Logos Design Trends 2017

Coca-Cola didn’t spend a dime on its original logo design, while BP’s most recent attempt cost a reported $211 million.

What’s interesting is that some of the most expensive logo designs are ridiculed, while some of the more basic, least expensive ones last for decades.

Logo design trends change every year, but sometimes they stick around for a long time. As a designer, it’s essential to commit yourself to keeping up with the trends for your clients’ sake. This way you’re more likely to find yourself with a happy client, and critics aren’t going to look at a logo and say that it’s out-of-date.

The best logos stay ahead of the trends, allowing for at least a little time to pass before the design needs a revamp. Not only that, but it’s important to stay away from designs that are too trendy. Take, for instance, all the businesses going with “hipster” or “retro” logo design. It might be unique at first but when everyone jumps on the bandwagon, it’s not going to have the same effect.

Therefore, let’s take a look at the best logo design trends of 2017.

The trend of moving elements in logos is a hot one for a couple of reasons. First of all, it allows for animations and effects without slowing down a website. Past website design eras with Flash animations were pretty cool. Unfortunately over-excessive movements on a website were often hurting conversions.

Moving logos combine nicely with parallax effects if you’re trying to get creative and grab visitor attention. The cool part is that you can have the moving logo on a website and other digital mediums, while also having a regular logo on physical marketing materials.

For example, this Killed Productions logo is ripe for adding moving elements. It’s a wonderfully creative logo that brings about an emotional response in the viewer. But the designer might also consider showing the “i” getting shot and falling in an animated GIF.

This HP logo took around five years to get accepted, but that might have been because it was way ahead of its time. Today we’re seeing all sorts of logos with broken letters. It represents a more modern shift in design, allowing for creativity while also clearly showing what the brand is to the customers. After all, the average user would still be able to recognize that this logo is for HP.

This is a favorite trend of ours because packing two meanings into a logo takes time and effort to create and it’s likely to make customers smile.

For example, the Rocket Golf logo combines two golf tees right next to each other. Without any other additions it would look like two golf tees. But three small lines transform the logo into a rocket ship, aligning nicely with the brand name.

Another beautiful example comes from another golf company. At first glance the viewer might only see a golfer taking a swing. But if you look a little closer you’ll notice that a spartan face is represented by the swing motion and the golfer.

Hand drawings balance the line between too basic and just right. Below we’ll talk about how some trends become far too popular. One of those would be the “vintage” or “hipster” look. Drawing often looks vintage, but logos like the one below seem to mimic that of Coca-Cola, where it looks simple, unique, and more akin to a mom and pops store than a large corporation that paid thousands or millions of dollars for a design.

These logos use negative and positive space, where both fight for the viewer’s attention. They are rather popular this year, seeing as how the negative and positive space come together to create a bit of an optical illusion.

The logo below is for a company called Horror Films. What’s interesting is that it also falls under the “Multiple Meanings” trend we talked about above, where the logo looks like a screaming face and a film reel at the same time.

MasterCard is the best example of extreme simplification. We’ve see this trend with many large businesses like Uber and AirBnB, but the decade’s old MasterCard logo change was more of a shock.

As you can see, the company removed several “3D” elements and the horizontal color combination shown in the previous logo. It went with a flat design, where the company name is shown below the icons and the circles are given a more modern look.

Flat, vintage, and hipster logos are huge in today’s design world. So much so that Guinness wanted something that went against the trends. Therefore, they opted for a logo with modernism, but a harp with great detail to keep around its historic flair.

The Placeit Logo Maker is full of custom design elements, created by professional designers. It only takes a few clicks to test out ideas and save big on creating your own logo in minutes. Alternatively, you can download logos for Adobe Illustrator with your Envato Elements subscription.