Seven Inspiring Startup Logos and What Makes Them So Great

One of the best ways to stand out from your competition is to create a unique business brand, so customers can readily identify your company both online and offline. Selecting a font and color for your business name, creating a slogan, and designing a unique logo is a must in today's world if you want to earn consumer trust and develop brand loyalty.

Why is a Logo so Important?

It takes an average person just two seconds to look at your company and decide if he or she is interested in doing business with you. As individuals process visual information much faster than text information, an appealing logo will catch a person's interest more rapidly and effectively than a business name.

What's more, a logo tells consumers what they can expect from your business. An intricate, formal logo shows your business is formal in nature and can be ideal for companies such as financial services. A casual logo shows you have a relaxed ambiance. A playful logo attracts kids and parents, letting them know the business offers children's products and/or services.

Seven Startups with Winning Logos: What Made Them Great

There are certain qualities that make a good logo – versatility, memorable, simple, relevant and timeless, and all of the below logos convey these qualities.

ByteDance

ByteDance is an internet technology company headquartered in Beijing. Some of its best-known platforms include TikTok, Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), and Toutiao, a platform for sharing news and information.

ByteDance's logo is incredibly simple. It features four vertical trapezoids of varying lengths. Each bar is a different shade of blue, while the company's name is written in dark blue. On the company website, the company name and logo are white on a dark blue background.

The logo is superb for a number of reasons. The bars can easily be associated with the internet access icon found on many computers and cell phones, making it easy for consumers to identify ByteDance as an internet company. The design can be used on any platform; furthermore, it does not lock ByteDance into providing only its current services and platforms. If the company branches out to offer other platforms and services in the future, its logo will continue to serve it will.

InstaCart

InstaCart is a platform that allows users to pay for a personal shopper to do his or her grocery shopping at participating retailers. Users can access the platform via computer or smartphone.

Instacart's logo is a bright orange carrot with two green leaves on top. The letters are the same shade of green as the carrot's leaves and the font is casual in style. While some company logos can be displayed without the company name and users will still recognize them, this is not the case with InstaCart's logo. The carrot and company name are meant to be paired together as the image-based logo is too generic to stand out on its own. Even so, the branding and logo are perfect for InstaCart as the colors accurately showcase the company as one that works with natural products (food in this instance), and their vibrancy helps the logo stand out on just about any platform.

Databricks

Databricks is a data and AI company that offers data storage, analytics and large-scale data engineering, among other services. Its icon-based logo looks like a stack of bricks but also closely resembles a server. The logo is dark red while the company's name on the site is placed under the logo and is white on a black background.

Databricks' logo goes well with both its name and its mission. Those who see it won't have a hard time remembering the company name, and the logo looks classy and professional, what one would expect from a large technology company that serves multinational corporations such as Shell, Regeneron and H&M Group.

Kyruus

Kyruus offers provider search and scheduling services for healthcare organizations, helping medical facilities match patients to the professionals who are best able to help them. Its logo is the company name, written in black, capital letters, with a streak of light blue across the first letter. This line replaces the top slanted line on the letter "K".

Kyruus made a smart choice when adding the light blue to its logo. Light blue is a common color selection for companies serving the medical industry, including Sensely, Diabnext, Augmedix, Baylabs, and Day Two. Thus, when prospective clients see the logo, they automatically associate it with a medical facility. The sleek capital letters make it clear that this firm offers professional services.

PatientPop

PatientPop, like Kyruus, offers medical services. However, it has taken a different tack with its logo design, creating an icon-based logo that looks like a heart The design itself is white on a green background, while the company name is written in green, all-caps letters.

While green is commonly associated with nature, it also conveys energy, hope, health, and compassion. Medical facilities and pharmaceutical companies often use green to convey safety when speaking about medications, and it has the same feel when used for the logo of a company that helps medical professionals grow their practices. The heart augments the color selection, giving PatientPop a caring feel.

Natural Machines

Natural Machines offers food printing, a unique service that enables eateries and even average individuals created culinary masterpieces. Its logo is a lower-case 'n' joined with a lowercase 'm'. The letter 'n' has two leaves sticking out of the top. The logo is white, as is the company's full name, which is written right under the logo.

As Natural Machines works with food, creating a logo with a clear connection to nature was undoubtedly a good idea. At the same time, the logo is sleek enough to allude to the fact that Natural Machines also works with machinery, not groceries. The inclusion of the company's initials was also smart, as the name is a bit long, and it could be easy for individuals to forget the company name without the initial letters on clear display.

Aqtiva

Aqtiva is an EU-based company that specializes in helping companies identify and sort-through high-quality data. The firm's logo is a simple black circle with a diagonal aquamarine line on the bottom left-hand side. The company name is written in all lower-case letters; like the icon-based logo, the letters are all black except the line on the "q", which is aquamarine.

The logo is simple and easy to remember. It has a futuristic feel, as the aquamarine line through the circle resembles a pathway; this can be interpreted as a path to success, path to the future, or path to new technological developments. The fact that the logo resembles a capital "Q" makes it easy for consumers to associate the logo with the company name.

Are you designing a logo for your new business, or considering a logo re-design in order to attract more customers? If so, consider the tips and real-life examples above to design a logo that will meet your needs both now and in the future. With time, research, and the help of a good online logo design site, any business owner can create winning logo he or she can be proud of.