Young Upstarts

So you’ve just started a new enterprise but you’re looking at a cheap – heck, free – way to create a logo for your business. You can take a stab at it with your paltry Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop skills, take advantage of your designer friends or maybe even pay a slight sum on a design crowdsourcing platform such as 99 Designs to come up with something you think you might be able to use.

But here’s one resource you may find useful – website publishing platform Squarespace recently announced Squarespace Logo, an easy-to-use drag-and-drop logo builder anyone can use. This collaboration with design community The Noun Project lets users combine and format an infinite combination of icons and text to create the perfect logo. Users can choose from a number of different layouts, adjust dimensions, select colors, and more, to personalize their logos. Handy previews present the finished logo on a business card, a website, or on t-shirts, so you get a fair idea of how it would look in those use cases.

“One of our missions as a publishing platform is to help people bring their ideas to life. When you’re starting a business, even the basics like your website or logo can seem daunting,” says Anthony Casalena, CEO and founder of Squarespace. “We’re thrilled to add Squarespace Logo to our suite of creative tools and help small businesses start communicating their ideas even faster.”

“Our international community of designers at The Noun Project has been building a global visual language to make communication quick, easy, and fun. We’re thrilled to partner with Squarespace and open up this language to a whole new audience and medium,” says Sofya Polyakov, co-founder and CEO of The Noun Project. “Every time a symbol is used in Squarespace Logo, the designer of that symbol gets paid royalties.  It’s a win-win for both communities.”

Squarespace Logo is free for anyone to use for non-commercial purposes. High-resolution logos for commercial use are free with a Squarespace account, or $10 without.

That’s a pretty decent price, eh?

Daniel Goh is the founder and chief editor of Young | Upstarts, as well as an F&B entrepreneur. Daniel has a background in public relations, and is interested in issues in entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, public relations and the online space. He can be reached at daniel [at] youngupstarts [dot] com.