60 Highly Clever Minimal Logo Designs
Depending on the flavor of your business, your logo may appear big and flashy, bold and colorful or just plain simple and clever. In this roundup of minimal logos, I’ve turned the spotlight towards the more simple and clever logo styles that leave a strong impression. As simplistic as they may appear, there is genius behind these 60 highly clever minimal logo designs.
OneFund
Filmaps
NOON
Folder
back
Bipolar
Backspace
Stairs
Fence v.2
Walk
Unarmed
Frankenstein Films
Thinktank
Pelican
eveva
Love Clip
SewPerfect
Wave
Pendulum
Sex Lovers
City Direct
FishLine
Up
Straight UP
elefont
Rocket Golf
Illusion
Circus of Magazines
CodeFish
Zip
Mummy
Foot
Missing
Helium
Killed Productions
Bird
Giraffe
minimum
Catch 5
ascus
HandsUp
Pencil
James Forbes Plumbing
Wine Searcher
Ed’s Electric
LocKey
Handmade Pictures
upside down productions
More
Wine Kingdom
MOSLEEP
brand
Twins
Horror Films
Ross Poultry
Half
Crown
Jump
Atack
Tulipart
Have a Favorite Minimal Logo?
When putting a showcase of inspiration together, I often find myself picking a couple of favorites out of the bunch. In this case, I would have to choose Tulipart, Backspace, Pencil and City Direct. In actuality there are a dozen or more that I favor from this particular roundup. Did you find one or a couple that struck a tune with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts below. Thanks!
203 Comments
+Add your commentinspirational Logos. Horror Films and MoooooRE are my favorite ;)
Its so amazing that we can explain so much with clever logo designs.
Thanks for the round up, Shawn :)
Very smart logos. Pelican and Bipolar are my favorites. Great collection!
Nice use of negative space in a lot of these. It’s amazing how clever some of these designers are. Favorite – Circus of Magazines
Spectacular & very inspiring.
Thank you for compiling.
I was reminded of studying Herb Lubalin in college & being very impressed with his *families* logo.
Really, really nice collection.
Nice collection, very inspiring!
nice roundup, like the Twins and the Walk most
keep on the good work !
Elegance is always simple. These are great.
folder, bipolor, zip and foot. those are awesome. stay blessed…jon
terrific stuff- found “wave” to say the most elegantly, while still calling up the SoCal culture as a bonus…M
So simple but really efficient,
Thanks for this beautiful collection
Some of these are so good
my two favourites are illusion and missing :) great job!
Great collections. Thank you. My favorite logo design is Walk, Love Clip, Sex Lover and Wine Searcher.
I’m looking for a logo designer to produce exactly this kind of this for my company hyperlingo.com. If that’s you, or you know someone who can, please get in touch at webdeveloperapplications@googlemail.com
Thanks!
Carl
or you can even try http://www.99designs.com – decent stuff for $300-$500. In these websites, I still haven’t seen this quality – meaning intelligent and smart yet so elegant.
FREEEEEEERRR!!!
I LOVE YOU!!!! PELASE MARRY MEE!!!!!!!!!
You feel what you see……Illusion and Killed Production logos are my favorites….
Wow, that are amazing logos, love nearly all of them. My two favorites are backspace and illusion… Great, thanks!
Awesome! Horror films is no.1!
Cool, great Inspiration and concepts :) looking for more..
I’ve narrowed my faves down to Ed’s Electric, More, Illusion and Think Tank. At least, those are my faves until I look again.
… I like ‘pendulum’ a lot. By the way, it would be good to have several different backgrounds in order to see the visual appearance in different contexts.
Fantastic! My fave is ZIP
Walk, Jump, Killed Productions and Ed’s Electric are my favourites. Also like the logo of Shark Energy Drink http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/129895066_43ffa231da.jpg.
I have been teaching art for 40 years and simplicity is the answer. These are superlative! I am going to try to print them and use them in a lesson plan. Giraffe is so whimsical and the others are great tool
Fab collection of imagery. My fave has to be “giraffe”.
I love all of them! My favorites are attack, think tank and codefish.
@ EVERYONE
Thank you for your comments, they are much appreciated.
Shawn – where do I find such talent to design a similar logo in terms of intelligence, simplicity and elegance?
You truly have done great work putting all this together!
SP
my favorits are: up, pencil, and upside down
excellent logos with large variety
Excellent Variety, The best of it which like are two of them, Handmade Pictures and James Forbes Plumbing
Fantastic! simple, straight to the point.
nice. i wonder how many of these are logo designs versus type treatments. were they all used as actual branding logos?!
♥kudos
Some very unique logo ideas here. I specially like the logo for horor films. Lovly
My favorite is “Think Tank”, very clever.
Would you have a look at mine and tell me what you think?
http://www.myspace.com/envyphotocheyenne
They’re all amazing in their own right. Personal standouts are: Bird, and Unarmed, I love that unarmed takes a second to get and the sense of humor.
Bird is very relaxing, and seems so unhurried, as if there was no intent to be clever, just intent to be creative.
AAAAAAMMMMMAAAAAZZZZIIIINGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!
i like the illusion….. its about your ayes…….!!!
ALL LOGO is very unique idea. great
Great minds create great things, though greatness need no big effects. Wonderful works!
My favorites: Wine Searcher & handsup
These logos are overwhelmingly clever. I love the simplicity and cleverness of the helium logo. Frankenstein Film made me giggle which is more emotion than one gets from most logos.
Some logos are a bit too playful and too clever for their own good, though. Biggest offender is the “Fence” logo in my eyes.
Each was my favorite for a few seconds.
Response to “David,” if that’s OK:
The NV=envy concept is fine, but would be so much more meaningful if your own initials were N.V. The dots between the letters are distracting. And the overall balance of the several type messages needs work. A good logo-in-progress, I’d say.
Great! Yesterday I founded a company called “back”. I can perfectly use this logo as an inspiration. My other firm called “missing” already has a logo similar to the one shown above.
stairs, codefish, & tulipart.
thx for gathering these…
yeah those are really cool – nice post!
iloveit…
Thanks for a lot of new ones.
How many times do we have to see these same logos in a blog list?!?! DO SOMETHING ORIGINAL!
Jay, I write original material on this blog consistently. In between those original posts I like to throw in some inspirational roundups. I’m sorry that this particular one does not meet your standards.
@ Jay I’ve been coming to this site for a while and always find original material. When he does put together roundups, they are always of high quality. Look at these two font roundups he did where he used each font in it’s own design – http://bit.ly/br1fKa and http://bit.ly/boMZ1A . Who else is taking the time to do that?
ed´s eletric, up, and foot. “less is more”.
Wonderful works! ZIP is a very clever one. I love the work of this brazilian designer from the 60/70’s, Aloisio Magalhães. Particularly the light company logo http://bit.ly/91G0b2 and the energy company logo http://bit.ly/d7MDIA .
Sew perfect and Ed’s Electric – took me a while to spot the E!
Extremely gr8 talent.
Hats off
When you investigate further, you realize that most of these logos are made up – that is, there is no client. This renders the whole thing pretty useless for me.
Having a clever idea, coming up with a mark to fit a one word made-up company name, and then just drawing a logo like “UNARMED” to me has nothing to do with logo design. Next up is “LEGLESS” and Ill just draw a stick figure with no legs. Has nothing to do with logo design…
If your claim is true, I agree with you 100%. It’s a lot easier to “reverse-engineer” the graphic when the company name is whatever you decide it to be based on your vector. These are very slick but if it was done in the manner you imply, it is fraudulent IMHO.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I posted the same exact thing. The thing is that people will never understand that, and everybody thinks they are a designer.
bckspace is incredibly creative and the thing I like about it the most is that it is provocative – it makes me want to press my backspace key!
Wonderful! My favorites are mummy and helium. So cute.
Ah to be a student again… no clients, name your own fake company with a clever hybrid name.
Function follows form in most of these examples.
nicely put, and very true. Many is the time I wished I could have renamed a company.
They’re all fckng amazing!
Wonderful! Very good selection
in this article. I will bookmark this and keep an eye on updates. I wish every blogger paid so much attention to their blogs.
maravillosos!
Wonderful ! they all are cool love it.
ilovethis
Some clever designs. A friend came up with this one which I’ve always liked. http://www.layfielddesign.com/#logos?id=1&page=1
So !clever I love them and will share them with my friends in facebook :)
Favorite: PENDULUM!!
Whoever made those have a very creative mind.
The best blog post I’ve ever read
Awesome Creations. Really Clever Mind.
Nice, clean, original Designs. Good Post.
Good one…. my favorite one is “UNARMED” great visualization and execution
Hi fantastic and clever indeed. I would like to have something like this for my organisation. Anyone any idea hiw you can make someting for name is not final but in the line of …inclusive company. Its going to be about diversity and inclusion jobsite… Please do send me your ideas.
This is BRILLIANT!
ED’s Electric
FTW
ED’s Electric
FTW!
ol d logos are simply awesome…very inspiring :)
Very nice collection. I like the Sew and the Mummy one!
witty
I really love these sorts of things. You should check out my mates band page logo, he designed it himself. Really clever I thought.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Break-3/119143804827688?sk=app_178091127385
GREAT..all logo is awesome
my favorit is NOON and ILLUSION,those was clever idea..
ILLUSION is amazing one..!!
Great idea..
ILLUSION is amazing one..!!
Love these – I did a logo for an architecture practice some years ago. Inside Out Architecture designed houses and extensions but also interoir designs too. They called themselves ‘i o’.
file:///Users/benhunter/Desktop/IO.html
Its a amazing lesson for a student. It gives us inspiration to think and apply our wit with grace. The logos are so subtle and imposes the view to feel about the brand. The world’s best collection. Thank you for sharing. <3 them all.
These aren’t even real companies. Designing a logo is about creating a mark that will effectively capture the identity of an organization. They seem to just take the name of the ‘company’ literally and translate it into some kind of visual pun. I’ve seen worse but they certainly aren’t anything worth drooling over.
very creative and inspirational.
I was wondering if you could help me come up with a logo for my company. The name is Precision Electrical Contracting or Precision Electric.
our logo is really cute too! check it out!
Beautiful, creative and effective!!!!
Great minimal logos. Very creative.
I liked ZIP most. Overall cool minimalistic designs,
Thanks for sharing, good inspiration!
The film logo is very good
i really liked the half one.
well compiled. very clever.
great work
really you have got u work precisely go on
fauvorite up – illusion – missing – bird – killed
Very inspiring designs! You can really get a strong message across with a minimal design!
My mom taught Typography for 15+ years and the final projects she graded every year were a lot like these. I miss them so thank you!
FAV: Ed’s Electric
NEXT BEST IDEAS: Bipolar, Thinktank, & Horror Films
Awesome and clever logos! I have few more at my blog
http://www.alldesignstuffs.com/category/logos/
I hope you like it!
I’m looking for a logo designer to produce exactly this kind of this for my business. If that’s you, or you know someone who can, please get in touch at abdulmah_G@hotmail.com
Thanks!
Abdul
Pendulum is brilliant
hw can pendulum b not ur fav? lol, awsm, jst simply awsm
All very wonderful. But for me, Frankenstein, Horror, and
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I really love graphic design.
Every single one of those got a smile outta me. My favourite is Think Tank though. Really inspiring stuff.
My fave is Folder – very tricky and perfect really……
Hey guys. i manage this really cool band in the uk
Any of you clever creative types fancy suggesting a good approach to a logo for them
http://www.facebook.com/parkerandtheflowingwow
cheers
Geenee
Hey. I don’t create logos. I am a graphic design student, though. I could attempt to help you out, but their current logo is cooler than anything i could make probably. Anyway, the real reason I wanted to write you is because i really like the band! I live in The USA and i am 16 years old. I would like to get some of their music if you could tell me how that would be great. I could show a bunch of my friends, too. I really like their sound.
Do you mind designing a free one for GvSparx …..
GvSparx
I sent you an email with a quick minimal logo.
Andy
True clever . nice
My favorite is Bipolar because I am Bipolar
Something about the ross poultry logo attracts my eyes… has to be the chick (^^) cute.
I will say though, looking through the logos, they make you smile at their cleverness … at first glance.
Now I am by no means a logo designer but after staring and inspecting a few, I get the sense of gimmicky. As thought a lil’ too clever for their own good.
But what do I know. ^^ still a good time browsing through.
I like Helium logo best.
Man, these logos are all very cool… super creative !!!
these are some really cool stuff!!…creative and eye catching…simple yet marvellous…i too myself design on photoshop and corel draw…but buddy hats off!!…superb…
i just really hope that you can help me out with designing a logo for our college’s upcoming cultural fest where my designed posters have been posted…
do have a look at its facebook page http://www.facebook.com/utk12?ref=ts and suggest a suitable logo…if you may please….
Simply awesome… very creative :) Kudos!!
/agree.. Love the logos.
You are great buddy…..
Most of them are my favorite. Really, it’s hard to pick one.
Seriously some of the best graphic design I’ve seen in a long time, simple but effective.
I liked the one for Twins, and the plumbing one
Great designs. I’d been looking for a selection lof this quality for hours. Is there anyway I could find out who some of the designers are?
There were a few I really had to look at before I got it..
“wait for it… wait for it… Ahh god that is cool!!!”
I am a graphic designer and logos are where I struggle the most. These logos are extremely inspirational.
Lovely collection
“Code Fish” and “Sew Perfect” are much impressive and I feel they have Excellent sense of minimal design.
Anyone know who designs these?
Fantastic compendium.
I can only assume these aren’t “crowd sourced”.
Looking for a clever logo designer.
These are nice, but the thing is….. these are all fictional brands. Its very easy to create a logo and a name together, but in the real world of graphic design that almost never happens. You are given a set name and its your job to interpret that into a successful logo design. These are just clever image/word pairings, and finding a real connection with the guidelines you are given is much more clever.
Truly amazing logos, very inspirational
Collest collection i’ve ever seen.
So many! Folder, ThinkTank, Pelican, Pendulum, Up, Foot, Bird, and Ed’s Electric stood out for me, but I only saw one or two I didn’t quite like.
I’m going with Wine Searcher as my favourite
Pendulum – brilliant!
These are great will bookmark this for inspiration
Atack …pencil…in fact I liked them all!
“marvelous logo designs”
Superb logo collections….WALK and FOOT are interesting ones :)
Very clever. I am always amazed at how simplicity shines over complexity. There are some extremely clever people in this world. Bravo.
Zip, Upside Down and Jump are my favorites but there are lots of others
Some really nice, clean and simple designs
I love Circus of Magazines and Rocket Golf!
These are awesome. I LOVE the walk and backspace logo.. genius! lol
Nice surprise to stumble upon such a superior collection of original niche ideas. Thanks, MC
Inspiration, inspiration, inspiration… Love it!
Atack, Handmade, Unarmed, Walk, and Killed productions are awesome!
like like
Pretty amazing yet simple designs! Well think!
simple,witty,creative and so clever! great aesthetic appeal and sheer genius! hard to pick a favourite but frankenstein films and bipolar are outstanding!
Brilliant logos!… Horror movies is my fav!
I think, I will cry!
wow ! this is so amazing and inspiring !
There’s so many that i like, I must say that handmade film is totally refine :)
circus of magazines and ross poultry are personal likings. Amazing collection :)
Great information. Very informative. I really like the simplistic logos. Very nice!!! Mirajestudios.com
Subtle and simple — superb!
thank you for good design.
i have good idea.
The logos are awesome! I wonder if you guys could make me a custom one like this for my production!
It could be ‘ARA’ or ‘ARA Productions’.
Hire a graphic designer, you cheap ass.
nice share!
These are all examples of how great design looks effortless (but I know better).
Very nice! Collest collection i’ve ever seen.
I love bird, pelican, sew perfect. I’m looking for a logo of a stick figure woman with curly hair and a dog, that screams compassion.
these logos are great they gave me some good ideas to make one of my own thanks for sharing this
I’ve already seen many of these logos elsewhere on the web, but it’s a good list none the less. Thanks.
Hi guys good job on all of those,
Im looking in to hire somebody to help with my logo,
Can you pls refer me some one.
Thank you
R.
Hi Rodrigo.
I use to work with logos creation.
Do you speak portuguese?
Let’s contact by email ok?
Blessings
These are all great! I love the one for Bipolar, Killed, and Hands Up. Everything was very witty and creative. Good job!
Amazing simlicity!
This is an excellent collection of minimalist logos. I love the work done by each of the designers and will bear it in mind for my own future designs.
Great collection which I will keep to remind me when I do my logos, “Keep it simple”. “CN” logo, Canadian National Railway”, is still one of my favourite logos (http://www.cn.ca/en/media/media-kit/logo-usage-and-licensing). Simple yet says railroads, boxcars etc.. Also “GO”, Government of Ontario transit logo. http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/default.aspx.
nice, my favourites are OneFund, Code Fish, Stairs and Folder
I need to know if I can have some options to change my logo. please. Thanks
I liked (Giraffe, Bird, Code Fish, Pelican, Handmade Pictures) there is vision.
great and wonderful logos!
Most of them are great. The one that stood out for me was City Direct and Up. I’d love to know the brief behind them or more about the companies they represent.
Russ Meyers produce a movie call Up, it had a simple logo as well
I love looking at these amazing logos and thinking about the creative genius and the thought process spent on each one of them. And then I wish that I could someday be so clever. Thank you to each and every one of you for your clever and intelligent design.
‘City direct’ and ‘code fish’ are my favorite. They are really clever.
And the ‘Horror film’ is kinda funny :) Love that too.
Thanks Shawn, for the great list.
I thought the love clip one was cute.
You can’t beat immediate, well executed and simple logo design. The Elefont and City Direct examples do it for me, very nice.
Logos are amazing
Great use of negative space. Entertaining collection.
The bipolar logo is pretty clever ;)
‘Bipolar’ , ‘Illusion’ and ‘Thinktank’ are my favorite. They are really smart.
They represent the perfection for a well-designed logo:
thousands of suggestions behind one simple sign…
Thanks for the great list, these examples will enter in my list of graphic inspirations.
Awesome logos. Nice to share with us.
i love pendulum logo :)
electric and wine searcher, very nice
Anyone know who the artist is here? I’d like to hire them.
Hehe, I love the Code Fish one~! ^.^ How very cute and clever~!
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Haha, now I’m spamming my friend’s phone with a bunch of little fishies. Such a great idea. There are many others I like as well, but that one’s definitely my favorite.
} <3 {
Really nice logos. I like negative and positive combination inside a logo.
very nice!
great, Usefull for me ;)
I really liked the selection
nice collection.
i like thinktank logo. creative design.
Great and wonderful logos! i like the back(BACK) Logos are amazing.
Cool! Perfect! They are really smart.
hey cam anyone come up with my logo call Elbon Photography? but that can look cool like those above
Hi Shawn ! Great logo collection. Thanks for sharing. If you know of any free/paid resources for vintage badges. Please share. TIA !