How to Create a Professional Logo for your Business Website – For Free!

A professional logo is essential to the success of your contracting business.

You could operate a business and build a website without a logo, but if you can create a professional logo for your contracting business quickly – and for FREE – why wouldn’t you? 

If you’re following our blog series on How to Build a Professional Website for Your Contracting Business, you’ll want to have a logo to work with – even if it is a simple one – because we will base your new website’s fonts, colors, look, and feel on your logo. 

(If you haven’t read the first post in the series, you can check it out here!)

Besides.

After you have a logo, you can do all sorts of things with it!

You can slap it on merchandise – like shirts, hats, coats, and mugs!

Or you can make promotional products for your business, such as pens and business cards, to give away at home shows or networking events.

That will bring in customers!

And it all starts with a professional logo that you can create for FREE. 

Already have a logo? Great!

All you’ll need is a favicon, then.

Let’s jump in.

Create Your Business Logo (for Free!)

You can spend as much or as little as you like on most things in today’s marketplace, including logo design.

For the purposes of launching your website, though, you don’t need to spend any money at all on a logo – you can make it for free!

After your business has gotten off the ground, you may choose to pay a professional graphic designer to create a custom logo for you – but for now, you can quickly build a logo using a free website platform called Canva.

Meet Canva

Canva is a free online graphic design platform that is – simply put – pretty dang awesome.

You can use Canva to create custom logo designs, blog post feature images, social media posts, and more. You can even design and order business cards, brochures, or merch for your business!

Canva has an extensive library of templates for any number of graphic design needs, open-source photos and figures for your use in designs of your own creation, and fonts for building your brand.

For now, all we are going to do is create a logo and a favicon for your consulting website.

And it won’t cost a dime.

How does that sound??

Create a Design Canvas

First things first, you need to choose a size for your logo.

Canva’s logo templates are (generally) 500 x 500 pixel squares.

While this is helpful, and square logos have their place, there are many instances in which a 500 x 500 px image is not large enough.  

If you use a 500 x 500 px logo in a space that needs a higher quality image (because it is larger than 500 x 500 px), the logo will look pixilated or blurry…and nobody wants that.

To avoid this situation, we recommend creating a rectangular logo and a square one – both with widths of 1200 pixels.

The available logo space on a website often necessitates a linear logo – so if you only want to create one logo and you’re planning to use it on your website, go with the rectangular one.

Our favorite “canvas” size for creating logos is 1200 x 630 pixels.  

While probably taller than you will need after your logo is complete, this is a standard size for creating feature images, and it provides extra space to work within.

After your logo is finished, you can easily change the height of the final canvas. When we make logos, they tend to be ~1200 x 250-300 pixels in size.

In our opinion, though, it’s easier to design on a larger canvas and resize it later than to try to guess how tall our logo will be at the desired 1200 pixel width.

So.

Go ahead and sign up for a free account with Canva (so you can find your designs later), and create a custom 1200 x 630 px canvas to work with.

Find a Font

A basic logo contains a business name and, possibly, a related graphic or image.

After you’ve created a canvas, you can start looking through fonts to use for the written portion of your logo.

To add text to your design canvas, click the “Text” tab on the left side of the page, and then click “Add a heading.”

Then, simply type out your business name, and look through Canva’s fonts to find the right one for your business!

To bring up the font library, highlight the text of your business name, and click on the down arrow next to the font name above the canvas (likely Open Sans Extra Bold).

Scroll through the list, and pick a font that represents your business.

Try a few, and see how they look.

Fonts might seem insignificant, but this is the most important part of designing a logo!

You’re building your brand by choosing the font in which your business name will be displayed.

Think of this process as trying on a piece of clothing or choosing a new haircut.

You wouldn’t wear a shirt or a hat for a sports team you don’t support…or decide to get a mullet if you despise the ’80s.

See what we mean?

Fonts are the same way.

They convey a specific feeling or message with their seemingly simple shapes.

Think of your favorite TV show or movie – what does their logo font convey?

The Star Trek and Sesame Street logos are radically different…and they are completely different TV shows, so that’s good!

The point is, you want to find a font for your business logo that will convey what you are trying to express with your business.

Your logo, believe it or not, can help you sell your products or services.  

It is likely the first thing people come into contact with when they “meet” your brand, so you want your logo to describe your business.

As you go through Canva’s font library, ask yourself questions like: “Does this font help define my business to my customers?” and “Does this font convey the feeling I want to express with my brand?”

Don’t worry about your logo being perfect…just keep these ideas in the back of your mind while you create it, okay?

You’ve got this!

Colors

You’ve found your logo font, and you’re ready for the next design step: choosing colors.

There’s all sorts of information floating around the internet about the psychology of color and how to choose the “right” colors for your business.

We aren’t going to get too far into that with this post – but think about how the color red hits your eye in a logo vs. the color green.

They bring different feelings to the surface, right?

Colors convey certain messages to your audience, so your logo color(s) deserve some thought.

But have fun with this!  

Pretend you’re in art class and have been given free rein to the paints.

That’s fun waiting to happen!

Think about how colors make you feel and how they look together – but when it comes down to it, choose colors that you like!

And remember – you aren’t stuck with anything here. If you decide you want to rebrand later, you can.

Consider a Logo Graphic

In addition to the words, there is often a picture portion to a logo – like the Amazon arrow or the Nike swoosh.

You can easily add a graphic to your logo in Canva by searching under the Elements tab.

Whatever you are looking for – be it mountains, animals, or simple shapes – there are many (somewhat customizable) options to choose from. 

Once you find an element you like, it’s just a matter of putting that picture into your logo in a way that looks good.

Then? You’re done designing!

Resize the canvas to match the necessary height of your logo (you may have to create a new canvas and copy and paste your work), and your linear logo is complete!

If you need a square logo, you can follow this same process to create one in no time (we suggest a size of 1200 x 1200 px).

One thing you’re sure to need if you’re designing a website, though, is a favicon.

Create a Favicon

An easy way to give your website an extra professional boost is to create a branded favicon for your site.

A favicon is that little picture you see in the tab of your browser for each website you visit – just before the tab’s description of the website it holds.

Canva’s is that little “C” with a blue background.

Amazon’s is a tiny “A” with a yellow-orange arrow on a white background.

Google’s is a multicolored “G.”

Favicons look professional, make browser tab identification simple, and are easy to create! 

You can follow the same process as making a logo for your site to create your favicon – but you’ll need a square design rather than a rectangle.

We like to create our favicons as 500 x 500 px images for ease of design – but it’s good to remember that this image will be viewed at a much smaller size than that…like, 16 x16 pixels, sometimes less.

Because it will appear so small in a browser, you don’t want to make your favicon too detailed – all that hard work wouldn’t be visible!

That’s why companies tend to use the first letter of their brand name or a recognizable image associated with their brand (like the Starbucks mermaid) for their favicon.

So. Keep it simple, and base your favicon on your logo for brand consistency.

You can always edit the image in Canva if you find you need to later.

For now, let’s download your creations so we can use them on your website!

Download Your Logo and Favicon

You’ve done all the hard work, and it’s time to reap the rewards!

Let’s download your company’s new logo and favicon.

Open the files you want to download and click “Share” and then “Download” in the top right of the design page.

The default image type for a file download is PNG, and that is preferable in this case, so let it be.

One thing to change, though – we recommend starting a free 30 day trial with Canva so you can download your logo with a transparent background.  

You will need a logo with a transparent background for adding to your website.

There are other ways of removing an image background for free – but a free Canva trial is also free, and that background removal method will take no work…so why not?

You can always cancel before they charge you, and you’ll have access to the premium features of Canva for 30 days – plenty of time to finish up your website designs before paying a dime.

Anyway.

Download your logo with a transparent background, but keep the background as it is for your favicon so that it will stand out on a browser tab.

Once you’ve downloaded your files, you can compress them using a free compression site – like tinypng.com – to save space on your website later.

Re-download the compressed files…and that’s it!  

Conclusion

You did it!

You created a professional logo for your contracting business – all for free.

Great work!

A professional logo is essential to the success of your business, and you’ve taken steps to build your brand and connect with your customers today!  

You should be proud!

We are sure proud of you, grasshopper.

Next time, we will discuss how to prepare your website for adding your logo and favicon.

Until then, feel free to reach out to us with any questions you may have, and

Happy Designing!