15+ Best Logo Design Books, Courses, & Tutorials for Beginners
Logo design is a highly competitive industry where only the best designers survive. And to be one of the best logo designers, you have to learn from the best.
Whether you’re just getting started in logo design or an experienced logo designer, there’s always something new you can learn from other more successful designers.
Logo design books, courses, and tutorials are the perfect source for you to learn new techniques, understand trends, and gain deeper insights from the veterans.
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We’ve selected some of the best books about logo design, as well as courses and tutorials for you to get a head start on your learning journey. Start exploring or click the links below to jump to a section.
Best Logo Design Books
Books are the best medium for learning the technical side of logo designs. Most of these books feature valuable insights and case studies that hold lessons for all types of logo designers. Here are a few books to get started.
Paul Rand: Inspiration & Process in Design
Paul Rand is often referred to as the father of modern logo design. He’s a legend among designers for creating iconic logos for brands such as IBM, UPS, and ABC.
This book features a collection of essays, interviews, and early sketches of Rand’s works. It’s a treasure trove of valuable insights you can explore to understand what goes into the thinking process and designing iconic logos like Paul Rand.
Principles of Logo Design
If you’re new to logo design or want to understand the technical side of crafting logo symbols, icons, and shapes, this book is the best place to start.
The Principles of Logo Design book covers everything from the basic principles to advanced techniques designers uses to craft memorable logos. It will take you through the process of sketching, using grids, tracing, fine-tuning, and every other aspect in between the workflow.
Logos that Last
Creating timeless logo designs that last decades is an art form that only a few have been able to perfect over the years. While many brands often go through logo redesigns, a few brands are still using the same classic logos they created at the beginning of the company.
This book looks at a few of those iconic brand case studies to explore the concepts and strategies the designers have used to craft those iconic logos. Simply put, this book will show you the process behind such great logos to help you design “logos that last”.
Logo Design Love
Professional logo and brand identity designer, David Airey shares very valuable lessons and his own experiences in this Logo Design Love. It’s quite a popular book among designers as well.
In this book, David uses many case studies to show you the process behind designing great logos. He also packs more than 30 tips for designing logos. This is a book that’s useful to both beginning and expert logo designers.
Symbol
Symbols play an important role in every logo design. In fact, every logo design features some sort of symbolism that represents the mission and the industry behind the brand.
With this book, you can understand the meanings behind each symbol and learn to incorporate them into your designs more effectively. The book contains a lot of symbols organized into different categories based on the visual type and with descriptive captions. It’s a must-read for logo and brand identity designers.
Square Circle Triangle
This is an interesting book that explores a concept introduced by legendary Italian designer, Bruno Munari. In the book, Munari shows how the square, circle, and triangle shapes contribute to each and every design you create.
It’s an eye-opening book that will allow you to see the world of design from a new perspective. The book is a valuable resource for not just logo designers but for all other types of designers and artists.
Thinking with Type
Understanding typography is something that every designer should master from the very beginning. Learning about font formats, style sheets, using ornaments, and all the other technical aspects of typography lays the foundation for the creations you make.
Thinking with Type will teach you all the basics and concepts about typography to help you use fonts more effectively in your designs.
Book of Branding
Logo design is only one part of a brand identity. Understanding how it fits into the big picture of a brand’s visual identity is key to finding the right concept for a logo design.
Book of Branding is a guide that will help you understand how logos fits into the brand identity as well as learn what goes into the process of making a visual identity for a brand.
Best Logo Design Courses
Learning with online courses is much more effective than any other medium. The organized structure will give you a clear path for learning specific parts of logo design and understanding them better. Start with these courses.
Logo Design: From Concept to Presentation
This course is taught by a veteran designer named Sagi Haviv, who works at an agency that handles branding for big companies such as NBC, National Geographic, and Animal Planet.
The course content includes 16 lessons that cover the entire process of designing logo, from concept to presenting the final design. It also includes practical exercises and downloads.
Logo Design 01
This course comes from the Emmy award-winning designer, Chris Do. It covers the basics of logo design and provides all the details you’ll need to create a better workflow as a logo designer.
The course includes more than 6 hours of video content covering logo design principles, different logotypes, presentations, and Adobe Illustrator shortcuts too.
Typographic Logos
One of the most popular trends in logo design is typographic logos. These type-based logos are commonly used in everything from brands to T-shirts, packaging designs, labels, and so much more.
This course packs all the lessons and details you’ll need to know to start making professional typography logos on your own.
Logo Design with Draplin
Aaron Draplin is an icon in the world of graphic design, he’s well-known for his US postal stamp design with the star ribbon logo. In this course, Draplin will teach you the basics of logo design.
The course contains 10 short lessons packed with details about the secrets of shape, understanding type, and using proper colors in your designs.
Hand-Drawn Branding: Design Original Logos
If you’re a designer who prefers a more hands-on approach to designing logos, you will surely appreciate the contents of this course. This course comes from another industry veteran, Jon Contino who’s worked with big brands like Hulu, Coca-Cola, Nike, AT&T, and more.
There are 16 valuable lessons in this course that will guide you in creating original logos with a hand-drawn approach. It will give you lots of insights into how Contino works on logo designs as well.
Best Logo Design Tutorials (Free)
If you’re interested in learning cool new techniques and methods related to logo design, these free logo design tutorials are for you.
How to Design a Logo for Beginners
Daniel Walter Scott, an Adobe Certified trainer shows you how to craft a logo from beginning to end in this very beginner-friendly YouTube tutorial. In the 28-minute tutorial, you’ll learn the process and workflow of creating logos with very simple and step-by-step instructions.
Create a Vector Logo from a Sketch
This free tutorial will show you how to turn your basic pencil sketch logo designs into a digital format using Adobe Illustrator. Many designers prefer to work on sketchpads and pencils when coming up with concepts for logos. Sometimes your clients will even send you sketches for you to work with. This tutorial will be quite useful for those situations.
13 Golden Rules Of Logo Design
There are many things you need to consider when creating a logo. Like making sure your logo looks great in both print and digital formats. Or making sure the colors look great on all platforms. In this tutorial, you’ll learn 13 of those golden rules you should follow when creating logos.
13 Advanced Logo Design Techniques
If you want to upgrade your already impressive logo design skills, this tutorial is for you. It features 13 advanced techniques you can use to create more complex logo designs with less effort.
How To Design A Logo Using The Grid Method
Logo designs with geometric layouts are quite popular among traditional and big brands. This tutorial will show you how they are made using the Grid method. It’s a simple tutorial you can use to learn the basics and experiment with.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the books and courses we think you should check out. Use them as a starting point to explore new possibilities. And go beyond by reading more books and watching more great courses.