Creating a logo is a huge part of establishing any business, including a restaurant. Your restaurant needs a way to be remembered by customers. A memorable logo plays an important role in this. So, how do you create and design a restaurant logo? 

Learning how to design a restaurant logo takes a lot, especially if you don’t know much about graphic design. With this article, we are going to try to teach you some of the basics. So you know what to look out for when you hire a designer to work on your own restaurant’s logo.

Know Your Brand

Before you get onto design ideas, you need to figure out what your brand is all about. Think about what your restaurant is, from the cuisine to your specialty dish. These details will help you create a logo that perfectly matches your restaurant.

For instance, let’s say that you have a diner, and your specialty is your burgers. You can add a burger to the logo. Burger King is a great example of this, as they have a burger in their logo. The burger was fairly explicit in their logo design in the past. Today, they add the burger in more abstract ways. 

You ought to consider your target market when making your logo. When you design a logo for your restaurant, you want to cater to your customers. If your target market will be young millennials and the other Gen Z kids, you may consider using pastels and muted colors (making sure it matches your restaurants). These colors are popular with the younger generations. Alternately, if you want to stand out: don’t be afraid to experiment!

Study the Competition

Don’t forget to look at your competitors. You need to make a statement with your logo to differentiate yourself from your competitors, but you can definitely pick up a few things from them as well. Scope out competing restaurants and see what their logos are.

Your competitors will already have a good idea of what works with your target market, so borrowing an idea or two from them can help you. Let’s say that you have got a cafe, and you notice other coffee shops opt for minimalistic logos. You can go for the minimal route as well, just make sure to add your own unique flair! 

Keep in mind that borrowing ideas from the competition may not ALWAYS be the best idea. In some cases, your competitors may give you an idea of what you should avoid. For instance, Starbucks is the main coffee shop that uses a “mascot” for their logo, and most other brands cannot get away with that. Finding a unique wordmark logo for your coffee shop might be the better bet.

Stay True to Your Colors

Colors are crucial for everything in a business, especially restaurants, because of color psychology. Color can impact your customer’s feelings about your restaurant, so you need to select your color palette wisely. Moreover, the colors you choose when you design a restaurant logo should match your current business’s aesthetic.

Here are some colors and what they convey:

• Yellow: Cheery, Sunshine, Summer
• Green: Calming, Seafood, Premium, Water
• Pink: Playful, Feminine, Sweet
• Red: Passion, Energy, Love
• Green: Healthy, Vegetarian, Vegan, Eco-friendly
• Purple: Spiritual, Luxe, Healing
• Brown: Warm, Wholesome, Homemade, Vintage

There are no exact rules that you have to follow, but these are good general ideas that you can keep in mind. At Tremento, we love to experiment by choose more unique colors for the brands we work with. Sometimes we match the palette to a restaurant’s interior, sometimes to the food they’re serving, and sometimes we try to create a clear connection to the heritage of a restaurant. 

Important is to keep in mind which colors competitors nearby are already using (you don’t want to use the exact same green color as the restaurant on the corner of the street) and what assumptions the colors create by potential guests. For example Indigo blue is often perceived as ‘fancy’ and ‘luxurious’. Not necessarily the best color for a quick in-and-out pizza place. The same goes for fluorescent green: not our first choice for fancy restaurants! 

Try to choose several colors to create a beautiful color palette. We have a huge array of color palettes to choose from if you are stuck in a rut for color ideas. Click here to check them out!

Choose a Font

Fonts have a huge impact when it comes to learning how to design a logo for a brand. Fonts show off how classy, fun, unique, etc., your brand is. Choosing the wrong font for your logo can leave a wrong impression of your restaurant in people’s minds. Imagine using the dreaded Comic Sans and Arial for your restaurant’s logo – it’s best to skip those entirely.

Let’s say that you have a fancy restaurant that needs a logo. You are gonna need a font that matches that fancy restaurant logo. We have showcased a few excellent fonts for a fancy restaurant in this article. They are simultaneously classy and clean.

Pictures

You can choose a symbol or illustration to accompany your logo. There are many brands that use wordmark logos (logos without an image), but that is up to you and whatever matches your restaurant’s aesthetic. Sometimes the two can also be combined.

Pictorial logos can help people recognize your business without reading a name. For instance, Dominos Pizza uses a pictorial logo. McDonald’s has its iconic monogram logo. Wendy’s and KFC use mascot logos. Another example would be the Ninja Cat logo that we made above. Just the cat on its own is recognizable enough!

Some people think that pictorial logos leave a lasting impact, but that really depends on how you create your wordmark logo. In Tremento, we believe any logo style can be memorable and impactful with the right effort. Your logo needs to tell a story, and we know how to make that work with any logo style you choose.

Your Logo Structure

Finally, let’s talk about the structure of your logo. When you design a restaurant logo, or a logo for just about any type of business, the structure matters. There are tons of options for your logo’s layout. You can choose from square, circle, diagonal, etc., but try to opt for something that will match your aesthetic.

Let’s say that you have a high-end restaurant. The layout should be fairly simple, especially if you chose wilder colors. A horizontal layout, like the below, may be best for this.

Design a restaurant logo that attracts more customers!

Creating a logo that defines and tells a story about your restaurant will always be essential when you learn how to design a restaurant logo. You want it to perfectly suit your restaurant’s aesthetic, and we can help you with that. Check out our logo store!

Have you already seen all the amazing inspiration on Design Rush? See some great packaging examples here.

Ready to learn more?

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