Best Logo Design Software Programs

One of Adobe Illustrator’s most powerful features is the ability to import a scanned image. This is great for users who’ve sketched a few ideas on paper but don’t want to start from scratch on the computer. Geometric shapes can then be laid over the drawing and manipulated with ease. Illustrator also offers a variety of templates and vector logo objects to help get users started.

Of course, words are a part of any good logo, and Illustrator provides access to over 17,000 font types, from fun to professional. When it comes time to add or modify colors, users can design with Pantone or CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and key) palettes for precise color matching on printed material like business cards and show banners. Finally, because Illustrator is vector-based, designs won’t become pixelated when enlarged, meaning users can scale their logo to any size.

Adobe Illustrator is available for Mac and Windows computers, and a subscription starts at $20.99 per month. This subscription comes with a seven-day free trial, 100GB of cloud storage, access to Adobe Creative Community and Adobe Fonts. A 30-day free trial of Adobe Stock is also available, but this trial includes access to just 10 images.

Summitsoft's Logo Design Studio Pro platform has consistently been the top-selling logo design software for two decades. Logo Design Studio Pro comes with 2,000 logo templates and 6,000 objects to choose from. Shapes can easily be stretched and manipulated, and users get professional-grade coloring and styling options, including gradients, shadow, blur, glow, and emboss effects.

On the downside, Logo Design Studio Pro doesn't have as full a range of editing capabilities as Adobe Illustrator, leading some users to feel that the final products don't look quite as polished or professional. However, the software has a gentler learning curve than Illustrator so that beginners can get started faster. Like Illustrator, Logo Design Studio Pro creates vector-based drawings that can be scaled to any size without losing sharpness or quality.

Logo Studio Design Pro offers two versions called standard and platinum as well as one online subscription version.

• Logo Design Studio Pro Standard Edition: $69.99 with 2,000+ logo templates, 6,000+ graphic objects, and full vector graphics
• Logo Design Studio Pro Platinum Edition: $149.99 with everything in the standard edition, plus Cutting Edge Premium Expansion Pack, Vintage Cool Premium Expansion Pack, Color Splash Premium Expansion Pack
• Logo Design Studio Pro Online: 29.99 for the first month, then $7.99 a month with access to unlimited logos, full vector graphics, unlimited storage
  

Logo Design Studio is available as a download for Windows computers for a one-time fee. Users can also choose a subscription-based version of the software that can be used on a web browser on both Mac and Windows systems.

Getting started with Designhill is easy. Just enter the name of the business and the basic logo style and color palette. The software then offers over 100 template design options that can be previewed on business cards, T-shirts, signboards, and more. Designhill's templates, including fonts and color options, can be tweaked and edited to suit your business's needs.

Users can spend as much time as they want to create logos, and the process is free. Once they find a design they like, it costs just $20 to download a basic low-resolution file suitable for online use.

For $65, users get a high-resolution logo, vector graphic files with transparent backgrounds, phone support, black and white versions, font names and color codes, and full commercial and non-commercial use rights.

Canva offers a free version to easily create professional logos. There's also an affordable monthly subscription with additional features. Canva's free logo maker features a visual and easy-to-use interface on both the website and the mobile app. Users start by choosing a template from the thousands available. From there, they can personalize the colors, shapes, and symbols.

Canva offers two paid plans in addition to the free plan. All three of them come with over 250,000 templates. The two paid plans come with a free trial and many additional features. The Pro plan is for one user, costs $12.99 per month, and offers things such as over 100 million premium stock photos, brand kits, 24/7 support, magic resize, 1 TB of cloud storage, and more. The Teams plan costs $14.99 per month, allows up to five users, and adds features such as collaboration comments, brand templates, brand controls, team reports, and more.

Users can rearrange elements, including fonts, icons, or imported graphics, or even change templates using a simple drag-and-drop editor. Canva's professionally designed templates give users a head start with color and font combinations that look good right out of the box. Users can also choose from millions of free and premium icons, illustrations, and images.

On the collaboration side, Canva's Brand Kit is included with the Pro Plan and helps teams consistently create products that stay on brand. Teams can keep color swatches with exact values at their fingertips, store and access logos for different uses, add font styles and notes, and even upload the fonts themselves for any team member to use.

If you want the expanded 1 TB storage and premium features of the paid plans, it really comes down to if you'll be working alone or if you'll be working with a team. Only the Teams plan allows multiple users where as Pro is limited to one. The Teams plan also offers sharing and collaboration features as well as tools to maintain a consistent brand identity across the work of multiple people.

Tailor Brands' logo maker works very similarly to Designhill's. Users simply enter their business name and design preferences, and the software offers several designs. Users can then change any element's font, color, and size to create the design they envisioned. The final logo can be downloaded as a high-quality vector file that can be used on a website or for business cards and merchandise.

Tailor Brands also offers a number of other branding services, including business cards, presentation decks, social media posts, and more. Once a logo is created, Tailor Brands' artificial intelligence (AI) ensures that any branding asset is built to include the logo and match the overall style and brand. Tailor Brands lets users download a low-resolution graphic for free and offers three subscription plans with the following features:

• Basic: $9.99 a month and offers high-resolution logo, full ownership, social media logo sizes, logo resizing tool
  
• Standard: $19.99/month and offers all the basic plan features, vector logo files, business cards, seasonal logo generator
• Premium: $49.99 a month and offers all standard plan features, the ability to create an online store, and to accept online payments

Hatchful is a free logo design tool made by Shopify, one of the leading e-commerce platforms. It allows users to create a professional logo with hundreds of templates to choose from with just a few clicks. Creating a logo with Hatchful couldn't be easier.

Just enter the business type, creative style, business name, and where the logo will be used (website, social media, business cards, or merchandise.) The platform then uses AI to create hundreds of logo variations in the chosen style. Users can customize the colors, icons, or fonts of any design.

Unlike other free logo makers that charge to download a high-quality logo, Hatchful lets users download logo packages that contain images of different resolutions for websites, social media profiles, and other use absolutely free. It's important to note that even though the logos generated by Hatchful are free, the styles and industries are somewhat limited.