How I Designed the Perfect Startup Logo for $20

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You can engage a fancy design agency and pay tens of thousands of dollars (or more!) for a nice logo or you can follow what I do. The results are similar.

With a design agency, you are really paying for their creativity. The technical skills of making a logo are cheap with global labor. 

Here is how I made the Avocado logo in under an hour and for less than $20.

Step 1: Browse Dribbble for inspiration

Dribbble is a community for the world’s best designers to post their work. It is the place to go for design inspiration. 

I like to search for related keywords and heart the designs I like to save them for later. 

Avocado is a platform for the world’s best audio courses and I wanted our design to reflect that.

For the logo, I wanted to combine an avocado design with an audio design. 

Here are some Avocado designs I liked.

                   

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And some audio sound wave designs I liked. 

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Step 2: Sketch out ideas on paper yourself

I sketched out some ideas and got feedback from friends in the office.

I put the sound wave in the avocado as a seed and played around with what the sound wave could look like. 

Unfortunately, I only had an orange marker for this. 

                   

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Step 3: Iterate yourself

This is a creative process and it takes time to arrive at something you’re happy with.

Try out different sketches and give it a few days of background thinking before you pay money to actually get it digitized. 

Trying to iterate with a designer is what will cost you money.

Step 4: Pay a Fiverr designer to digitize

Share your sketch and your inspirations with a Fivver designer. Fivver is one of the largest online marketplaces for global talent. 

Finding a quality designer can be hard. Just use the designer I use. I’ve used him for a few different logos and highly recommend him. He does excellent work and will make iterations until you’re happy. 

The first versions won’t be perfect. Feel free to ask for small changes. 

Here were some early versions for Avocado.

                   

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We iterated on the shape and quantity of the sound waves until we found a happy medium with more seed-like sound waves.

The final result for Avocado. I’d put up against $100,000+ designs from any major agency.

                   

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Happy logo designing!