Top Logo Design Companies

Best Logo Designers for Startups, B2B, Enterprise, Small business, SMB, SaaS. In San Francisco (SF), New York (NYC), London, Austin, Los Angeles (LA)

✨ They Make Design ✨
TMDesign
8 min readMay 4, 2020

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UPDATED: July 2, 2024

Logo design agencies are essential in creating strong brand identities. They craft logos that are more than just visually appealing; they represent a brand’s values and message.

The right logo can set a brand apart, making it memorable and recognizable.

Selecting a suitable logo design agency is vital for any business seeking to establish a distinct and impactful brand presence.

The Best Logo Design Agencies in the world:

1. Amberd Design Studio

Amberd Design Studio is a digital marketing and logo design agency established in Los Angeles.

  • Website: www.amberddesign.com
  • Location: Los Angeles, CA, United States
  • Clients: New York Times, Laque Nail Bar, Mellbe, Olympanic, SortPak, Spinners Entertainment
  • Hourly Rate: $100 — $149 / hr
  • Team Size: 35+ employees
  • Founded: 2010
  • Services: Logo, Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, Graphic Design, Social Media Marketing
  • Industries: Automotive, Business services, Other industries, Advertising & marketing, eCommerce, Arts, entertainment & music, Financial services, Legal, Medical
  • Best for: tech companies seeking premium yet affordable logo design, web design, SEO, and graphic design
  • Clutch rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 (1+ reviews)

2. Logo Design NYC

NYC Design Company serving small and large businesses across the tri-state area.

  • Website: www.logodesignnyc.com
  • Location: New York, NY, United States
  • Clients: Dough Doughnuts, Lost Farmer Brewing Co., Nine Moons Piercing, Eastern Concrete Cutting, I am Nubian Hair Salon, Barcel USA
  • Hourly Rate: $100 — $149 / hr
  • Team Size: 5+ employees
  • Founded: 2007
  • Services: Logo, Branding, Graphic Design, Packaging Design
  • Industries: Business services, Financial services, Legal, Retail, Supply Chain, Logistics, and Transport, Automotive, Consumer products & services, Hospitality & leisure, Information technology, Manufacturing, Medical, Non-profit, Real estate
  • Best for: tech companies seeking unique, memorable, and custom logo designs across various industries
  • Clutch rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 (0+ reviews)

3. Marchio

  • Website: hellomarchio.com
  • Location: Los Angeles, CA, United States
  • Clients: Adeia, Chargie, Constant Contact, East West Bank, Everyset, LegalZoom, Leviant, Shutterstock, Syniverse, TruConnect, Fluxergy, Resource Innovations
  • Hourly Rate: $200 — $300 / hr
  • Team Size: 5+ employees
  • Founded: 2018
  • Services: Branding, Logo
  • Industries: Arts, entertainment & music, Automotive, Consumer products & services, Telecommunications
  • Best for: tech companies seeking impactful branding and logo design services that resonate and leave a lasting mark
  • Clutch rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 (5+ reviews)

4. Daake

  • Website: daake.com
  • Location: Omaha, NE, United States
  • Clients: Averta, Syncron, Amarok
  • Hourly Rate: $200 — $300 / hr
  • Team Size: 10+ employees
  • Founded: 2001
  • Services: Branding, Logo
  • Industries: Business services, Consumer products & services, Education, Financial services, Medical
  • Best for: tech companies seeking strategic, transformative logo and branding services to create a competitive advantage and inspire their culture
  • Clutch rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 (25+ reviews)

How Do We Review These Logo Design Agencies?

Our review process is meticulous and grounded in a set of well-defined criteria, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of each agency. The review parameters include:

  • Location: Understanding where the agency is based helps in assessing their market understanding and cultural relevance.
  • Clients: A look at their client roster gives insights into their experience and versatility.
  • Hourly Rate: This helps in determining the affordability and value-for-money aspect.
  • Team Size: This reflects the agency’s capacity to handle projects and its scalability.
  • Founded: The year of establishment indicates their experience and market presence.
  • Services: A rundown of services offered shows their versatility and capability to handle diverse requirements.
  • Industries: This shows the range of sectors they have experience with, indicating their adaptability and understanding of different market needs.
  • Best for: Identifying what type of businesses or projects they are most suited for.
  • Clutch Rating: A reliable indicator of their reputation and client satisfaction.

How to Choose a Proper Logo Design Agency?

When selecting a logo design agency from a list, consider the following steps:

  1. Define Your Brand Identity: Understand your brand’s core values and what you want to communicate through your logo.
  2. Evaluate Their Portfolio: Look for diversity and creativity in their past work. Assess how well they have translated other brands’ identities into visual elements.
  3. Consider Industry Experience: Agencies with experience in your industry may offer more nuanced insights.
  4. Check Client Testimonials: Client feedback can offer valuable insights into the agency’s work ethic and client relations.
  5. Assess Their Creative Process: Ensure their process is collaborative and they are open to feedback.
  6. Budget Alignment: Find an agency whose pricing aligns with your budget without compromising on quality.
  7. Communication and Support: Choose an agency that communicates clearly and is responsive to your needs.

To choose the right logo designer for your startup, you need to know how a standard visual brand identity design process usually go

Creating a strong brand is essential to any organization. While there are many elements that come together to establish a strong brand identity, often the logo is at its heart of well-designed branding. Even if you already have a logo, something fresh may be needed for a new product, combining companies, or simply modernizing. Whatever the reason for the project, using a repeatable process is smart in order to ensure branding designers and stakeholders alike know what’s expected and can result in a better design by preventing any steps from being missed.

startup logo design sketching
Source

The process can be simple and still support interaction with the team, research, design direction, and smooth delivery. The key steps in the logo design process include Scope and Planning, Research, Ideation and Design, and Asset Delivery.

Scope and Planning

The first step is all about defining the project goals and organizational needs. At the end of this step, you will deliver a Creative Brief, scope, budget, and timeline. There are two primary objectives of the step, get to know the client or business the logo is to represent, and to define the parameters of the project for what will be delivered and when. It establishes expectations and acts as an agreement for the services to be provided.

In your initial discussions with the client or stakeholders, it’s important to discuss how the final design will be used. Based on these needs and constraints, along with the design skills available you can list all deliverables and get agreement on them.

  • Full color, scalable logo
  • Black and White version
  • Horizontal and vertical variations
  • Different versions for web, print, merchandise, paper products, and other specialized needs

The other main discussion is intended for the design team to get to know the company, its brand strategy, and personality. A Creative Brief summarizes the findings and is a way for the design team to verify that they’ve heard and understood the goals and needs for the project. This can be accomplished by interviews, surveys, and gathering existing standards and guidelines. Your approach will vary depending on the scope and availability of existing marketing materials. It should include elements such as:

  • Audience
  • Service or product descriptions
  • Vision
  • Core philosophy
  • Market

Research

The next step is to do more in-depth research. If you weren’t able to get much in the first step because it doesn’t exist or for other reasons, you’ll want to include more time in this step to Interview leadership, employees, and existing customers to learn what the company stands for, how it is viewed, and how management wants it to be viewed. Some possible areas to explore include:

  • What brands are they similar to? What do they like or dislike about their brand identity or logo?
  • What kinds of driving forces or passions are behind the company?
  • Is your brand young, fun, and irreverent or established and serious?
  • Are their adjectives or emotions that reflect your brand? Think fresh, strong, bold, playful.

The other part of the research step is external to the business. This means looking into and talking to target customers, competition, and the market in general. You want to paint a picture of the who, what, and where for the brand. What’s working for the biggest competition? Are there key factors others are missing related to your customers’ locations, interests, or passions? What resonates with those customers?

The creative brief from step one might need to be extended or refined. Additional elements like mood boards can be added to help guide the design step.

Ideation and Design

This step is an interactive one and comprises the real design work. Begin by brainstorming many ideas. If you have a team, work together so that your ideas can build off one another. Once all the ideas are down on paper and out of your heads, patterns may emerge, and a few good potential sketches should become obvious. It’s a good idea to have a checkpoint to review these best candidates with the client or stakeholders. The objective of the checkpoint is to make sure your couple of options are matching up to what they are expecting and to get a feel for which options they prefer. It can be helpful to only show pencil or ink sketches without color so that the team doesn’t get caught up in elements like color yet.

Those top 3 or so concepts are now ready to be refined. They can be digitized with color added and more complete feel. Each of the concepts should be packaged for a more formal design review. The really great concepts will evoke emotion, stick in the mind of the customer, be timeless, not trendy, and be scalable. The client should be able to select a final concept, but some additional refinement may still be necessary so be sure you padded your timeline to allow for rework when necessary.

Asset Delivery

Using the approved design and the initial scope as a checklist, create all the promised deliverables. At a minimum, the project should result in a scalable graphic file in color. Typically it will include variations such as vertical and horizontal or black and white. It’s also beneficial to provide style guidelines around how and when to use the variations, including spacing.

Summary

Using a simple, repeatable process will streamline your projects and keep the experience positive for both the client and the design team. The process will help to ensure that nothing gets missed and keep misunderstandings to a minimum for a great logo and happy client.

Disclaimer

This review is an independent analysis intended to guide readers in choosing a logo design agency.

It is based on a comprehensive and objective evaluation of various agencies using specific criteria.

The content of this review is not influenced by any external sources and does not favor any particular agency.

The goal is to provide readers with the necessary information to make informed decisions that best fit their branding needs.

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✨ They Make Design ✨
TMDesign

A team with 10 yrs of experience in branding web design and UI/UX.