mockup has to offer with the cons that come with using this free tool.

There are definitely reasons you would choose this program. However, there are also some things to consider about the mockups you will create with this platform:

• Limited selection. With just over 25 mockup templates available, the choices you have when creating mockups with Magic Mockups is nothing compared to other programs like PlaceIt, which have over 38,000 premade templates to choose from. Magic Mockups only offers technology mockup templates.
• Little to no customization. There is essentially no customization with this free mockup generator website. The photos that you upload will fit into the image as is. There is no option for changing colors or even cropping.
• No frills. With this free tool, you will miss out on many of the advanced settings and integrations offered by paid mockup generators. There are no third-party integrations or business tools.

Reasons To Use the Magic Mockups Generator

The final images created with Magic Mockup are still quality and can be of great use to those without design skills or who do not want to spend much time creating quality mockups. Here are some of the main reasons you would want to use Magic Mockup for your product mockups:

• Downloaded File Types: Final images can be downloaded in a variety of resolutions- from 960 px to greater than 5,000 px. They all come in JPEG format.
• Upload Options: You can upload images to the templates by uploading from your computer files or by capturing a URL.
• Time: With Magic Mockups, simplicity comes the benefit of needing to take no time at all to make the mockups. Without having customizations or a large library to sort through, you can have your finished quality mockup in less than a minute.
• Saving Money: Get a quality technology mockup without spending a dime. If you need to upgrade to a more intense generator in the future, you can, but you can try this free tool first to see if mockups are something that you need.

Magic Mockups Is the Cheapest Mockup Generator But The Website Is Not Reliable

If you quickly need a mockup made, and technology is the category you are looking for, choosing Magic Mockups is a great idea.

If you have no design or photoshop skills and no need for fancy customizations, in a matter of seconds, you can upload and create simple, realistic-looking technology mockups for absolutely no fee.

The mockups can be used for your personal use, or they can be used commercially, making this free tool a really smart choice for anyone needing a quick mockup.

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5. Media Modifier

Another tool for creating mockups online that offers a free plan is called Media Modifier. This mockup generator has a medium-sized library of templates with just under 3,000 templates to choose from. They have many categories for you to search through, so you are likely to find something that meets your needs:

• Technology: Choose from iPhones and iPads, Macbooks, and Androids
• Logo: Find logo mockups
• Print: The print category has books, business cards, greeting cards, and magazine mockup options.
• Products: Coffee mugs, bottles, vans, and many more to look through
• Apparel: T-Shirts
• Image Effects: signs and billboards, frames, canvases, and other unique images

How Much Does Media Modifier Cost

Media Modifier is another extremely affordable mockup generator website that is worth checking out. There are two payment options depending on your needs. With both plans, you get:

• Unlimited Downloads
• Monthly New Mockups
• The ability to switch plans at any time
• High-resolution images downloaded

The difference between the two plans is outlined in the chart below. For quick, occasional mockups, you might consider just sticking with the free plan. The Pro plan offers a few more advanced features that might be important to you if you are going to be creating mockups consistently.

Free Plan	Pro Plan
$0	$9 per month
Images have a watermark	No watermark on images
No commercial license	The fees cover royalties, so you can use your mockups on your website and social media and also sell them to your clients without an issue.

The Pro plan also comes with a money-back guarantee and priority support. If Media Modifier has the tools and categories that meet your needs and you need to use your mockups for commercial purposes, upgrading to the Pro plan could be a wonderful choice.

The Pros to Using Media Modifier

Media Modifier’s website claims that their tool was built with speed and simplicity in mind. They really meet this goal with their quick and easy professional looking mockup generator. Benefits to this generator include:

• Simplicity. In just a few clicks, you can have your designs and products placed in realistic-looking environments.
• Good enough selection. The variety and quantity of mockup template options that you get with Media Modifier are right in the middle when compared to other tools that create mockups. There is still a lot to choose from, but it is easy enough to sort through when you know what type of scene you are looking to place your design in.
• Customization.  Several options are available. All on the online editor, you can personalize by canvas size, font, and colors. You can even add free stock images directly into your designs.
• Use Any Device. If you have an internet connection and a browser, you can make quick, professional designs from anywhere.
• Kept Up To Date: Media Modifier is always adding new templates and working to bring out new features. They place a big commitment on product support and help you create with the templates you need the most.

While it can easily be said that Media Modifier is good for simple, free non-commercial mockups, it is also easy to claim that upgrading to a pro plan is very worthwhile. At only $9 per month, Media Modifier is one of the most affordable tools.

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Finding the Best Mockup Generator Website

Having the right tool can make or break your experience with creating mockups. From using the top mockup generators out there, it’s become clear that the overall experience depends on a few crucial factors:

1. How many templates do they have?
2. How much does it cost?
3. How easy is it to use?

With those things in mind, there seems to be a clear winner: Placeit.

Placeit has over 90,000+ templates, whereas the next best mockup generator only has 3,000. Placeit is only $14.95 per month, and they offer an additional 15% off discount. And lastly, Placeit is beginner friendly, easy to use, and has other tools included for free like logo templates, video templates, social media templates, and more.

Hopefully, this review of the best tools for creating mockups online can help you narrow down the choices and get started making beautiful mockups for your products in no time!

Choosing a font for your logo is an important decision. Logos don’t just communicate words. They communicate identity. So, if you’re going to find the best font for your logo, you have to have a clear understanding of the feel of your brand or business and how different fonts can resonate with your brand’s identity.

In this article, we will be looking at a wide variety of fonts to give you a range of possibilities to consider. If you’ve ventured into the font world before, you know it can be dizzying to choose just one. It’s a process. So, sit back, take your time, and consider these selections.

What is the Best Font to Use For a Logo?

Helvetica

Helvetica is a popular font that has been around since the late 1950s. This family of fonts is used by a variety of corporations, from Panasonic to Mac and Jeep to American Airlines. It is a simple font that communicates neutrality and calm resolve.

Proxima Nova

Designed and published by Mark Simonson in 2005, Proxima Nova is a redrafting of Proxima Sans. Its geometric but approachable lines have come to be associated with such brands as Spotify and Bosh, and the font family has 48 full-featured OpenType fonts.

Times New Roman

This is a classic font that has come to represent reliability and tradition because of its wide use in printed materials from newspapers to books. Although it was developed in 1929 for the New York Times, it remains a widely used seraph font.

Futura

Also from the late 1920s is the sans seraph font, Futura, which is recognizable for its unique geometry. The Futura family is used by such brands as Bed, Bath & Beyond, Calvin Klein, and Domino’s Pizza.

TT Norms Pro

TT Norms Pro is a popular font available in 216 languages. Published in 2017 this classically proportioned font can function well for small or large text.

Garamond

In 1531, French publisher Claude Garamond began developing the punch cuts that would set the standard for clear and graceful printing for the next several hundred years. These days many different people have created variations of this type face. One of the most common ones, Adobe Garamond, was designed by Robert Slimbach and can be found in the Harry Potter series as well as books by Dr. Suess.

FF DIN

Found on signs, packages, and billboards, FF DIN has a techy look to it but is no less popular for that. It was developed starting in 1995 by Albert-Jan Pool and has since become a staple for web and magazine publishing.

Avenir Next

Avenir is a French word that means future, and Avenir Next does bear some resemblance to Futura. But, as Arek Dvornechuck points out, “Avenir is not purely geometric. The font has vertical strokes that are thicker than the horizontals, an ‘o’ that is not a perfect circle and shortened ascenders.”

Avenir Next was published by Linotype and can be found when you look at the buttons on an LG phone.

Myriad Pro

Myriad Pro was published in 1992 as a font for Adobe and was later picked up by Apple. It has come to have many variations and is used broadly on the web.

Rockwell

Rockwell is a slab serif, which means that it is a blocky, dramatic typeface that is often used as a display font, such as a title for a book or an advertisement. Sometimes this type of font can feel archaic, but Rockwell has many variations that have made it adaptable to the web.

Baskerville

Here’s another serif font. It comes from the transitional period when fonts were taking a break from the old-style fonts that had dominated printing for centuries. It’s characterized by wider serifs and greater contrast in the thick and thin strokes. Baskerville’s weight and readability made it ideal for books.

Nexa

Nexa has become another popular font for the web including use in motion graphics because of its legibility. The family includes 16 fonts and weights, and Nexa works well for headlines, t-shirts, and posters.

Cera Pro

This highly geometrical font has a beautiful italic effect due to its perfect 10-degree slope. Jacob Runge has made this simple and readable font ideal for corporate display in print and on the screen. It also supports 150 languages.

Akzidenz-Grotesk

Simple and modern with the technical-looking edge of FF DIN and the reliability of Times New Roman, Akzidenz-Grotesk is a durable font that was originally used for tickets and forms. It has since graced everything from Clifford the Big Red Dog books to the covers of jazz albums.

Mont

Mont is a balanced font that is available in the hairline to black weights and is another one that works good for motion graphics. Supported in more than 130 languages, designers Mirela Belova and Svet Simov made this font striking even in its thin forms, and it works well for simple, head-turning declarations.

Intro

Intro family is quite large, containing 72 different font styles. Intro has a modern look that many graphic design companies use. It is essentially a sans font, but contains the occasional serif which gives it a playful feel.

Gilroy

Here’s another font well suited to graphic design for the web, signage, corporate and editorial. This modern san serif has 20 weights ranging from light to extra bold. Gracing everything from toilet paper to playbills Gilroy has an in-the-moment feel.

Bodoni

This font was developed with bold contrasts between thick and thin in mind and has been used to great effect in some of the legendary logos of our time including Vogue and Calvin Klein. Bodoni also graced the cover of Patti Smith’s album Radio Ethiopia.

Khula

Khula is a contemporary Google font from the Devanagari family and was designed by Erin McLaughlin. When spacing is added between the letters, it causes them to stand out without being bolded or italicized. It was designed to complement Open Sans and comes with five weights.

Flix

The rounded characters in this font give it a graphic element that doesn’t require a lot of symbolic embellishment. Produced by Fontastica, this all-caps font has a single weight but comes either bold or outline.

Choplin

German designer Rene Beider created this slab serif to be modern and durable. New and old inspiration give this font a bold character. It’s related to the Campton family of fonts, but the serifs are sharper and sturdier which make this a good companion to an assertive brand.

Teko

Here’s another contemporary font that takes a simple and clear stand on a layout, making it eye-catching and readable. This Open Source font from Indian Type Foundry has five font styles and is square in proportion. The lighter weights are ideal for headlines but fit well with one to two word, logotype statements.

Randrake

This is a modern script logo that elevates the style from get-well cards to chic displays, making it a good companion to brands that have a fashion focus. Randrake is produced by Micromove and fits in with both print and digital mediums.

Yeseva One

Dedicated to his wife, designer Jovanny Lemonad named this font after the phrase, “Yes Eva,” and wrote that Yeseva One was “a sign of complete agreement between a man and a woman.” The “feminine essence” comes through in this stately, contrastive font.

Cormorant

This thinly styled font with sturdy serifs, has the flair of age without the stodgy side effects. Inspired by Gamarond, Cormorant would fit well with a brand where knowledge and experience are musts. Designer Christian Thalmann handled every last aspect of the font’s conception and design.

Mike Sans

Mike Sans is an unshakeable font in bold, square characters. Available in 8 different weights, the faint curves of the edges give the font an air of approachability. Nevertheless, Mike Sans has the unmistakable look of a no-nonsense brand.

FF Avance

Developed by Evert Bloemsma, FF Avance flaunts an edgy feel with upper and lower serifs pointing in opposite directions. Bloemsma said, “The overall image of text could be more pleasant because serifs can bring more differentiation of forms, a wider spectrum of forms.

An expression of dynamic movement, a stream of thoughts. Reading is moving.” High energy brands might feel at home in this font.

Alegreya Sans SC

Originally intended by designer Juan Pablo del Perol for longer texts, specifically literature, this delicate font becomes pronounced when bolded or italicized. A brand that takes artistic values into business may want to consider this font for a logo.

Quentin Pro

This modern font has a bold, eye-catching look that is at home on movie posters. Perhaps this is why one site considers Quentin Pro to be an ideal logo font for a startup venture.

Nunito Sans

Nunito Sans began life as a display font from creator Vernon Adams and was expanded on by Jacques Le Bailly to include different weights, making it more versatile. But it retains its point of origin, and its high x-height and short descenders make the font feel open and ideal for a brand that is expanding its vision.

Cutive Mono

Here’s another one from designer Vernon Adams. Cutive Mono is an open source font that borrows inspiration from the typewriter typefaces of IBM’s “Executive” and “Smith-Premiere” models. This gives the font a classic look of reliability.

Didot

A common font in the fashion world and used on Michael Jackson’s album “Invincible,” Didot comes from a family of French printers and publishers in the late 1700s. One of their versions of the typeface was used for the George Armani logo.

Expletus Sans

Some of the fonts we have looked at can be used for display or for text, but Expletus Sans is not versatile. It is explicitly for display and one glance at it tells you why. Where letters have intersecting lines, in Expletus there are gaps, giving the font a highly stylized feel that is nonetheless striking on a white background.

Moon

Like the celestial body for which it is named, Moon is stark with rounded edges and it graces, not surprisingly, a 2018 moon phase calendar. This free font designed by Jack Harvatt, is versatile enough to go with a variety of fonts.

Walk On

Walk On is a highly contrastive font that may bring to mind other fashion fonts that we have looked at. It’s not surprising then that Hanson Chan originally developed Walk On for the fashion brand Wang and Lynch. This dramatic font is now free.

Boogaloo

Developed by John Vargas Beltran, Boogaloo was inspired by Latin American culture and musical genres, as well as fonts on LPs from the 60s. Boogaloo references a happy, carefree nostalgia.

Natasya

Natasya is a script font almost reflective of graffiti the way some of its curves nearly come to a point. As such it may be suitable for a hip, up and coming brand that wants to attract a modern, edgier clientele.

Neue Swift

This font comes to you from Dutch designer Gerard Unger and was originally released in 1985 with updates in 1995 and 2009. Available in six weights, Neue Swift features prominent serifs that make the font easy to read and ideal to use if your logo has multiple words.

Catamaran

Catamaran is the brainchild of Pria Ravichandran from India. Its Unicode compliance signals that this font was designed specifically for our digital era. It is made of 9 weights and has a solid, stable look that might go well with a construction company brand.

Herona

Herona was designed with e-sports and video game design in mind, so if your brand is tech focused with a fun edge, try out this font for your logo.

Gafata STD

The principal designer Lautaro Hourcade originally designed this font for smaller sizes in medium to long text blocks. But it’s quirky look makes it a good choice for logos if your brand is striking out in new territory and you want to communicate the difference quickly.

Kanit

In the Thai language, Kanit means mathematics, so it’s not hard to imagine that this font has a technical and even futuristic look. Coming in a variety of weights, this free font was designed by the Thai type foundry Cadson Demak and is another good option if you have a tech brand.

Blackpast

Speaking of futuristic, Blackpast is a highly stylized display font that recalls posters of science fiction movies. With some lines exaggerated and others missing, this font is perfect for edgy tech brands who want to stand out.

Big Caslon

Big Caslon is the first font of the Caslon family to be available for display in the digital world. Released in 1994 by the Font Bureau, designer Matthew Carter wanted to revive the 17th-century era type faces of William Caslon I. Big Caslon blends sharp serifs with faint geometry to make a big statement.

Sacramento

This semi-connected script font was inspired by the hand-lettered brochures of the 1950s and 60s. It has a nostalgic feel and evokes a formal letter, which, in the digital world, feels causal because of its handwritten appearance.

Leafy

If your brand needs a natural touch, Leafy font is exactly as it sounds. It has a raw, unpolished feel thanks to brushwork by Ieva Mezule. This free font has 95 characters and is a great way to represent individuality.

Glober

The winner of the 2014 Modern Cyrillic gold medal is a sans serif with 18 weights, support of 130 languages, and a great look on the web. Glober’s bold, magazine-style look has great readability and makes an excellent pairing in a logo with supporting text.

Open Sans

Open Sans was developed by Ascender Corp’s type director Steve Matteson and has an upright posture, but a friendly appearance. Matteson optimized this font for web and mobile use, as well as print.

Benford

Benford is a layered font with a decidedly vintage look. Think of a label for old-fashioned cream soda with a picture of a man with a handlebar mustache and you’ve got the idea. If your brand is attracting the vintage crowd, this font could be for you.

Racing Sans One

Racing Sans One is another font that kind of looks like it sounds. The letters are slanted forward as if they’re in a cartoon race for the finish. As described by the creators, Impallari Type, it is a “high contrast sans” that pays tribute to the forgotten genre of contrasted sans dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. With this font, think relic in motion.

Canilari

This font is something of a loner. It doesn’t look quite as stiff as a normal serif font and almost has the rounded feel of many sans serif fonts. Likewise, it hints at old-style fonts on the one hand and new on the other. It’s hard to pin it down, which may work well for brands that have a similarly shifty personality.

Cormorant Garamond

Another free font designed and developed entirely by Christian Thalmann, Cormorant Garamond, was inspired by Claude Garamond but is not dependent on him. The resulting font is stately, clean, and gentle with the sort of grace that calls to mind time-honored, happy traditions.

Fresh Guava

This playful script font was developed by Khurasan and is as fun and spritely as it sounds. Put it to use for your fresh and inspired food brand, and you might just have a winner.

Ribeye

Ribeye is another font that’s quirky and fun. This contrastive serif font has a cartoony feel faintly reminiscent of tattoo lettering but is also very readable. Think playful biker dude, and you might have the right font for your logo.

Ostrich Sans

Ostrich Sans has stretched out the x-height to give it a distinct length coupled with its rounded characters. Appropriately, it is only available in uppercase letters to make the most of its style. If your logo needs to raise its voice to be heard, consider this font as an option.

Rochester

This script font is inspired by Victorian and Art Deco calligraphic forms and has a graceful feel. If you want to strike a formal, elegant tone, this might be the font for your brand.

Cloudsters

Cloudsters is a ligature logo font with a clean and modern feel that can give your logo a stylized touch. Ligatures are characters that combine two letters into one shape. For example, the “f” and “i” will often blur together, so a ligature makes one character out of them.

Pacifico

Pacifico is another script font that looks great with food brands. This 2011 brush script is another Vernon Adams designed font inspired by 1950s surf culture. Originally commissioned by Google, this font was redrawn by Jacques Bailly in 2016.

Modesto

This font finds its inspiration in 19^th and 20th-century hand-painted circus signs. So, Modesto brings the “Dumbo” style font into the digital age. If your brand would benefit from references to fruit crate or cigar box style lettering, this font is one to consider.

Passion One

This is a passionate font for big displays. It is solid and sturdy, and its heavy weight would go well with a body building logo.

Lexlox

Here’s another stylized font from Khurasan. Thick letters crowd against or on top of each other in a way that speaks of luxury.

Gruppo

Squat and spread out, Gruppo is Vernon Adams style-conscious font with thin letters made for displays where a “less-is-more” aesthetic speaks to the heart of the logo.

Abril Fatface

Abril Fatface comes in 18 styles and is part of the larger Abril family designed by the TypeTogether foundry. 19th-century advertising posters from Britain and France provided the inspiration for Fatface’s heavy, dramatic characters. If your brand is making previously custom-made items broadly available, this font might be a good one to consider.

Playfair Display

A traditional design of transitional font genre, Playfair Display can be found in headlines of journals and fashion magazines where its stately presence creates an expectation of elegance. It is influenced by the designs of John Baskerville and works with Georgia as a body text.

Lequire

Here is another modern font with heavy stylization, including gaps in lines, lines that are missing altogether, and little diamonds in the middle of “o’s” and “c’s.” It has a techy feel that once again calls to mind science fiction posters from the early eighties. Campy technology brands might do well with this.

Life Savers

Speaking of campy, Life Savers is a fun font that reaches back, once again, to the days of hand lettering artists in the 1950s. This font playfully calls that time to mind, and maybe even a few specific Life Savers ads. If your brand needs a nostalgic and silly font, Life Savers is for you.

Rufina

Our final font is Rufnia, a font that takes its inspiration from stencil design but arranges the breaks differently so that the letters look less stenciled than loosely assembled like you would a model before gluing it together. This font works well for brands with artistic endeavors, like an art gallery.

Conclusion

As we come to the end of our list, you should have more than enough fonts to play with and consider as you design the right logo for the personality of your brand.

A big shoutout to FontSquirrel and Indentifont for helping with the font example images.

A logo is the symbolic representation of a company. It aims to communicate not only the company name but also the mission, purpose, strengths, and feeling the company hopes to provide to its customers.

This list gives you the best examples of logos with more than one message. Some are hard to decipher at first, but you will wonder how you missed it once you see them. These 41 logos all have hidden messages, and some may blow your mind.

Logos You Thought You Knew

While some companies choose to have direct, straightforward logos – such as UPS – many companies opt for a combination of words and pictures that convey more than one meaning. Designers work hard to embed the secondary meanings within the logo, so you might not notice them at first (or even second or third) glance.

Logos use white space, playful fonts, symbolism, and more to “hide” their multiple messages. You have probably seen most or all of these logos hundreds, potentially thousands, of times in your life. But, have you seen all of their hidden messages? Read on and learn how these messages have been hiding from you for all this time.

Unintentional Hidden Messages

The hidden messages in these first two logos are unique in that inquisitive fans discovered them. Still, when asked directly, the designers for these iconic logos claim the hidden meaning was unintentional. These are two of the most recognizable logos in the world, so it is a wonder that the messages were hidden even to the designers themselves.

Wendy’s

This hidden message is one for all the true Enigmatologists out there. Hidden within the ruffles of Wendy’s collar, investigative fans have found the word “mom.” The logo was famously designed after the daughter of the owner of the fast-food chain, so sneaking “mom” into the logo continues the family theme of the logo.

However, after speculation and theories began to spread online, the company came out and said the hidden message was unintentional. What do you think?

Apple

Apple is known for being at the forefront of user-friendly design and changed the trajectory of computer usage for the rest of the time. So, it is almost unbelievable that the designer of the iconic bitten apple logo says he had no specific message in mind when designing the logo.

This hasn’t stopped fans from creating their own meanings behind the logo. The most popular being that the bitten apple is symbolic of the bite Eve took from the fruit growing on the Tree of Knowledge in the biblical story of Genesis. Thus, the Apple logo represents knowledge and the sacrifices made to gain that knowledge.

Message Hidden in White Space or Negative Space

Similar to the Magic Picture books that may have caused you to nearly go cross-eyed as a kid, many logos use white or negative space to hide meanings. To see the hidden messages in these logos, it is all about perspective. Once you adjust your eyes and focus on the negative space, you will never be able to unsee the hidden message again.

FedEx

FedEx is one of the most popular hidden message logos, probably because you might not expect a shipping company to have a hidden meaning in their logo. Hidden in the negative space between the letters of “E” and “x” in the Ex portion of the logo, there is an arrow pointing to the right hidden.

The exact meaning of the hidden arrow has not been divulged, but if you consider the mission of FedEx, you can assume it has something to do with moving your package with precision or advancing it forward.

NBC

As the oldest major broadcast network in the United States, you have likely seen the NBC logo thousands of times in your life. But, you may not have noticed the array of colors coalesce around white space that is meant to represent a peacock.

If you are thinking, what do a broadcasting company and a peacock have to do with each other? NBC says the peacock is meant to show how proud they are of the shows and programs they broadcast. Now that NBC has named its new streaming service, Peacock, the connection to the logo is even stronger.

Toblerone

The iconic airport treat has an animal hidden in the negative space of the logo’s prominent mountain. Do you know what animal? If you answered, Bear, congratulations! You know your chocolate.

Why a bear? The company was founded in Bern, Switzerland, also known as the City of Bears.

Pittsburg Zoo and PPG Aquarium

Continuing with our animal theme, zoo logos tend to prominently feature animals, as you might expect. The Pittsburg Zoo and PPG Aquarium logo designers wanted to be a little different. They chose to hide their animals in the negative space of their logo, on either side of a central tree.

If you focus your eyes on the negative space, you can make out a gorilla on one side and a lion on the other. The logo mimics what it might be like finding these animals in the wild, having to focus and look closely in the trees or savanna to find these well-hidden animals.

Hope for African Children Initiative

You may not have seen this logo before, but its interesting use of negative space makes it worthy of this list. This logo represents both the people they aim to help, children and families, and the geographical location they serve, Africa. This logo is a beautiful piece of art, which is also reflective of the beautiful work they hope to accomplish.

Hershey’s Kisses

Did you know there are actually THREE Hershey’s Kisses in this logo? Two of them are fairly obvious to anyone glancing at the logo, but the third is cleverly hidden using negative space. Do you know where?

If you answered between the letters K and I in the word “kiss,” then you know your kisses.

The Bronx Zoo

Another zoo on the list, but this time it is not the animals that are hidden. Using the negative space around the animals featured in the logo, the Bronx Zoo logo features the iconic New York City skyline. By rendering the zoo’s location in the logo, you are reminded that it is truly amazing to be able to see these wild animals in the heart of a major city.

Nintendo GameCube

At first glance, the GameCube logo looks like a drawn version of the game console itself. That would make sense for a logo, so you may have never taken the time to look a little deeper. Hidden within the negative space of the geometrical shape are the letters G and C, representing GameCube.

This may not be the most creative use of negative space, putting the name of the console on the representative image of the console, but once you see it, you will have a hard time NOT seeing the letters again.

Formula One

At first glance, the logo looks like the letter F sitting at the starting line of a race, which seems pretty perfect for a racing logo. When you look at the space between that letter and the “starting line,” you will see in the negative space the number 1.

Once you see the 1, the red “starting line” looks like it could represent the speed at which the letter F and number 1 are moving—another perfect meaning for some of the world’s fastest races.

Washington Capitals

If you are not a big hockey fan, you may think that this team’s mascot is the eagles. Instead, the eagle is meant to represent the team’s home city, Washington, D.C. The name of the team is hidden in the white space underneath the bird’s head. Look closely, and you will see the silhouette of the Capitol building. The Washington Capitals are represented in multiple ways in this single logo.

Disguised in the Font

Many logo designers develop unique fonts to represent the company. Fonts can communicate that a company is serious, fun, innovative, and many other emotional or descriptive adjectives. Designers also use fonts to creatively hide messages or secondary pictures in their logos. These next logos are great examples of creative font use to disguise hidden messages.

Milwaukee Brewers (1978 – 1993)

Hats off to the designer of this logo. Using block letter fonts, the lowercase letters m and b are stacked and angled on top of each other to form what, at first glance, looks like a baseball glove. If you are not a big sports fan, the Milwaukee Brewers are a Major League Baseball team.

The font is so perfectly chosen that you may not even notice the letters until taking a second or third look at the logo.

Tostitos

Tostitos are known for being the center of the party. Everyone congregates around the bowls of chips and dip, and the logo depicts this common scene. Hidden in the middle of the company name, Tostitos uses a font with flare to depict the two lowercase ts as people holding chips and use a fancy dot on top of the lowercase i to represent a bowl of salsa.

Sun Microsystems

At first glance, this logo looks like it might be a squiggly line block representative of a microchip that powers Sun Microsystems. When you look closer, those squiggly lines reveal themselves to be a curved font that spells out the word “sun” over and over. Any way you look at the logo, you can read the word “sun.”

Jack in the Box

This hidden message is especially secretive as the connection between the fish symbol that is created with the letters o and x fused together in the word “box,” and the fast-food company is not immediately obvious.

They sell more hamburgers than they do fish burgers. It is thought that originally the owners planned on making their fish sandwiches their focus. It seems customers had different preferences on the menu options.

Gillette

Gillette chose a font with sharp lines to mimic the sharpness of their razor blades. To further accentuate the sharpness, the tips of the letters g and I are slashed as if done by one of their sharp razor blades.

Hyundai

The smooth edges of the Hyundai font seem to mimic the smooth designs of their cars, but there is another image hidden in the letters. The company says that the shape of the capital letter H of their logo is meant to symbolize two people shaking hands and making a deal, like a customer and a car salesman when a Hyundai car is purchased.

Toyota

Toyota’s logo uses a rounded font to embed each letter of their company name within the logo itself. At first glance, the logo looks like an oval with smaller ovals swirling within it. But when you look closely, you can make out each letter in Toyota within the ovals. This logo designer must have loved puzzles and codes. 

Ray-Ban

Ray-Ban is known for its famous sunglasses, so you might be disappointed when you first see the logo and think it is only a cursive-like spelling of their company name. If you tilt your head to the left, you will see the B in “Ban” is shaped to resemble their famous shades.

My Fonts

Of course, a font company has to do something creative with the font in their logo! My Fonts uses a connected, cursive-style font to hide the second meaning in their logo. The outlined shape of the word “My” resembles a human hand. The hand then looks like it is selecting or picking up the word “Font.” Just like any customer can select any font of their choice from My Fonts.

Pinterest

A giant letter P as the logo of a company named Pinterest seems fairly obvious and straightforward. The swirly font harks to arts and crafts, which is a central hobby that connects people on the tech company’s platform.

Looking a little closer at the outline of the letter, you can see that it resembles a push pin. A pushpin is the kind of pin that would be used to stick pictures and papers to a classic corkboard, which is what the platform is providing for its users—a virtual corkboard to pin up any great idea you find surfing the internet. Pretty perfect logo, right? 

Symbolism

Symbolism is a classic technique used by artists and writers alike to infuse double meanings into their works. In these logos, symbolism is used to convey key features, history, missions, and slogans. Most use pictures, but some use simple colors or shapes to add symbolic hidden messages to their logo.

Subway

You have probably noticed the two arrows pointing in either direction in the Subway logo, but do you know what the arrows symbolize? If you have ever ordered a sub from subway, you know the sandwich chain is famous for its layout that allows a customer to start at the top of the counter and work their way down, requesting ingredients for their order as they move along.

The arrows represent this assembly-line feature that is found in all of their restaurants across the country.

Audi

The Audi logo is four linked circles, and no, the symbolic meaning has nothing to do with the Olympics. Each circle represents one of the original companies of the 1932 Auto-Union Consortium—DKW, Horch, Wanderer, and Audi. The Audi logo pays homage to this founding group of car manufacturers.

Google

Every time you open your internet browser, you likely encounter the Google logo. At this point, you would recognize those four colors anywhere. A lot of thought went into selecting those colors.

The company selected primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—with a single secondary color—green. The secondary color was included to symbolize the company’s ideology that Google does the unexpected.

Adidas

The three stripes on top of the word Adidas in the company’s logo represent more than you may think. Resembling a mountain, these stripes represent the challenges that the company and its customers must try to overcome. The logo suggests that the Adidas product you purchase will help you climb your metaphorical mountain and achieve your goals.

Amazon

These days, you can find anything and everything you need on Amazon. So, the idea that the company sells everything from A to Z fits the iconic logo connecting the two letters. However, Amazon did not start as a mega-warehouse. Originally, the company focused on selling books, and the connected letters A and z represented bookends.

The smiling line connecting the letters is intended to symbolize Amazon’s central idea that the customer should always leave happy.

Cisco

Cisco develops and sells various types of technological equipment and offers other services and products. The lines atop their logo represent a digital signal that can meet the needs of all their customers. However, the overall shape of those lines offers a secondary meaning.

The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and got its start in San Francisco. To pay homage to their home city, the shape of the signal lines make an outline of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Quicksilver

Quiksilver’s logo can be found on the bottoms of skateboards and plastered on the sides of skateparks all across the country. The logo is based on the 19th-century print depicting a giant wave in front of a mountain. As an extreme sports company, customers of Quicksilver often find themselves riding waves, both the water and pavement variety.

Roxy

As a female-oriented company, the heart logo was intended to draw female customers to Roxy’s extreme sports apparel merchandise. The logo is more than just a heart, however. It is also a duplicate logo of the parent company, Quiksilver. If you look closely, you will see that the heart consists of two Quiksilver logos turned on their sides.

Dell

The Dell logo looks fairly straightforward. It is the name of the company with the letter E tilted at an angle. You may have thought the tilt was intended to break up the block of the name or to accentuate the Electronic focus of the company.

The tilt is a little more meaningful than that. The founder of the company wanted the work done in Dell to turn the world on its ear. So, the logo designer turned the letter E to mirror this mission statement.

Wikipedia

The Wikipedia logo is an example of pure symbolism. Without an explanation, you may not even be aware of what the logo means in the first place. Sure, you recognize it, but what is with all the puzzle pieces and various symbols shaped like a globe?

The logo represents the global community of individuals piecing together various encyclopedic posts in an attempt to capture and define all the parts that make up the world. However, that goal is so lofty, it will forever remain unfinished. Thus, the company’s logo is an unfinished puzzle of the globe.

BMW

Many people believe that the BMW logo symbolizes the company’s aviation history as it looks like propeller blades. However, the symbolism in the BMW logo has to do with the colors used. The blue and white represent the Bavarian flag, where the company began. BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH, which means Bavarian Engine Works Company in English.

Meaning in the Numbers

Numbers depicted within logos is a common strategy used to imbue logos with hidden meanings. Often logos also include a series of symbols that are always found in a certain number or count. These specific counts generally hold a secondary meaning that is special to the company. These next logos use numbers or specific symbol counts to depict hidden messages.

Baskin Robbins

In conjunction with playful fonts, the Baskin Robbins logo offers the most famous use of numbers to represent a secondary logo meaning. As extra credit, the numbers themselves are hidden within the logo.

Using the rounded side of the capital letter B and the straight line of the capital letter R, Baskin Robbins highlights the number 31, which is the number of ice cream flavors they offer.

Paramount

The stars arching over the Paramount logo are not just aesthetically pleasing; they are also meaningful. When the logo was designed, Paramount 24 actors contracted under their company. These actors would go on to “star” in the movies and films produced by the company.

At some point in the 1970s, Paramount dropped two of the stars from its logo, though the reason is unknown. Perhaps, they wanted to dissociate themselves from two of the founding stars for whatever reason. 

Domino’s

If you have not played the game before, you may not even realize that the two squares with dots on top of the Domino’s logo are a domino game piece. Traditionally, the pieces have dots representing any set of numbers from one to six. So, why were the three dots chosen in this logo?

Originally, the founders of Domino’s thought they would add a dot for each new store that they opened. Little did they know their company would outgrow the potential number of dots a single domino piece can hold. Instead, they stuck with the three dots representing their three original locations.

Hidden Faces

Your brain is wired to find faces, so the hidden messages in these logos may not be very hidden to you. These logos take the idea of putting a face on a brand literally.

Chik-fil-a

The strange spelling of this company may be enough to stop you from seeing the hidden face in Chik-fil-a’s logo. The shapes and swirls making up the capital letter C in the logo create the face of this food chain’s best-seller, chicken.

LG

The face in LG’s logo is pretty apparent, but what you might not notice is of what the features of the face are comprised. The nose is the capital letter L, and the shape of the face and winking eye is the capital letter G. 

Goodwill

Because your brain is so wired to see faces, the faces in Goodwill’s logo are likely to jump out at you. What you might not see at first is that it is the use of a well-designed block font that makes the lowercase letter g look like the face. The purpose of this company is to make people’s lives a little better and hopefully put smiles on their faces. This meaning shines through in their logo.

Beats by Dre

The lowercase letter b jumps out, and the logo looks like a simplistic representation of the company name. When you look again, you may notice that the circle encapsulating the b represents a human head, and the b is placed exactly where the company’s headphones would cradle that person’s ear. Pretty sleek, huh?

London Symphony Orchestra

One more because this logo is cool once you see it. At first, you might think the logo is just the abbreviation, LSO, written in a rounded cursive font. The three letters create the outline of the hands and head of an orchestra conductor leading the symphony.

Ready to create your own hidden message logo? Here are some of our favorite logo templates to start with.

Watermarks are one of the best ways for artists and photographers to protect their work against unauthorized use. Creating your own watermark is easy, but you need to make sure it’s done right!

When creating a watermark, it must be on-brand with the business, present a professional look, and be properly placed. There are multiple programs and resources to use while creating a watermark, and the best choice depends on individual needs and preferences.

Below, we’ll highlight some of the best tools and resources for creating your own watermark, as well as some arguments to consider when deciding if you need one.

What Is the Purpose of a Watermark?

The primary purpose of a watermark is to prevent either counterfeiting or copyright infringement. It will typically take the form of a superimposed:

• Logo
• Signature
• Stamp

While most people are familiar with watermarks as they’re used by photographers and artists, certain government documents also feature watermarks in order to reduce the chances of counterfeit documents. Some government-issued documents that feature watermarks include:

• Currency
• Driver’s Licenses and other forms of identification
• Stamps
• Official stationery from an elected official

In addition to preventing copyright infringement and counterfeit documents, watermarks may also be used as a way for artists to create brand recognition.

When a watermark contains the name of a business or contact information, such as a website, it’s easy for people who like their work to view more or contact them.

Who Should Use a Watermark?

Anyone who will be posting their copyrighted work online should use a watermark to prevent theft and unauthorized use or duplication. This might include:

• Photographers
• Artists (especially digital artists)
• Authors and writers

When in doubt, use a watermark on any work you’ll be posting online to protect yourself against unauthorized use!

What a Good Watermark Looks Like

It’s not enough for your images to just have a watermark – it has to be a good watermark! The right kind of watermark to use depends on how you do business and what’s recognizable for your brand.  It should be:

• Easy to read
• Relatively simple
• On-brand with your business’s message

How to Know Which Type of Watermark to Use

What you incorporate into your watermark depends on your business needs and how well-recognized your brand is. Here’s when each type of watermark is appropriate:

• Use a logo if your brand already has an established, recognizable logo.
• Use your business’s or your own name if it’s well-known in your community. Make sure to keep the font and style consistent with other branding materials.
• Use your website’s URL if you do most or all of your business online. This is also a great way to increase traffic to your site!

The best watermarks tend to have some degree of transparency, as professional watermarks aren’t typically 100% opaque. This is usually done to minimize the distraction, as well as to make them more discreet and difficult to find to prevent removal.

How to Create a Watermark

Creating a watermark for your brand is simple. You can use pretty much any free or paid drawing program to create your watermark, including:

• Microsoft Paint
• Logo Maker for Mac
• GIMP

You might also want to use an online graphic design program if that’s easier for you. Here are some of our favorites:

• Placeit
• Canva
• Brandmark.io
• Adobe Illustrator

Here are the pros and cons of using each program to create your brand’s watermark.

Microsoft Paint

If you have a Windows computer, Microsoft Paint is probably the easiest program to create a watermark.

Microsoft Paint comes standard on all Windows computers and is relatively easy to use, plus it includes all the tools you could ever need to create a basic logo or stamp.

It is, however, a pretty basic program that won’t let you get as creative as you can with other programs. If you value simplicity, Paint is a good option. If you want to really go wild with your design, however, look elsewhere.

Logo Maker for Mac

Logo Maker is an Apple application, available to download for free in the App Store, that is specifically designed for creating logos. While it does offer a few free templates, users have the option to upgrade to Logo Maker Pro to gain access to over 3,000 different templates for:

• Logos
• Invitations
• Flyers
• Business cards

Along with the templates, subscribing to Pro will give you these additional benefits:

• Save custom shapes
• Sync your logos to your iCloud
• Save in high-resolution
• Make your logos more aesthetically pleasing with over 200 overlays and over 100 backgrounds
• Access to over 5,000 different logo icons made by professional designers

If you don’t mind spending a few dollars, this is an excellent choice for Mac users. Even if you opt for the free version, you’ll probably be able to create a pretty nice-looking watermark with this program!

GIMP

GIMP, which stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program,” is a free option that’s compatible with both Windows and Mac computers. It offers a similar range of tools like Photoshop, making it a very high-quality free choice.

The downside here is that it is a bit more difficult to navigate than other options, but there are a good number of tutorials online that show you how to take full advantage of its features.

Placeit

Placeit is a free and paid online design tool. They only require internet access, and no need to download any software. Placeit is known for their large library of templates, ranging from logos all the way to video templates.

You’ll be able to browse different categories of templates and find one that matches what you’re looking for. Then you can customize the colors, fonts, and every design features of the template, and instantly download it to your computer or smartphone.

Placeit is our favorite tool on this list because of it’s ease of use.

Canva

Canva offers you the choice to “Design Anything” and offers a variety of templates for each! It has a very user-friendly interface and step-by-step pop-up instructions for creating your logo.

You can instantly download your logo as soon as you’re done, and you even have the option to do so with a transparent background perfect for watermarking. You can sign up for a free account to create and save more than one logo for 100% free.

Brandmark.io

Brandmark is a paid service that automatically creates logos for you based on your preferences. The process is very quick and simple, and you can choose between a few different automatically generated options. Here’s what happens:

• When you first visit the website, click “Create my logo.”

• This brings you to a new page where you can enter your business’s name and slogan if you have one.

• On the next page, you can enter all the keywords that describe your brand. For instance, if you’re a photographer, you could type in “photography,” “camera,” or “nature.”

• You can even choose a color palette or color scheme you’d like to include in your logo’s design!

• Finally, it’ll generate logos for you to scroll through, save for later or purchase.

• If you’d like, you can even edit the pre-made options to fit them perfectly to your style.

The logos created by Brandmark aren’t free, but they’re pretty reasonably priced and look very professional.

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a professional-grade program that offers a ton of options for creating a stamp or logo to use as your watermark. It’s also vector-based, meaning your image will never lose its quality from scaling the size up or down.

Adobe Illustrator is another paid option, available as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite. When you subscribe to Creative Cloud, you’ll gain access to Illustrator, as well as several other Adobe programs:

• Photoshop
• InDesign
• Premiere Pro
• XD
• Acrobat DC

If you’re a photographer who already subscribes to Creative Cloud to use Photoshop, Adobe’s image editing program, you likely already have access to Illustrator! One of the benefits of Creative Cloud is that it offers a one-week free trial to let you decide how you like it before you subscribe.

If you’re creatively challenged when it comes to logo design, you might even want to try hiring a graphic designer to design a watermark for you!

Hire a Graphic Designer to Create Your Watermark

While it may seem gratuitous to hire someone to create your brand’s watermark, having a graphic designer on-hand can be beneficial in the long run. This is especially true if you don’t have a great handle on digital art or will have future graphic design needs.

If you want to hire a designer, the first thing you’ll need to decide is whether you’d like to bring one on as part of your permanent team or hire a freelancer to do the work. There are pros and cons to each approach, as noted here:

Hiring In-House

If your brand is big enough and already includes a team of employees, or if you’ll have a recurring need for a graphic designer, it might make the most sense to hire a permanent employee and make their first task to design your watermark.

On the plus side, this will mean you have someone who is always available when you need them and is very familiar with your brand. This will allow them to design the best possible graphics for your business.

However, it will also mean another employee to pay, even when you don’t have any graphic design needs. Because of this, hiring a permanent in-house graphic designer isn’t usually the best option for those just starting out or businesses that don’t have a constant stream of graphic design needs.

Hiring a Freelancer

If hiring an in-house digital artist or graphic designer doesn’t make sense for your business, or if you’d like your watermark design to be a one-off project, hiring a freelancer is probably the better option.

This is a more flexible option, as freelancers are typically paid from project-to-project and don’t require a traditional salary.

On the downside, you’ll have to spend time explaining your brand identity to them, and if you ever need to hire them for another project, there’s no guarantee they’ll be available to do the work in the timeframe you need it done in! Finding the best-quality freelancers can also take a great deal of time and effort, as you need to know:

• What they can do
• Where to look
• What to look for
• What to avoid

What to Expect from a Graphic Designer

The first thing to remember is that a graphic designer is there to create graphics for your business. You shouldn’t expect them to come up with an entire creative identity for your brand, and they’ll need a good amount of guidance to achieve the goals you set. You tell them your vision, and they’ll bring it to life. Some of the guidance they’ll need includes:

• What you need to be designed
• The color palette/fonts you’d like used
• The feel you’re going for
• Information on your target audience and established brand identity

Where to Find Freelance Designers

There are a few places you can look to find freelance designers available for hire. These include:

• Freelancing websites
• Local guides
• Artist portfolio websites

Freelancing Websites

Some of the best freelancing websites to find graphic designers on are:

• 99designs
• Fiverr
• Upwork

99designs is a hiring platform specifically meant for artists and designers. You can browse through the portfolios of various artists or create a “design contest” where designers compete to “win” your project!

With a design contest, you’ll browse through different designs submitted by artists and choose which you like the best. Then, you can work with the chosen winner to design your brand’s logo to use as a watermark.

Websites like Fiverr and Upwork, on the other hand, offer freelancers with a variety of specialties. It may be harder to find graphic designers on platforms like these, but they’re out there if you look hard enough!

These websites usually offer payment protection as well, meaning payment will be required upfront. However, the money you put in will be held by the website until you personally approve the project. Then, it’ll be released to the seller. This is a huge advantage of using freelancing websites, as it protects both parties from fraud.

Local Guides

Finding a freelancer through local guides or the recommendations of fellow business owners is probably the hardest way to hire a freelancer, but you might prefer to work with someone who already has a reputation in your community. Some ways to find a local designer include:

• Taking out an ad on a local website or in the local paper
• Asking for recommendations at your local Chamber of Commerce
• Browsing through websites like Yelp
• Asking others in the community if they’ve worked with local designers in the past

Art Portfolio Websites

There are a ton of websites out there that allow you to browse through different artists’ portfolios. If you’re able to find a graphic designer that you identify with on these sites, you can contact them to see if they’d be willing to create a watermark for your brand!

Some of the best websites for browsing art portfolios include:

• Behance
• Dribbble
• DeviantArt

Using these types of websites is different from the traditional options because they’re not hiring platforms and require you to reach out to artists yourself. As such, they also don’t offer the payment protection that other websites do. However, this may be your best option at finding the perfect graphic designer for your brand.

How to Choose the Right Designer for Your Watermark

The first step in choosing the right designer is always to view their portfolio and relevant samples. This gives you insight into their typical style, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.

You might also want to look into what kind of companies they’ve worked with before. For example, if you typically do nature photography, it might be best to work with someone with experience in the field. They’ll usually understand more of what exactly you’re looking for.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when hiring graphic designers is cutting corners in terms of payment.

The last thing you want is a subpar, unprofessional looking watermark on your photos, as this will reflect negatively on your business. It’s always better to pay more for a better design.

Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring a Designer

As with everything, there are some definite red flags to avoid when choosing a graphic designer to create your watermark. These include:

• Large gaps in communication
• No availability of references or samples
• Requests for the entire payment upfront

While it is typical for a designer to request partial payment upfront as a deposit, you shouldn’t send the entire amount before approving the final product. This keeps your investment safe.

When working with a freelancer, always make sure you have a contract in place to avoid miscommunications and other problems down the line.

Some freelancing websites, including 99designs and Upwork, have a contract built-in as part of the hiring process. If no contract is drawn up by the platform, however, you’ll have to create one yourself. Make sure to include the following information in your contract:

• A timeline for the project
• All relevant deadlines
• Pricing terms and payment structure
• Copyright information
• Any confidentiality agreements you need
• How many revisions are included in the agreed-upon price

Adding Your Watermark to Your Work

Now that you or the graphic designer you’re working with has created your watermark, it’s time to actually add it to your photos, text, or artwork! Here, we’ll cover doing so in two different programs: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.

How to Add a Watermark in Photoshop

Photoshop is one of the most popular editing applications for photographers. It’s relatively easy to add a watermark to your photos using it but does require quite a few steps before you’re able to do so. Here’s how to get started:

• Start by creating a custom brush of your watermark. To do this, you’ll first create a new document with a white background.

• If you need to scale your image, try to stick to scaling down rather than scaling up. Although some programs won’t cause images to lose quality as they’re scaled up, most will.

• Import the logo or stamp you’ll be using as your watermark onto the new document. If you’re just using a text watermark, simply type out the text you’d like for your watermark! Then, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset and name your custom brush.

• Now, the document will function just the same as any other brush! You can change the color, size, and opacity.

Use this custom brush to place your watermark wherever you’d like on your image. Make sure your placement is consistent across all of your work for a more professional feel.

How to Add a Watermark in Lightroom

Lightroom is another popular option for photographers and artists to edit and organize their work. It allows you to add a watermark to multiple images at once, so it’s typically a better option for photographers who edit in large batches. With Lightroom, you’ll need to create watermark “presets,” which can be either text or a graphic added to a:

• .JPG file
• .PSD file
• .TIFF file

Step-by-Step for Adding a Text Watermark

Here’s how to create and add a text watermark to your images:

• Once you’re done editing a photo or batch of photos, click “Export.” Then, click the “Watermark” checkbox near the bottom of the Export window.
• From the menu, choose “Edit Watermarks.” This will open a new window.
• In this new window, you’ll see a text box in the lower-left corner. Just enter the text you’d like to use as a watermark and choose the:
• Font
  • Alignment
  • Text color
• Then, click “Save” and name the preset. In the future, this preset will be added to the options in the “Watermark” drop-down menu.

Step-by-Step for Adding a Graphic Stamp or Logo

The process for adding a graphic stamp or logo watermark in Lightroom is similar. Here’s how to do it:

• You’ll still open the “Export” window and select “Edit Watermarks” from the drop-down menu. This time, however, you’ll select “Graphic” in the top right corner of the Editing menu.

• Locate the logo or stamp on your computer, and cycle through the options to customize the watermark’s:

• Opacity
  • Positioning
  • Size

• Once you’ve finished, click “Save” and name your preset! Again, it’ll now be available as an option in the drop-down menu.

Unlike Photoshop, Lightroom doesn’t let you choose the exact location on the image where your watermark will be placed. However, it is a better option if you need to export multiple images with watermarks at once. The placement, size, and opacity will be the same on each.

Pros and Cons of Watermarking Your Images

There are lots of arguments for using watermarks, but there are also quite a few against using them! Whether you’d like to use a watermark on your images or not is 100% up to you, but it helps to understand the advantages and disadvantages before making a final decision.

The Case for Using Watermarks

As previously noted, the main purpose of watermarking is to protect your work from unauthorized duplication and copyright infringement. Many times, photographers will send “proof” images to clients before accepting payment for prints, so they can decide which and how many prints they’d like to purchase. Here’s why a watermark helps:

• Prevent unauthorized or unpaid use of your work. Using a watermark on proof images prevents clients from declining to buy prints from you and keeping the proof images to print themselves without paying.

• Branding. A watermark can also be used as an excellent branding strategy. If people see your watermarked images online and like them, the addition of your personal or brand name makes it easy for them to contact you for prints or licensing.

• Legal protection. Watermarking can also offer you legal protection. If someone removes your watermark and unlawfully duplicates or uses your image, you potentially have a case for copyright infringement! With the proper litigation, you might even be awarded compensation from the guilty party.

The Case Against Watermarking

The main argument you’ll hear against watermarking is that if people want to steal your photos, they’ll do it whether it’s watermarked or not. There are many programs and websites that offer to remove watermarks from images, and unless it’s very large and obvious, they’ll usually succeed!

The solution to the above problem would be to use a larger watermark, but many people argue that this creates an eyesore and detracts from the image’s value.

People might find large, intrusive watermarks too distracting, which may take away from their incentive to look further into your work.

Typically, it’ll be individual people, not companies, who use your images without your authorization. This is incredibly common on websites like Tumblr and Pinterest, but anti-watermarking advocates argue that people usually link to your work on these websites anyway. You’ll usually still get credit for your work without ruining your photo’s appeal.

The Bottom Line

Using a watermark is one of the best ways to prevent any problems with the unauthorized use of your images online. If you do use a watermark, make sure it is:

• Properly branded
• Professional looking
• Placed in a way that’s not too easy to remove but also not too distracting

The decision of whether or not to use a watermark is up to you and what you’re most comfortable doing.

Coming up with a unique logo for a business or organization can be challenging, especially with all the logos currently in use. If you find one with general elements or graphics that you like, you may be wondering if you can alter it slightly for your own use. 

A logo may be changed and used as long as the original is not copyrighted, the changes are significant enough to no longer hold the “essence” of the original logo, and the new logo will not be confused with the original.

If possible, we recommend using a logo creator to start from copyright/trademark free templates to create your own logo from scratch. This helps avoid any confusion down the road should your brand grow quickly.

Coming up with a unique logo will ultimately help to differentiate yourself from other brands. Keep reading to find out more about altering logos and pertinent information about copyright law.

Can I Change a Logo and Use It?

There are many moving pieces at play when trying to change a logo for your own use. To legally change a logo and use it, you’ll first want to look at the current registration of the logo. If the logo is trademarked, it can still be modified and used as long as the changes are significant enough to avoid any brand confusion or recognition.

If a logo is copyrighted, it cannot be changed and used legally. Copyrights protect logos that have specific creative or artistic elements as intellectual property (Source: Investopedia). Many logos are not protected under copyrights and can still be altered. This is especially true for simpler logos that do not have creative art incorporated.

You should always check if there are any registered trademarks or copyrights before attempting changes to a logo. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has a database where you can search for a specific company’s trademark registration and compare companies to your trademarks and services (Source: USPTO).

You should be careful when changing a logo and using it to ensure that you are not infringing on any trademarks or copyrights to images and artwork. Companies may take legal action, which can be time consuming and expensive.

Standards for Changing Logos and Using Them

There are no set standards for how much a logo needs to be changed for you to legally use it. This means no percentage or specific requirements detail what needs to be changed either.

If you want to change a logo and use it, you will need to consider whether the following conditions are satisfied:  

• No confusion with the original brand or owner: Avoiding confusion between the original logo and your logo is the biggest factor in determining if you can use the changed logo. It should be different enough that there is no way that a reasonable person or customer would confuse your brand with the original logo. Changes to colors, text, font, and other key elements will help to differentiate the two.
• Logo republication: There should be enough alterations made to a logo that it would need to be registered with the USPTO as a new trademark and satisfy their standards (Source: Small Business Chronicle). This would ensure that the new logo will not infringe upon any trademarks placed on the original logo.
• Different business sector or geographical location: The globalized nature of the marketplace can make these standards more obsolete than previously and may need to be doublechecked with a lawyer in your specific state.

Similar logos are typically not a problem if you operate in an entirely different industry or geographical location. For famous brands, this does not always apply, as anti-dilution laws protect large brands from any small company that could tarnish or distract (Source: Digital Media Law). This will help to solidify the fact that there is no confusion between logos and brands.

Enforcing Trademark Infringements on Changed Logos

Even if you do not change a logo substantially, the company that owns the logo you changed will have to press legal action to stop you from using their logo. The organization or individual will often send a cease and desist letter as a warning to stop using their logo or legal action will follow (Source: LegalZoom).

Companies can press legal action as a first step if they feel that there has been harm caused to their brand due to your changed logo. This could result in monetary damages and sizeable legal fees. 

If you are using a famous logo and changing it, you will often be at a much greater risk of trademark infringement and being faced with legal action. Trademark dilution can blur or tarnish the public’s impressions of a brand when others exist with similar logos (Source: Cornell Law). Famous brands have the capital to fight these cases more effectively than small businesses. 

We do not recommend using any elements of a famous logo for commercial use.

Can You Change A Logo Without Permission?

If you adhere to the guidelines mentioned throughout this article, you do not need permission to change a logo and use it as your own. Whether or not you need permission will depend on your intended use and the degree to which you make changes.

These are the situations in which you do not need permission to change a logo:

• Substantial changes are made to the logo: This assumes that you have changed the logo to such a degree that there is no confusion or brand recognition of the original company. The key stipulation is that you modify it “enough” to legally use it.
• Fair use: Protected under free speech protections in the U.S. Constitution, logos can be modified and used for informational and editorial purposes or parody and satire (Source: American Bar Association). If changed and used, “fair use” is a defense that can be used in court if a lawsuit is filed. This can sometimes be used for commercial sales, such as a parody t-shirt of a brand.

If you are not substantially changing the logo, it is always safest to ask for permission to avoid potentially expensive consequences.

These are the situations in which you do need permission to change a logo:

• Small changes to a logo: If you want to make small changes and use a logo, you will need to seek permission from the owner of the original logo. This will give you a clear answer and ensure that you can use the logo without any trademark or copyright infringement.
• Changing a famous logo: Unless used for informational or satirical purposes, you should always ask to use a famous logo. It can be difficult to obtain this permission, but they are often the companies that will crack down on these types of infringements.

If you are only changing a logo slightly and want permission, it should not be for commercial use unless it is a parody. This will often drive sales based on the original logo’s brand and likeness, especially if it is a recognizable brand.

Final Thoughts

If you do choose to change and use a logo, make sure that you have added enough of your own original design to avoid confusion with the original logo. This will help to ensure that you don’t run into trademark infringements. It is in your best interest to do your research on the trademarks or copyrights that the original logo holds and proceed with caution.

Existing logos can help to inspire your logo design or serve other purposes for the communication of information and satire. Just make sure that any time you do change and use a logo, you are doing so with the proper protocol given the specific use.

It’s a graphic designer’s worst fear: you spend hours creating a stunning logo for a client, only to have them run off with the design before paying a dime. If someone is using your logo without permission, either due to nonpayment or because your agreement kept the rights with you, it can be disheartening, to say the least. But is there anything you can really do about it?

If someone is using your logo without your permission, there are several steps you can take to resolve the issue, including registering the logo, double-checking ownership, filing a cease-and-desist or trademark violation letter, or taking legal action.

Fighting a battle over a stolen logo design is costly and time-consuming, but it can be done. Below, we’ll break down the steps required to take action, as well as some suggestions for how to avoid a similar situation in the future.

Can You Sue Someone for Using Your Logo?

While you can sue someone for using a logo that you have legal rights to, it’s a long, stressful (not to mention expensive) process, so if you can settle the matter out of court, that’s usually ideal.

That being said, below are the steps to take if you find out that someone’s using your logo without your permission:

Make Sure You Own the Logo

We know what you’re probably thinking: “Of course, I own the logo, or I wouldn’t be accusing someone of using it without my permission.” But bear with us.

The very first thing you should do if you find out that someone is using your logo without your permission is to double-check your contract and make sure that you definitely have the rights to it.

After all, nothing would be more embarrassing than starting a fight about the theft of your creation if it turns out that it’s not really yours after all. In most cases, you’re going to naturally want to start with the contract.

Do You Have a Signed Contract?

You did have your client sign a contract before beginning work on the logo, didn’t you? And you definitely read anything they may have had you sign, right? Good.

Because, as you doubtlessly already know, it’s super important for freelance graphic designers (and freelancers of all kinds, really) to have ironclad contracts for any and all projects they agree to work on. (Yes, this includes favors for friends. Yes, this includes that nice little old lady who runs the cat cafe down the street.)

We’ll get into the importance of contracts a bit later, as well as how to go about creating a contract for your freelance graphic design business. But, of course, that won’t do much good for your current situation if a client without an agreement has run off with your work.

If you do have a signed contract belonging to either you or the client, take a closer look at it.

Does Your Contract Specify Who Has the Rights?

Now, not all contracts specify who owns the rights of work created, but many do. If, by the way, you currently use an arrangement that doesn’t include a section about rights and licensing, you might want to add that in.

Many artists don’t realize how much they can profit from rights and licensing if they play their cards right, and they end up selling themselves short, frankly.

For the most part, artists generally maintain all the rights for anything they create for a client unless they sign something stating otherwise. The most common scenarios are:

• Signing away the rights ultimately, so the client owns them in an unlimited capacity
• Licensing the rights for limited periods or only in certain capacities

“Work for hire” contracts also give full rights to the client in most cases.

If you haven’t signed anything that would give the client the rights or have their signature on a legal document that proves the opposite, you might have a case. Press on.

Did the Client Pay You?

Here’s another place where a contract may come in handy: payment (or lack thereof). Say you and a client have a contract stating that they’ll own any and all rights to the logo that you create for them. It also states that they must pay half upfront and half upon delivery. You deliver the goods on time, and poof, the client disappears into the night.

Well, guess what? They didn’t fulfill their end of the contract, so that means that the rights to that logo are still yours. If you find that they’re using it without your permission (and without paying for it), then you have just cause to pursue legal action.

Freelancers take a bit of a gamble with every new client they work with since it’s so easy for a shady client to disappear into the night without paying you for your time and energy. The freelance artist’s strongest ally in the fight for security is a well-crafted contract.

A signed contract stating that the client has agreed to pay you money is undeniable proof that you own the logo’s rights if that final payment hasn’t been made.

See What the Logo is Being Used For

If someone is using your logo without your permission and it’s clearly for normal business purposes, they’re clearly in the wrong. But what if they’re not using it in a commercial application and aren’t necessarily profiting from it?

Believe it or not, there are times when people can use your work—even if it’s copyrighted, trademarked, and everything else under the sun—as long as they’re using it in a way that’s consistent with fair use law.

What falls under the umbrella of fair use? Well, these are the main things, according to Nolo’s legal encyclopedia.

Informational Use

If someone is writing an informational piece or filming a documentary or news story about your logo, they’re allowed to use a picture of it. This makes sense since they’re not claiming that it’s theirs; they’re just using it for descriptive purposes.

Parody

In many cases, trademarked works like logos can be used freely for works of parody and commentary. Again, this is because the artists making the parody aren’t attempting to claim the symbol as their own, and no reasonable audience would think that that was the case.

Comparison (Usually)

In many cases, logos can be used for comparison purposes, as long as:

• The logo isn’t altered in any way, especially in a derogatory manner
• The information provided in whatever the logo is being compared in is probably accurate

For the most part, fair use covers instances in which it can’t reasonably be proven that a company is attempting to imitate a logo (or other trademarked item) or pass it off as their own.

Consult a Lawyer

As you probably guessed, if you’re confident that someone is using your logo without your permission and not in a way that falls under fair use laws, your best bet is to consult with a lawyer about your next steps.

A good lawyer will know inside and out the laws relating to:

• Intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks, etc.)
• Fair use
• Freelance artist rights

Find a lawyer who specializes in such matters—if you can, get a recommendation from other graphic designers you trust. The more experience an attorney has with intellectual property law and fighting for independent artists, the more smoothly the process will go for you.

It’s generally a good idea, by the way, not to contact the person who’s using your logo without your permission directly, instead of going through your lawyer. This way, everything has a paper trail, and you won’t make any missteps that may cost you later.

When you first consult the attorney, they should be able to give you a good idea of:

• All fees associated with the process
• An idea of the total cost based on their rates and the case’s complexity
• The experience they have with similar situations
• Your options (suing is only one way to handle it)

Now, keep in mind that it’s not necessarily reasonable to expect a lawyer to be able to give you an exact figure and timeline because so much of it depends on how the other party handles it.

The other party might stop using the logo with the first cease and desist letter or get themselves a team of powerful attorneys who want to fight with everything they have and draw it out for ages, costing you time and money.

Register the Logo

One of the first things a lawyer will probably advise you to do is register your logo, so there’s absolutely no question about who the owner is.

The United States Trademark and Patent Office’s website has trademark basics and the process involved, but your lawyer should be able to walk you through it.

Even if you own the rights to a logo, if you’re going to be fighting about it in a legal capacity, getting it registered will give you that much more of an argument.

Send a Trademark Violation Letter

Most people are familiar with cease-and-desist letters or have at least heard of them. But not so many people know about the cease-and-desist letter’s friendlier cousin, the trademark violation letter.

Basically, a trademark violation letter lets the other party know that they’re violating trademark rights, so they can’t claim that they were unaware of the violation if they use it in the future. On the other hand, a cease-and desist letter threatens them with legal action for already having used it.

Talk to your lawyer about which might be a better option for your particular case.

File a Cease-and-Desist Letter

Most likely, the first thing your lawyer will want to do is file a cease-and-desist letter, which, as you might have already guessed, basically just informs the other party that they’re committing intellectual property theft and details exactly how that is.

Cease-and-desist letters usually ask that the other party do one of these two things:

• Stop using the property (logo)
• Pay the artist for licensing rights

Alternatively, they can ask that the artist gets the credit for the logo, but since you were hired to create the work, you’re most likely interested in payment rather than in recognition alone.

Depending on the person or business using your logo, a cease-and-desist letter might be all it takes to get them to stop.

If, on the other hand, you’re up against a big corporation, this step might be just the beginning of a very long legal battle. An independent artist from Los Angeles, Tuesday Bessen, found this out the hard way during an expensive battle with Zara, who used her designs without permission.

Seek Alternative Dispute Resolution

If sending a cease-and-desist letter doesn’t solve your problem, but you really want to avoid the hassle and expense of a lawsuit, you might want to consider ADR, or Alternative Dispute Resolution. ADR basically involves using a neutral mediator to help the two parties reach a resolution without taking the case to court.

While this can be an efficient option for solving issues of intellectual property theft, the only caveat is that both parties must agree to it for it to work. If the other party isn’t willing to work with you after receiving your cease-and-desist letter, it might be a sign that they’re not willing to play nice.

On the other hand, they may genuinely believe that they’re in the right and are just as eager as you are to quickly resolve the matter.

Your lawyer will best be able to advise you on how to proceed with alternative dispute resolution if that’s the option you’re most interested in pursuing.

Take Legal Action

If alternative dispute resolution doesn’t appeal to you or the other party doesn’t agree to it, your next step will probably be to take legal action to get the results you want; this will involve getting the court involved, which is a costly and time-consuming affair.

If successful, you might receive:

• An injunction to stop the other person from using your logo in the future
• Payment of what they owe you (licensing fees, unpaid contract)
• Lawyers’ fees

Now, keep in mind that even if you win the case, complete with lawyers’ fees and all, lawsuits are expensive in themselves, plus the time you’ll spend dealing with it instead of making money on other projects.

Plus, there’s no guarantee that the other party will pay you right away, even if the court decides in your favor. That can mean more fighting just to get your settlement.

Be Persistent

It’s easy to feel like the little guy up against a big, scary entity if someone—especially a large corporation—has stolen your work.

But keep in mind that a lot of the time, unreputable companies do that kind of thing because they know they can get away with it and that an independent graphic designer or other freelance artist isn’t in a position to fight back.

So if you really don’t want to let it go, resolve to stay in the fight for the long run and do all you can to get what’s right. It will take a ton of work (not to mention expense), but remember that you’re fighting for all the other independent artists out there.

Know When to Walk Away

That’s right; we’re going to contradict the previous section completely. And that’s because every situation is different, and every graphic designer’s life is different.

Maybe you’re a single parent fighting to make ends meet while taking care of your kids and can’t afford an expensive lawsuit right now. Perhaps you’re dealing with other adversity or financial hardship and just don’t have the mental capacity to deal with the stress of it.

If you and your lawyer decide that it’s going to be more trouble than it’s worth, there’s no harm in walking away, either. Chalk it up to a lesson learned, and focus on building relationships with better clients in the future.

How to Prevent It from Happening Again

It would be fantastic if there were a 100% foolproof way to keep people from using your designs without your permission, but that’s just not possible.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

• Put it all in the contract: this includes rights, payments, etc. Have a lawyer double-check it.
• Vet all new clients: see if their online footprint turns up anything shady, and ask mutual acquaintances about them.
• Trust your gut: if something feels off about a client, it’s better to miss out on potential money than to sign a contract with someone who’s going to try and steal your designs.

These simple things will help keep you out of harm’s way when it comes to intellectual property theft concerning logos and any other designs you create.

Final Thoughts

It’s nowhere near fair that the artist is the one who’s stuck jumping through hoops and shelling out a ton of cash because someone else has decided to steal their creation, but that’s, unfortunately, the world we live in. However, keeping a good lawyer on file and making sure to have all clients sign contracts before you do any work for them will go a long way towards protecting you in the future.

Hiding messages in logos is a great way to expand the iconography, meaning, and impact of a brand. However, it can be difficult to pull off effectively. If the message is too obvious, it may reduce the impact of the logo. If it is too subtle, it serves no purpose. Luckily, there are plenty of examples to look toward for inspiration and tips for beautifully hiding a hidden message.

To insert a hidden message in logos, first decide what the message will be. It should be a subtle, secondary mark that compliments the logo as a whole. Utilize negative space, color, and typography to make the hidden component blend in. Use famous logos with hidden messages for inspiration.

We recommend using a logo template to get the ball rolling. This will give you design inspiration, and allow you to choose a template with the opportunity for a hidden message. Here are our top logo template recommendations.

The rules are fairly basic; a large part of any good hidden message in a logo is proper execution. Finding the balance of all the different parts and ways to hide a logo is the main challenge.

How To Put Hidden Messages In Logos

Putting hidden messages in logos should be carefully considered and planned before executing. Otherwise, the result may be unclear, resulting in a useless hidden message that also serves as a detriment toward the logo as a whole. Effectively using alternative space, colors, typography, and symbols is essential for putting hidden messages in logos.

While exploring ways to place a hidden message in a logo, be sure to not lose sight of the logo as a whole. Good design should always come first, for all parts.

If trying to place a hidden message in a logo is not working, take a step back and analyze the whole piece to get a hint about why. Do not be afraid to constantly iterate on ideas until you land on one you are happy with.

Put Good Logo Design First

It is imperative to not destroy the logo or business identification aspect of a brand while including a hidden message. This becomes even more essential if the logo is a redesign; people will have gotten used to the old logo, and too much of a shock will result in a failing rebrand.

Define the purpose of the logo as a whole, then define the purpose of the hidden message. There are plenty of additional steps to explore for both of these aspects, but it is important to at least set a baseline before moving on. Largely, defining these aspects comes down to understanding the business. The next section goes over this in more detail.

After that is complete, employ good design principles while creating the logo. Keep the logo distinct, legible, and effective. For more tips on general logo design, you can find more here. Thinking of these various tips while incorporating the hidden message will be essential in making it good.

Utilize Negative Space When Possible

Negative space is essential for creating logos that stand out and breath. Essentially, negative space is the area between distinct areas of a design. Popular examples include the area between Apple’s apple and leaf in their logo or the blank space of the “P” in Pinterest’s logo. Any vacant space between two design elements is considered negative space.

It may be helpful to think of negative space as only being affected by the design elements around it; when you manipulate the shapes, you are also affecting the empty area. This can prove incredibly useful for hidden messages, as this negative space can be shaped into a hidden symbol or word.

A Few Examples

Let’s create a quick example. If you are producing a logo for an ice cream company based in Louisiana, it may be possible to hide the shape of Louisiana in the negative space between letters and the cone. Of course, this is still a highly creative process – it is important not to force the negative space to be something it cannot. Otherwise, it ceases to be negative space and the design will become too busy. 

For a real world example, look toward Yoga Australia’s logo. The main logo is a woman performing a yoga pose, the predominant design. Hidden within the pose, however, her body creates an outline of Australia.

Negative space can also be utilized in between letters when creating a wordmark – it is not just an aspect of symbolic logos. When in between letters, simpler messages are better as there is less space overall to work with.

Arrows, circles, triangles, etc. all work best. When using negative space to include your hidden message, it is a good reminder that the hidden message must be secondary to other parts of the logo.

Optimize Color Usage

Switching between colors, introducing new ones, or using the changes between them are great ways to introduce a hidden message in a logo.

When colors are used effectively, they can create illusions and make negative space easier to notice. In this way, optimized color usage is a way to improve the look of a logo as a whole, or compliment a hidden message that already has plans to exist.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to use a logo to include a hidden message, as well. Introducing a rainbow color scheme to a subtle part of a brand will suggest a different message than keeping the whole logo black, for instance.

While these are not direct hidden messages, they speak to the power of color. You can find more information on color theory as it relates to logos and their hidden components here.

Especially when rebranding a logo to include a hidden message, explore previous uses of color from the brand or similar companies to ensure that you are keeping the logo noticeable while also being unique. For instance, if a company is heavily focused on nature or recycling, introducing green into the logo is likely a good choice.

If the logo has multiple colors, it makes the negative space between them much more powerful. Areas where color is missing can easily be shaped into hidden messages, often by changing just a few lines or aspects.

When it comes to using color for hidden messaging, it requires a holistic view of the logo. Most often, inserting a hidden message works best due to the absence of color – making color just as important to the entire design.

Explore Typography And Symbols

Exploring options with typography and special symbols in your logo is one of the best and most unique ways to introduce hidden messaging.

Ultimately, the sky is the limit with this method; unlike negative space and color, utilizing typography to create a hidden message allows direct control over what is happening without necessarily influencing other parts of the design.

The ways to use typography in hidden messaging are endless, from switching fonts to cutting letters. Even something as simple as splitting an “L” into two separate lines can end up having hidden messaging, or creating a face out of the parts, as LG does.

Other common examples of using typography to create hidden messaging often include utilizing “O”’s as eyes, switching font so that it looks like it could also be something else, or using typography that meshes seamlessly into the rest of the design.

It is easy to fall into the trap of cliches when incorporating hidden messaging through typography, so be sure to continue following the rules of good design. Keep everything legible, effective, and distinct. Otherwise, the hidden message may become lost among the other elements.

Various symbols can also be used for hidden messaging where typography may fail or not make sense. Symbols, in this context, are any design element that is not directly related to font, color, or negative space. For instance, incorporating a smiling face or arrow into your design would be using a symbol. Often, these can be used to include a hidden message.

Utilizing symbols for hidden messaging works exceptionally well for logos where the wordmark is not as important as the logo, or pieces that use artistic lines. The more abstract the symbol, generally speaking, the easier it is to include hidden messages.

Of course, this does not mean that all hidden message logos must be abstract; Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world, includes an arrow that unifies the word Amazon while stretching from the letters “A” to “Z” – because the store stocks everything.

There are a plethora of examples of hidden messages through additional symbols or modified typography. It is likely the most popular way to include hidden messages in logos, but certainly not the only way. It is also a dangerous habit to get into while early in a design career; it is easy to go overboard with symbols and destroy the overall look of the logo.

When possible, it is best to incorporate symbols that also complement the main purpose of the logo instead of just focusing on the hidden message.

Understand The Business And What The Hidden Message Is For

Before starting any design work on the logo, it is essential to define some aspects of the business and point of the logo. The main purpose of a logo is, generally speaking, to be easily identifiable; customers should be able to look at a logo and know it relates to that specific business. The presence of a hidden message should not interfere with this at all.

In order to successfully hide a hidden message in a logo, the main message of the logo must be defined first, then the hidden one. Essentially, a hidden aspect of any logo simply exists to provide an additional point – one that ideally accentuates the first one.

Aim to know as much as possible about the business before starting to set yourself up for design success.

Define What The Business Is About

Learning more about a business may seem unnecessary, but preliminary research may end up being the most important part of the process. Whether designing a logo for an entirely new business or reworking an old one, there are some essential questions to ask that will make the process of inserting a hidden message easier.

First, figure out what the business wants the logo to represent. Do they want to be kid friendly? Elegant? Business-oriented? There are a plethora of options here, and narrowing it down is vital to producing good work later.

Getting some specific information will help with this if the client does not have a clear vision. Asking questions such as:

• Who is the primary customer?
• Has market research been done?
• What brands do you see as most similar to yours?
• What competition exists?
• What logos do you like?

Will help make the process much easier. Ultimately, the point of these questions is to figure out the main message that the logo is attempting to give off. Once you have that defined, you can begin work on the second message, as well as on actual design work for the wordmark and logo.

Well-established businesses likely have other material that you will want to incorporate or change as well. Which you choose will depend on whether the logo design is part of a whole rebranding package or a purely logo refresh.

Overall, establishing a secondary message is much easier when things are consistent. That way, the notable change where the hidden message enters is clearer.

Figure Out What The Hidden Message Wants To Say

After the main message of the logo has been established, or at least thought out a bit, the process of figuring out what the hidden message should be can begin. This process is largely similar to the ideation process of establishing the main message, with a few key differences.

Some of the key differences are:

1. The hidden message should complement or reinforce the main message
2. The hidden message should have a good reason to exist and be part of the logo

Keeping these tips in mind will allow for the previously mentioned techniques to actually be effective. Otherwise, the hidden message may fall flat and end up hurting the logo more than it helps it.

Compliment or Reinforce The Main Message

This key difference is likely the most important. It is wise to consider a hierarchy of importance when it comes to logo messages. People tend to focus very little time on logos; they want to be able to quickly look at one, recognize the brand, and move on.

During the first look at a logo, the observer should only notice one message. That being, the main message. This is true for a number of reasons, but the main one is that people do not want to be confused or have to spend extra time on something like this. Ultimately, when people look at the logo a second, third, or even fiftieth time, they should notice the hidden message.

Think of popular logos that have hidden messages, such as Amazon or FedEx. It is likely that you did not notice the hidden message of these logos until much later – after you easily recognized and identified the logo with that brand. Making the hidden message too obvious will alter people’s perception and make it more difficult for the initial recognition to occur.

Toward this goal, it is a good idea to choose a hidden message that helps with the main message of the logo. Consider, for instance, designing a logo for a beauty company. The company wants to feel sophisticated and well-established. They have been around for a few decades and want to incorporate that into the logo, but it should not be the focus.

With that example, the dichotomy between the main message and the secondary message is clear. Using this information, incorporating the date, silhouette of their first building, original colors of their first logo, or any of the above can easily be done as a hidden message. It complements, rather than distracts from, their main message. 

Having A Good Reason For A Hidden Message

Although it may seem like a good idea for every logo to include a hidden message somewhere in it, it is often not the best-case scenario. The fact is, very few people spend time analyzing and constantly looking at one logo.

Especially for small businesses where their logo needs to stand out more than most, the inclusion of a hidden message may detract from the logo’s effectiveness.

Logos are small and need to be legible quickly; if a hidden message interferes with that, it should be cut. They really cannot store an incredible amount of information. However, a good logo will call customers in, who then become interested in the brand. At that point, they can learn more about all the other reasons to support the brand.

Consider, for instance, designing a logo for an old-time popcorn company. Let’s say the company was established by the son of one of America’s first presidents. While that is an interesting fact that may draw in extra customers, it is probably not the best decision to include an homage to that in the logo. It likely does not mesh well with the other message of the logo and could make things confusing.

However, if that same popcorn company’s logo is effective at drawing customers in, marketing material or their website can then dive into the company’s history and mention that fact. Be critical in determining whether or not to include a hidden message in your logo, and only include the best.

Placeit is a fantastic branding and design website made to allow anyone to create beautiful designs quickly. It has grown to include an enormous library of options for almost any creative or internet user comprising both free and premium assets. The number of features on the site can be staggering, and first-time users may be confused about some options.

Placeit uses a subscription pricing model or the ability to purchase individual designs. It hosts templates on a wide variety of subjects ranging from logos to videos to design mockups. There are some fantastic alternatives available out there, but Placeit has the most extensive easy-to-navigate library.

This review will cover a significant portion of the website and its options so that users can make an informed decision about what Placeit offers them. For more details about pricing, features, and alternatives, keep on reading.

Pricing

Placeit offers a few different pricing models so that users can make the best choice for what they need. Placeit offers a wide selection of free templates and assets that can be used for any purpose, but most of the site includes paid content. These free templates and mockups are perfect for learning how the site works and experimenting with various styles before moving on to paid services.

When you are ready to take the next step, Placeit offers payment for templates through two different models. The subscription model is the most popular and, generally speaking, the best deal. Placeit also allows for the purchase of individual designs if you only need one or two cheaper purchases.

Reading through the details on pricing and the differences is essential before dedicating to one over the other. Purchasing one higher-priced design before realizing you need more will ultimately result in more money spent, while paying for a subscription and only using one cheaper design will also be a bit of a waste.

To optimize your pricing model, try to make a list of all the graphics and designs you will need before starting. You can then easily compare the price of purchasing designs individually to the price of a subscription and make the best choice.

Paying for Individual Designs

Paying for individual designs allows for Placeit’s online template tool to craft a custom image and purchase it. There are a few key things to note about choosing this pricing route:

• You purchase the design, not the template
• Price may vary significantly between categories
• Designs are saved online through an account and downloaded to your computer

When you decide to pay for one design you need, you are purchasing the finished design you created, not access to that template. This means that if you want to make even minor changes in the future, you will have to purchase the design a second time. As such, it is best to create the final design before moving on to purchase. You can experiment with Placeit’s entire library of assets before paying anything, so take the time to get it right!

While some templates are cheaper to buy once than a monthly subscription, some are not. When you are ready to move on to payment, be sure to look at the design price and compare it to the price of either a monthly or yearly subscription.

Examples such as:

• Animated logos
• Most Mockups
• Flyers
• Business cards

Are cheaper than paying for a subscription. However, some designs, such as most normal logos, cost more to purchase than access for one month. In this case, consider why you are interested in a one-time purchase over a subscription.

Finally, a small benefit of using a one-time purchase is that Placeit will save the design to your online account forever, in addition to letting you download it. On a subscription model, designs are lost when the subscription ends. This means that, using a one-time purchase, you could theoretically come back and find the design at any point in the future. Placeit’s specific licensing terms can be found here.

Choosing the Subscription Service

Placeit also offers a subscription service, a popular option that allows full access to all of the site’s templates and assets. There are a host of benefits to choosing the subscription service, including:

• Lower overall price
• Monthly or yearly payment plans
• Unlimited use
• Access to all templates and mockups

When looking at the subscription models Placeit offers, comparing the yearly and monthly plans is essential. If you will use Placeit’s services for the majority of the year, even on an irregular basis, choosing the yearly plan will ultimately save over 50% over a monthly subscription of the same period.

A per month subscription costs $14.95, and a yearly subscription costs $89.69, or $7.47 per month. When deciding between the two, it is best to consider how long you will use Placeit’s services.

Pro Tip: Placeit also offers an additional 15% off any plan with this coupon.

People like UI designers or T-shirt designers who will create designs or mockups continuously throughout the year will benefit from choosing a yearly subscription. People who are looking to establish branding and design for a business, for example, may only need the service for one to two months at a time.

It is worth noting that, with monthly subscriptions, you can cancel immediately when you feel that your work is complete, ensuring that you will not get charged extra. Additionally, all licensing rules are the same whether you are currently paying for a Placeit subscription or not.

Unlike an individual payment, either form of subscription unlocks the entire site for unlimited use. This is especially great for people who want to test out multiple designs off-site or who need to make multiple images. Pricing and details can be found on Placeit’s website by clicking on the “Pricing” button in the top left.

Features

Placeit offers a host of different features and categories for creating designs and is one of the largest mockup libraries, offering over 50,000 templates. The massive number of options can be generally split into four categories, but there is some overlap between them. They are:

• Mockups
• Designs
• Videos
• Logos

In addition to the number of templates and availability, Placeit makes it easy to actually use their services. Editing any template is surprisingly simple and allows for a significant amount of control over the process. Plus, if you do not like a template, it is easy to backtrack and select a new one.

Any part of a template can be changed to perfectly fit your needs, so you can get a unique product that represents whatever you are making this for. Specific parts of a design change depending on what category you are designing, but some options include:

• Font
• Colors
• Imagery
• Background / background color
• Text

Using Placeit is as easy as uploading an image for a mockup or choosing from design assets to create a logo or video. They easily list recommended sizes for uploads to get high-quality mockups and provide all logos in high-quality sized files.

Due to the number of templates available and the categories they fit into, each section also includes additional features. These make using templates easier and finding the perfect one a breeze.

Easy to Use Mockups

Placeit’s mockup offerings are some of the best on the web. Simply put, a mockup is any image that a design can be placed on top of to show how the design would look in the real world. For instance, a design for a t-shirt can be created and then placed on a mockup of a woman wearing it to show how it fits and would look.

Mockups are extremely useful for many reasons. They can be used as marketing materials for sellers, showcase designs to stakeholders or clients, or test out visibility in different locations.

Due to the number of applications these have, the mockup section of Placeit is quite large. You can find the general section here, but it is often in your best interest to employ the website’s search and tags feature to narrow down results.

App Design

Showcasing an app or webpage design is one of the most common ways that mockups are used. They allow people to actually see what the app would look like on a real phone screen or other device and are essential for presenting final work and testing.

App, UI, and UX design are growing categories that are becoming more and more essential to the success of new companies. Placeit’s broad library of app design mockups is excellent for showcasing how essential the work has been, and they offer several different options.

Subcategories on Placeit that encompass app design include:

• iPhones
• iPads
• Android Devices
• App Store Screenshots
• App Videos
• iMacs
• MacBooks

Each of these categories (and more) includes multiple photographs of the phone or device in many settings, featuring some different people or objects. By including many options, specific mockups that match the tone of the app or website can be selected to showcase the project better.

Merchandise

Merchandise mockups are some of the most popular templates featured on Placeit. This is likely due to the growing number of people and businesses starting to create their own t-shirts, mugs, pins, and other apparel. Like the app design mockups, these are meant to show the merchandise being worn and used as usual.

Thanks to the popularity of this category, there is a wide variety of subcategories and mockups available. Using Placeit’s search function or category search shows a number of them. A small selection of highlights includes:

• Apparel
• Beanies
• Face Masks
• Hoodies
• Mugs
• Tote bags

Almost any physical product you can create and place a design on has a mockup on the website. Plus, the details of various mockups can be changed to better match the merchandise you are selling, including things like the background color of a shirt, mug, or tote bag.

Packaging

Package design mockups are also a feature of Placeit that allows graphic designers to test how their designs will look on real objects and boxes. This is often an essential step in both testing out your work and presenting it for review.

The number of different package mockups available is staggering and ensures that you will almost always be able to find the right image. A quick look at the category reveals just how many are out there, along with the customizability that Placeit allows for.

Covering packages from chip bags to shipping boxes, these mockups allow designers to showcase every part of the complicated package design process. Ultimately, as with any other mockup, these will help to imagine, refine, and sell the design you have created.

Ready-made Designs

Placeit’s mockup library is one of its biggest draws for designers with work to showcase, but their ready-made design templates are transformative. These templates allow anyone, regardless of their graphic design knowledge or background, to produce fantastic-looking and usable designs.

Thanks to the number of templates available, designs can be created on just about anything. Things like Facebook ads to album covers have multiple templates available to start with.

While subcategories are helpful in the design realm, this is a case where it is probably best to search for what exactly you are looking for. That way, you will avoid the paralysis of choice that can often come from having so many options in front of you. Still, using categories before the search can help even more.

Apparel

Designs for apparel such as t-shirts, hoodies, and tote bags can be crafted directly on Placeit. Thanks to the number of assets and fonts available, you can easily create a unique design that fits what you are looking for and is perfect for selling.

For example, these t-shirt templates are excellent mockups. It is possible to edit the graphic, colors, text, and font, ultimately resulting in a unique product in a process that likely takes less than 5 minutes.

The design template process can be opened up even further, however; images from Placeit’s entire asset gallery can be pulled up and placed on the shirt, or you can even upload your own. This is especially useful for people who currently have apparel that they want to update or upgrade through Placeit.

Things like apparel designs can also benefit from being placed on a mockup that is also available on Placeit, bringing the whole ecosystem of options together. This is one of the most powerful parts of Placeit: everything can quickly be done on one website.

Business Needs

Businesses often need a surprising amount of design work done, especially while the brand is establishing itself. From large categories like a logo and wordmark, to smaller details like business cards and custom stationery, Placeit has templates for every step.

Logos are generally considered their own category thanks to the number of options that Placeit has just for them, so an exploration into those will be done a bit later. Everything else, however, is covered here.

Getting the details right for any business can help drive traffic and present the image you want out to the world. Leaving things like a business card design to the end of the process may feel like the right decision, but remember that it is the first thing many people will see about your business. It must make a good impression.

Carrying over that impression to the rest of your work is also essential, and where the rest of the business designs come into play. While using these designs, remember to keep things consistent; use the same colors and font, and place your logo tastefully.

The designs for business needs are just as varied as the rest of the site and support any sized business, from a freelancer to a thousand-employee plus operation.

Tech & Social Media

Designs in the technology and software space are hugely popular, and Placeit offers a number of templates that fit in this category. Ranging from social media post design templates to dedicated designs for placement on the back of phones, there are several templates that Placeit features to help.

This category is so popular that there are even specific categories for Instagram stories and posts as well as Facebook ads. Anything that an average person or even a small business may want for their social media needs can be found here.

As the business needs designs, it is best to maintain a consistent look and feel across your social media and technology templates, which Placeit makes it easy to do. Creating your own style from the templates will help you stand out from the crowd.

Video and Animation Capabilities

Among similar websites, Placeit is relatively unique in offering video and animation capabilities on its website. Rather than learning complicated video editing and animation software, Placeit has a growing number of templates that cover everything from animated GIFS to video introductions for YouTube.

Customizing these videos is a bit more complicated than the simple designs and mockups previously mentioned, but it is still easy enough for anyone to get started with. As always, you can customize the text, font, colors, and visuals of each template to make them your own.

Online Video Maker

Placeit has a fantastic online video maker that walks users through the entire process of creating slideshows, Instagram stories, video intros, product demos, and Instagram videos. It is an easy-to-use tool that simplifies an often difficult to understand process into just a few minutes.

This tool eventually takes users to the classic template editor of Placeit with the original choice’s added tools. For example, creating an Instagram story also allows users to add or find sound to accompany the animation and set up animation frames.

The number of videos and animations available on Placeit is consistently growing and even adding new categories like streaming screens and services.

While this tool is likely best suited for small business owners or designers looking to expand into animation, it is just as usable for the average person looking to step up their social media presence with some fantastic looking effects.

Logos

The number of logo templates is one of the best features that Placeit has. The available options are high-quality and span across a large number of fields, professions, and interests, all but ensuring that any business or person in need of a logo can find precisely what they are looking for.

The number of subcategories in logos that Placeit has is staggering and includes categories ranging from law firms to moving companies. Choices for logos are incredibly similar to how other designs on the site work, allowing users to customize each aspect to get what they are looking for.

Searching logos can also be done by look rather than sector. For example, if you are particularly interested in abstract logos, it might be better to search that way instead of looking through your most related sector.

Gaming

Gaming logos are trendy on Placeit for anybody looking to start a stream or YouTube channel around the topic. Alternatively, even actual games can create their logos on the site and use them.

Business

Placeit offers logos for a wide variety of businesses and supports assets that cover all sorts of aesthetics. The sheer number of options ensures that you can combine looks and businesses until you get a logo that truly represents what you want to represent your business.

Searching the logo section can be daunting at first, especially if you do not have a solid idea of what you want at first. In this case, there are a few good options:

• Use Placeit’s search and tags features to find what is popular right now
• Organize by field
• Use Placeit’s “save” feature to create a collection that you think could work

Any of these methods alone or in combination with the other should ultimately narrow the list down to a workable option. Then, if you are still unhappy, you can reset and start at a larger filter to find what you are looking for.

Alternatives

There are a few available alternatives to Placeit, although very few cover the same number of topics and features that Placeit offers. For those looking to standardize an ecosystem that allows them to design, brand, and mockup an entire business, Placeit is likely the best offering.

However, people interested in a single category can find some alternatives out there.

Creating Designs Without A Template

Creating designs, logos, or mockups without a template is undoubtedly an option for many people. Doing this is often more work but allows for excellent control over every possible aspect.

Creating your own designs from scratch is a good idea for designers already confident in their skills and handling of technology. For small business owners interested in easily getting some options out quickly, this is a significant amount of work to learn.

There are a few different options for those looking to get seriously into design. Some of the most popular include:

• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Affinity Professional Suite
• Procreate

These are programs or groups of programs that specialize in important parts of the process, such as image manipulation, creation, editing, and additional utility for animation and video. Each of them also costs either a monthly fee or a one-time purchase.

Using Similar Services

Similar services exist online that can do many things that Placeit can, often with smaller libraries or while specializing in one part of it. For those looking for an alternative or to simply compare, there are a few popular options.

Artboard Studio Works Wonderfully for Mockups

Artboard Studio is a similar website that offers a variety of mockups and image editing for those interested. It is a more powerful customization tool than Placeit and highly specialized. Their website can be found here.

Like Placeit, they also offer some free templates and a host of assets, as well as a possible upgrade to a premium subscription for $15 per month. As they are more focused on professional teams and designers, the cost is for each team member added.

This is a great option for those exclusively interested in mockups who wish for more control over their templates, including options to introduce layers and additional items. However, the tool may involve too many options for those who want a quick way to create product mockups.

Canva Includes A Host of Templates

Canva is a popular choice for creating quick animations and designs using templates that function similarly to Placeit. They include many different plan levels for using designs for personal use, small businesses, and even non-profits. Their website can be found here.

Their categories are similar to Placeit’s and include social media posts, videos, and designs.

Upgrading past their free plan can quickly get expensive for large teams, but the service works exceptionally well on the free level.

Recap

Placeit is a service for design, logo, and mockup templates that is meant to be easily usable and feature a host of different categories. It includes free templates as well as a subscription model or a pay-by-piece model.

The website is built to be easy to use for everyone, so no previous design experience is necessary. It has a huge number of templates, over 50,000, to ensure that anyone can find what they are looking for and make it unique.

Alternative choices exist but are often more complicated or do not include the entire ecosystem of products that Placeit does.

Important Links: Placeit also offers an additional 15% off any plan with this coupon.

A twitch offline banner can help bolster your viewers confidence that you are a reliable source of content. It can also imbue your project with a greater degree of professionalism. Fortunately, Placeit provides you with just the tools you need to make a banner that will keep your twitch viewers coming back for more. But how exactly do you create a twitch offline banner, anyway?

You only need a basic knowledge of Placeit and the tools it provides to create an effective Twitch Offline Banner. A working knowledge of templates, fonts, graphics, and the copyright law surrounding digital images is necessary for consistent results.

If you’d like to get started making your own unique Twitch offline banner without all the hassle of overly complicated programs, you’re just the person this is for. We’ve made it easy for you by laying out step by step instructions that will fill you in on how to make any basic twitch offline banner you want. From there, it’s up to you and your creativity to see your original vision come to life!

How to Use Templates in Placeit

Placeit offers hundreds of individual Twitch offline banner templates you can choose from, to kick start your offline Twitch banner.The templates combine compelling color schemes and preset fonts to jump start your project.

Even though these are great for getting you started, different templates are better or worse depending on what you’re trying to do. That’s why we’ve listed a few questions below that will help you determine exactly which template is best for you.

Do You Have the Right Template for a Twitch Offline Banner?

With Placeit, you can do more than just create a Twitch Offline Banner. You can also make Twitch Panels and standard banners, as well as a slew of designs for other purposes and services.

With so many options, you’ll firstly want to make sure that you’ve picked a template specifically for Twitch Offline Banners. The size of Twitch Panels and standard banners are sometimes different from that which an offline banner calls for.

To find the templates you need, to use the search bar on the left side of the screen and look up the term “Twitch Offline Banner.” This will provide you with a selection more curated towards your specific needs. Of course, when it comes time to make some Twitch panels, you can do the same with that term and any other.

What is Your Target Audience?

A lot of your design choices should revolve around what kind of audience you’re trying to captivate. Twitch isn’t just a video game streaming site anymore. There are popular streamers that discuss everything from Super Mario Brothers to human psychology and current events.

Depending on what audience you’re trying to attract, different color schemes and styles are preferable. For example, if you’re aiming at an older demographic, a template with bright, cartoonish colors might not be the right pick.

What Grabs Your Eyes First?

If something has an effect on you, chances are it will have an effect on others as well. If there is a template that immediately grabs your eye, you should consider using it.

Keep in mind, however, that the reason why it grabs your eye is just as important a detail like the fact that it grabs your eye in the first place. If it grabs your eye because it’s bright and flashy, but you’re already using a logo (hopefully designed in Placeit) with cooler colors, it might not be the best choice.  

How to Use Basic Design Features in Placeit

Over the course of this “How To,” we’ll discuss some very specific functions of Placeit design. However, before we do that, there are a few fundamentals we should get out of the way first. Below you’ll find the most basic design features on Placeit that don’t necessarily belong to one particular category. Learning these before you do anything else can save you a lot of time and energy.

How to Reset Your Template

When you first start working from a Placeit template, all of the images and text they have provided should be in places that are visually appealing. If, in the process of trying to be creative, you find that you liked the original layout more, you can reset everything to how it was on the template.

How to Resize or Crop The Border of Your Design

If you place a border or an image in your design and it’s too big, you can crop or resize it. To do this, you just need to double click on the image file on the right side of your screen.

This should open up the border or image into a window of its own with nothing but your image and checkmarks, which represent the rest of your design. At the bottom of the window, you’ll find the “Crop” and “Resize” buttons.

Once you’ve properly resized your image, you just click on the gray x at the top of the window and close out the crop and resize menu. Just make sure you click the x on the window in Placeit and not the x of your browser, as you’ll close out everything if you do that.

How to Toggle Layers in Your Twitch Offline Banner on Placeit

Sometimes you want to hide some of your text or images so that you can adjust what is behind it. Fortunately, it’s easy peazy.

To hide a layer of text or graphics, simply look next to the text box or the image box (text left side of the screen, image right) for an icon of an eye. Click on the eye, and that should hide the layer for you.

To restore the text or graphic back to your overall design, simply click the eye icon again.

Adding a Logo or Graphic to Your Placeit Offline Twitch Banner

As we stated before, Placeit allows you to make even more things than Twitch Offline Banners. You can use it to create streaming (or any business really) logos that will make your brand more recognizable to consumers.

To place your logo in your Twitch Offline Banner, follow these four easy steps. Please note that you can skip the first two steps if your logo is already uploaded to Placeit.

1. If your logo isn’t already in Placeit, click the “Upload Logo” button. On the left side of your screen, toward the bottom, you should see a small blue rectangle with the words “Upload Logo” on it.
2. Select the logo you want to upload from your files.
3. Click on the button that says “Add Another Graphic.” This should be another blue rectangular button, only this one is on the right side of the screen, between the icon and background color dropdown menus. 
4. Select your logo and place it where you think it will look best. That’s it. Your logo should be all set. However, please note that it’s a good idea to add this after you have your background.

The awesome thing is that you can use this same process to add any images to your Twitch Offline Banner. That means that if you want an image separate from your logo to appear on the banner, you just need to click that “Add Another Graphic Button.”

How to Effectively Use Placeit Fonts

While the font you use in your Offline Twitch Banner might not sound like it’s the biggest deal, it can actually make a world of difference. Having the font you use match the rest of your design will give your work a more professional feel. Therefore, you should keep each of the following rules of thumb when you think about what lettering will make your banner pop.

Please note that most of this advice applies to other types of projects you might make as well, such as Twitch Panels or your main banner.

Picking the Right Font For Your Placeit Project

One of the ways that Placeit saves you money, is by making good use of open source google fonts. Fortunately, the templates that Placeit provides, have been carefully crafted to match a default font to the style you’re using.

Though the default font of your template will usually do just fine, sometimes you want to express a little creativity and further distinguish your work from other projects. If you do want further customizability, follow these easy steps to add, change and adjust the size of your font:

• Click on the “Add Text” button. You should see this button on the right side of the screen. It will appear as a blue rectangle with the words “Add Text” written in the middle of it.
• Write out what you want the words to say in the text box. A small rectangular box with the word text above it should pop up right above the “Add Text” button. Please note there will also be a dropdown menu that appears right between the text box you can write in and the “Add Text” button.
• Select any font you want from the dropdown menu between the text box and the “Add Text” button. The default font it gives you is usually dictated by the template you’ve chosen.
• To change the color of your font, select the small dropdown menu right next to the font dropdown menu. You can’t miss this one; it’s a small square drop down box with a black square in it. For reference it looks almost exactly like the color dropdown menu in Microsoft Word.
• To adjust the size of your text, click on it in the image and use the manual resize tool. Essentially, on the actual text of your design, a box should pop up around it with points on all of the corners and sides for resizing. To keep all of your proportions the same, you should resize it with any of the four corner points, as the ones on the sides will elongate your text horizontally or vertically, depending on which side you chose.

Please note that you can turn off any unwanted text you’ve created any time by simply unchecking the box next to the font dropdown menu for that particular text. So if you were going in one direction at the beginning of your project but transitioned to another as your vision became clearer, it’s no hassle at all to get rid of what you don’t need and keep what you do.

Find the Right Place for Your Text

To move your text around, simply click on it and move it to where you’d like it to go. If you want to move a certain image or text to the front of the design, just right click it and select to move it to the front.

Just a little tip: Even if you don’t use the placement that your template gave to your font, pay attention to where it is. Templates are designed specifically to be visually pleasing. They put text where they believe it will be most appealing to the average person. Keeping in mind where the professionals place things can help make you into an expert yourself. 

How to Download Your Design

Once your image is completed, you’ll want to download it so that you can put it on your Twitch page. That’s why Placeit makes downloading your unique designs quick, easy and painless.

Follow these two simple steps, and congratulations. Now you’ve got the perfect offline banner to upload to your Twitch account today:

• Select the download button. You’ll find this in the top right of the screen, just beneath the tool bar. It should be a purple rectangular button that says the word “Download” on it, in white lettering.  
• Wait while it processes your design. When you click the download button, a small window will pop up that says “processing your design.” This allows Placeit to take all fonts, backgrounds, and graphics you used to create your banner, and make them into a singular image.
• Check for an email from Placeit that contains your design. When your design has been processed, the finalized image will be sent to your email for easy access later.
• Save the design from your email on your computer. Now your banner is ready to go on your Twitch page and anywhere else you’d like to use it!

What About Using Copyrighted Material in Your Design?

If an image is copyrighted, you need to get permission to use it. If you do not, you could end up having a copyright strike against your Twitch Account. Too many of these, and they will suspend you.

Important: One of the main benefits of using Placeit.net to create your Twitch Banner is that everything you find on Placeit.net is commercially usable, and copyright free. See the usage rights for confirmation.

How Do You Create a Twitch Offline Banner in Placeit?

To create a Twitch offline banner on Placeit, you’ll need both a clear vision of what audience you want to appeal to, as well as a grasp of the fundamental tools the service provides. These fundamentals include; the use of templates, graphics, fonts, and what copyright laws to pay attention to. 

Learning the tools is easy if you follow the steps we’ve laid out, however finding the right look for your audience can be a more difficult task. Just trust your instincts and think about what kinds of color schemes, fonts, and graphics that tend to draw your attention. Especially, look for the kind you’d like to see on a similar twitch channel to yours. Basically, go with your gut, use Placeit, and your Twitch offline banner will look great!

Pro Tip: Placeit also offers an additional 15% off any plan with this coupon.