How to Create the Perfect Logo for Your Travel Website

A travel website should evoke confidence and exploration. If you are creating a website for your travel business, you need a solid logo to help solidify your brand. Creating the perfect travel website logo can be a complex job because there are many elements to consider. This post will cover how to create the perfect logo for your travel company.

Why Does Your Travel Website Need a Logo?

Like any brand, your travel company needs to stand out from the competition and be memorable for your audience. Your logo is typically one of the very first things people will notice about your brand. The right logo can convey your purpose and niche in an appealing way. In addition, a logo can display how professional your company is with a design that looks smart and trustworthy.

When someone visits your website, they will be looking for the same kind of consistency displayed that they would expect during their trip. Your branding will rely on a solid logo to help inspire the rest of your brand aesthetic.

How to Design Your Travel Website Logo

Now that you know why a logo matters, you will want to start considering the potential options. Here are a few of the essential design elements you will want to consider for your logo.

Choose Meaningful Colors

The right colors will help your logo stand out. It should illustrate brand characteristics to your audience in an intuitive way. For example, colors can look happy, daring, relaxing, adventurous, calm, serene, confident, or active.

Not only should your colors allude to what your brand does, but they should also help your company stand apart from the competition. Ultimately, you should choose colors that are appealing to your audience without sacrificing their symbolism.

Colors and their variations (light/bright/dark) will hold different meanings. A few examples of color meaning for travel company logos include:

• Bright green can show high energy, positivity, and money-saving.
• Dark or muted green can represent nature, relaxation, and rejuvenation.
• Bright red will give off vibes of hot deals, exploration, daring, and passion.
• Yellow can express happiness, sunshine, optimism, and value.
• Orange looks like adventure, warmth, comfort, and vibrancy.
• Blue often conveys tranquility, dependability, and a slower pace.
• Lighter blue colors may represent the ocean, sky, or relaxation.
• Purple is a color often used to illustrate nightlife, luxury, or creativity.
• Gold might be used to show extravagance, opulence, and serenity.
• Black can display strength, mystery, and edginess.

Consider Fitting Imagery

Many travel logos use an icon image of some kind. This small illustration should be extremely easy to see and recognize. The pictorial representation you choose could be on the literal side:

• Mountains
• Airplane
• Beach
• Travel bags
• Boats
• Earth
• Map
• Trees
• River or ocean

Or more obscure images, like:

• Owl (wisdom)
• Birds (freedom)
• Lines or shapes representing motion
• Stars (navigation)

Not all logos have to have imagery included. If you don't find an illustration to fit your brand name or industry niche, you don't have to use one. As you explore your options, try using your company's name (logotype) or its initials (letter marks) as your design. Or, consider an abstract illustration or geometric shape for your logo.

Pick a Font Type or Family

Selecting the right lettering for your logotype is a big part of a successful design process. A great font makes your logo easy to read and identify. Different fonts will have different results in the overall look of the design.

While a handwritten font may make your business look handcrafted or family-owned, it can also be very hard to read. A sans serif font is more modern and easy to read, but it could also get lost in your logo design or make your company look generic. Slab serif fonts and decorative typefaces can help you stand apart, but they can quickly look gaudy.

Your selected typeface will impact every part of your site design because your fonts should stay consistent with your logotype. Finding the perfect font takes a lot more time and consideration than most non-designers realize.

Make it Scalable and Clear

You want a logo that is going to look just as good on a very big sign as it will on a business card. Part of this will come down to design. Your logo needs to be clear and easy to make out when it is shrunk down. Plus, it still looks good when displayed at a very large size.

For example, using the wrong font may make it hard to read your logotype when printed small. On the flip side, errors in your illustration may not be noticeable at a smaller size but be blatantly obvious when printed large.

How to Get Your Custom Logo Made

Once you have your concept, you want a professional finish. Take this idea and turn it into something versatile and scalable for your business. Here are the top options for creating your travel website logo.

Use a Creative Friend or Relative

Some business owners will create a DIY logo on their own or ask a budding artist they know to design it (like a friend, wife, cousin, co-worker's kid, or even their grandchild). This often means saving a lot of money and possibly giving someone else a chance to wet their feet in design.

The problem with amateur logo design is that it often isn't made in the right format or doesn't take into consideration certain issues (like scalability). You might end up with a logo that can only be used up to a specific size and looks pixilated and distorted on a t-shirt or a billboard. Creative people don't innately know what great logo design involves. So, hiring your friend or family member is likely to result in an inexperienced design that doesn't look very professional to your audience. An amateur-looking logo can make establishing business credibility an uphill battle.

Hire a Graphic Designer

A graphic designer is trained to understand design elements. Most graphic designers have specifically learned how to create a logo that works perfectly for your website. However, this route is not cheap and may not be a sure thing.

Graphic designers typically take weeks to months to produce your logo. They will often set a flat fee for the logo design so you aren't directly paying for their time. A professional logo from a designer could range anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars. While your first instinct might be to go after a low-cost graphic designer, you may end up with an amateur who isn't familiar with real-world use or your industry.

Freelance Design Platform

Some websites have freelance designers ready and willing to create a cheap logo for your business. If you choose to go with a freelance designer, make sure you set the right expectations. A freelance designer will quickly churn out your logo, and you won't have a lot of say over the outcome. It's often one of those cases where you get what you pay for.

This method may result in a rushed-looking or basic design. You might end up with a generic logo that doesn't really fit the look you are going for. Some designers will post example logos that look nothing like what they deliver for their low-priced logo packages.

Use a Logo Maker

Another option for creating your brand logo is using a mixture of DIY logo design and expert logo design. With a DIY logo maker tool, you can make a logo yourself, and have complete control over the aesthetics while still getting a professional result.

A logo maker allows you to input your company details and select your favorite fonts, colors, and imagery. The AI design tool you use should be fast and user-friendly. After selecting your preferences, you will get several designs roughs to tweak and create precisely what you want. The final result will be a professional logo design that is perfect for your travel website at a fraction of what it would cost to hire a graphic designer.

Pay Your Web Developer

Whoever is creating your website may have an option to add on a logo design as well. As a professional designer, the web developer is probably not going to do it for cheap. Great web developers are going to count this as an additional upgrade that costs more.

The upside to having your developer do the logo is that it should work perfectly with the aesthetic of the design. And while the web designer may create the perfect logo for your travel website, it may not be ideal for other purposes—like for your printed marketing materials or promo items.

Time to Make Your Travel Logo

The sooner you have a logo on your website, the more likely your visitors are going to trust you and want to read what you have to say. So, now that you know how to go about designing your logo, it’s time to get to it! Follow the above tips and you’ll have yourself the perfect travel logo in no time.