How To Make a Logo on Canva

Canva is an incredible online design tool that lets you create all kinds of designs, including logos!

There are quite a few logo makers but, in our opinion, Canva ranks among the best (you can read our full Canva logo maker review).

In this article, we’ll take you through how to create a logo on Canva.

Course Content

1. Overview
2. Finding and choosing a template
3. Customizing the template
4. Downloading your logo
5. Logos we made with Canva.
6. Pricing
7. Licensing
8. Alternative tools
9. FAQ

#1 Overview

Before we dive in, for those of you who aren’t aware of what Canva is, here’s a quick run-through for you.

What is Canva?

Canva is an extremely user-friendly ‘drag and drop’ online design tool that allows anyone to create incredible designs without needing any expert design knowledge or experience.

#2 Finding & choosing a template.

When it comes to making a logo on Canva, the easiest option is to start with a template.

Canva currently has around 1,400 logo templates you can use as the starting point for your logo design.

From the Canva homepage you have a couple of options when it comes to finding templates, you can simply search for logo’ in the search bar (or make the search more specific e.g. ‘beauty logo’):

Free & Pro templates

One thing to be aware of is that not all the templates on canva are completely free (don’t worry there are still plenty of free ones!).

Some of the logo templates have Canva Pro design elements in them and can only be used if you have a Canva Pro subscription.

#3 Customizing the template

Once you’ve chosen a template it’s time to start customizing it.

Here are the main customization features when it comes to creating a logo:

Resizing & repositioning

Resizing and repositioning design elements is super simple. You just need to select the element(s) you want to modify and click and drag them to move them around on the canvas.

When it comes to resizing, all you need to do is click on the element you want to alter and click and drag your cursor to make it bigger or smaller:

Accessing the customization options

To see the customization options of a particular design element all you need to do is click on the element that you want to alter, and the customization options will appear on the top bar of the editor.

You can see in the image below that we selected some text and several customization options appeared:

Modifying & adding text elements

Canva gives you several options when it comes to modifying the text elements.

From the toolbar you can change the text font, size, color, and perform normal text alterations such as making it bold or italic, underlined, and uppercase or lowercase.

Note: Some of the fonts are for Canva Pro users only, so you won’t be able to use them if you only have a free Canva account.

Modifying & adding graphic elements

When it comes to the graphic elements of your logo design there are several features that Canva gives you.

When you select a graphic element, you will typically have the following options in the toolbar – the ability changes the colors, to crop the graphic or flip it:

You can also add replacement or additional graphics to your design by going to ‘Elements’ tab and searching for graphics that fit with what you’re looking for.

If you see a crown icon on a graphic element, then you know it’s only for Canva Pro users. So, if you don’t plan to upgrade you can only use the free elements for your logo design:

Grouping elements

A useful feature that makes the process of creating your logo on Canva easier is the ‘Grouping’ feature.

You can group elements together which makes it simpler to move them around or resize them whilst ensuring they all remain aligned and to scale.

To group elements simply select the ones you want to group together (you can hold down shift and click on elements to select them at the same time) and then click ‘Group’ in the toolbar:

Other customizations

Other customization options that are useful when it comes to creating logos on Canva are adding transparency and also changing the position (or ordering) of the elements of the design.

To change the transparency of an element simply select it and then click on the transparency icon at the top right to adjust how you like:

To change the ordering or alignment of your design elements it’s a very similar process.

Select the element you want to change and then click on ‘Position’ at the top right:

This allows to create interesting design effects and also easily align elements e.g. center, bottom, middle, etc.

Making an animated logo

Finally, an awesome feature of Canva is that you can easily make your logo designs into animated logos.

To add animation, click on the background of your logo design or the grey area of the editor and you’ll see that the option to ‘Animate’ your design appears in the toolbar:

You can see from the image that there are 5 free animation options, and also 5 animations you can also access if you have a Canva Pro account.

Here’s an example of one of the free animations called ‘Pan’:

#4 Downloading your logo:

With a free canva account, your options are fairly limited when it comes to downloading your logo design.

You can download your logo as a PNG, JPG, or a few other files options:

As you can see from the image above, some options are on for Canva Pro users such as the option to download your design with a transparent background.

Ideally, for a logo design, you’d have a version with a transparent background so you can easily add to various designs and platforms.

By far the easiest option would be to get Canva Pro, but for those of you who don’t want to invest in Canva Pro, we’re going to show you how to get a version of your logo design with a transparent background for free!

You can use a tool called Kaping – more specially their free background removal tool:

Download your logo as a PNG from Canva, and then navigate over to Kaping’s image background remover.

Upload your logo design, select the ‘Magic Wand’ button, click on the logo background, and then click ‘Remove Pixels’ from the right-side menu:

The background should be removed, but you may have to repeat that process a few times to get all parts of the background.

Eventually you should have removed all of the background and can click ‘Done’:

On the next screen click ‘Export Image’, and then you can finally download your logo design with a transparent background: