Designing a logo is very often one of the first steps in your yoga career, but there’s no need to hire an expensive designer when you’re just starting out. Instead allow your brand time to evolve before you invest serious money in a professionally designed logo. Until then, keep it simple and create your logo yourself in Canva (*affiliate link) with a custom font of your choice!
Here’s a quick video tutorial where I show you step-by-step how to create a logo with a custom font in Canva:
If you haven’t been using Canva (*affiliate link) yet you’re missing out on one of my favorite tools. Canva is a user-friendly design platform that allows you to easily create social media images, brochures, flyers, and of course logos.
#1: Choose your handwritten font
I recommend looking for your favorite handwritten font on Creativemarket.com (affiliate link) and buy it there. This will cost you between $15 and $30. Here you find a selection of fonts that I love.
After you’ve bought your font download the font files to your computer. You’ll need them in the next step.
#2: Upload your handwritten font to Canva
Canva has a few handwritten fonts to choose from in their free plan, but if you want to upload your own fonts, you’ll have to upgrade to Canva Pro (*affiliate link). I think it’s totally worth it for the free images you get alone, but you could also join just for a month and cancel right away if you’re on a tight budget.
After you’ve created your account and logged in, select “Brand Kit” in the menu. Go to “Uploaded Fonts” and upload the .otf file of the font you bought on Creativemarket.
#3: Create a new design with custom dimensions
Go back to your Canva homepage and select “Custom dimensions” next to “Create a design”.
The dimensions you need will depend on where you need the logo for and the length of your text.
Let’s start with 300px width x 100px height. Enter this in the fields and click on “Create new design”.
Choose “Text” in the menu and click on “Add a heading”. This will add a text field to your design. Here enter your logo text, for example, your name.
Next change your font. Select the handwritten front that you just uploaded from the list.
Increase or decrease the font size so that your text fills the layout as closely as possible.
If your text is longer you might have to change the dimension of your layout. To do this select “Resize” and then “Custom Dimensions” and change the numbers to a larger width, for example, 400px width and 100px height. Then click on the “Resize” button. You can play around with the size until you’re happy with the way your text fits in your layout.
Center your text vertically and horizontally until you’re happy with how it is positioned in the layout.
Change the color if you don’t want it in black.
#4 Download your logo
Click on the download button and download your logo as JPG jpg in the best resolution (100%), or as a PNG if you need it with a transparent background.
#5 Create a printable version of your logo
For print, you need your logo image in a bigger resolution than for your website. To create a print version for your logo resize it and choose a size that’s 10x your original size, for example, 200px x 1000px. Download it as a JPG in 100%, this will be good enough to use in print.
And there you go! You now have a professional logo without paying a designer the big bucks. Of course, you may want to update your logo at a later time as your business evolves as many brands do. Once you are at a point where you’re ready to invest in your branding a little more you can always choose to hire a designer and revamp your logo if you’d like. I hope you found this tutorial helpful and feel ready to create your own logo in Canva.