Vintage Logo Design – A theme that never goes out of fashion and always has its place across design industries. They don’t get older;they just become classics. Be it on a website or an accessory, vintage designs are always considered premium, luxurious, and lovable.

In this article, we will discuss in detail some forms of vintage logos, and how they have managed to stay in trend even after so many decades. We will also discover newer logos that have evolved gracefully, without losing the vintage touch.

Here are few forms of logo designs in Vintage form

Elements of Vintage Logo Design

Textured Background / Photography in Background

If you are a kid of the 80’s, you would not have forgotten some of the iconic logos like Cadbury, Coke etc. These logos essentially have a fine writing structure that flows freely and yet never deviates from proving its point at large. Most of the vintage logos had (in some cases, still has) a textured/blurred/ faded image in the background.

Cadbury

Cocacola

Having textured backgrounds enhanced the look of the logo by helping it pop-up. This in turn helped the brand to easily captivate the minds of their audience. A seamless pattern or a subtle texture or an image that is blurred or faded were used in the background to make their logo easily stand out and be identifiable. These logos were popularly based out of a few color tones like grey, sephia, eastman colors etc.

Here are a few vintage logo inspirations to consider picking from for your next logo project.

Riley’s Cycle Shop

Medium Rare

Arrow Head

Epic Mountain

Wildlife expeditions

Hustle

Pine Wood

Noise in Background / Text

What strikes your mind when you first see a logo with grains in the background? Noise? Well, the first thing that reminds us is that its old. A subtle and a balanced use of noise / grains in the logo background or the text of the logo enhances the look of the logo and also makes the user feel that the logo has been given some attention to detail rather than the ubiquitous computer-made ones.

A noisy texture, grains of wood, a crumpled/stained/burnt/torn/old paper effect in the background doubles up the home-made feeling of the logo. Adding noise to the text falls under the same category. If you are looking for a vintage logo for your brand, this form is very popular and also has a lot of scope for improvement and scaling.

Here are a few vintage logo examples, that falls under this category.

The Bronson

Trenton Farms

Alice Crowley

Spoon Graphics

Textured Typography

Textures and patterns are an integral part of a vintage logo. Adding thin borders to text, using concentric circles, a double or triple line, hedged fonts, hand-drawn elements in the sides or in between the logo, adding a signature effect (see the Super Game or the Dan Cotton Logo), chalk piece grunge textures (The Mensch logo), using shield-type frames (The Aldo’s Logo) etc are also used to make the logo look more vintage-ish.

Here are some vintage logo inspirations that falls under this criterion:

The Surf Club

Frisky Goat

Abduzeedo

Alvin’s Sea food palace

PaperWheel

Coffee Box

Vintage badge logo design

Badges and Stamps are always a proud form of logo design and is an even more luxurious vintage form. Companies have always used badges or stamps to portray themselves as trustable brands. These badges and stamps were paired again with textures of choice or noise to make the areas they believed need to pop-out.

These badges had more ethnic details to it based on the industry. For example, a farm logo had an image of an actual farm in it while a distillery had wheat chaffs and brewery images in them. As there is no hard-and-fast rule of what should be there in the logo, the designers have unlimited freedom to craft the logo according to the business needs. This form is mostly straight forward and the logo directly depicts the industry to which the company belongs.

Here are some vintage logo examples you can take as inspiration:

Floyd’s Bakery

Artillery Drums

Tamme Valley

Scoops n Smiles

Sceret Wales

Handwritten typefaces

What’s more personalized than a handwritten, hand-drawn logo for your business? In each era of design, designers have tried to use exquisite hand lettering and detailed drawings to enhance the richness of a logo. Even today, this legacy is followed and designing such logos with a vintage touch, is a challenging and exciting task for any designer.

Businesses like personal blogging, boutique shops, bakeries, cake shops, photography studios, florists etc can use this style form to bring that personal, handmade, contemporary look to their logo design.

This form of design can be achieved by using extraordinary looking retro typefaces paired with subtle handmade drawing to keep the flow going in the logo. Here is a list of some free retro fonts! Have a look if any of them look like the one you need for your logo!

Here are some retro looking logos for ideas for your next logo project:

Burnt Toast

Simple Life

Gardenia Vert

Katie Moore

Becoming Josephine

Melissa Davis

April Sloan

R|A

The love for gears

Logos of the yester era were created in the time where there was a high industry/factory boom; times where there was a rise of labour or an industry revolution. So, use of gears and tools played a predominant role in the creation of logos. Logo design company will analyse the clients need and work with them until the clients satisfaction.

Gears meant hard work, labour, factory, revolution, sustainability, strength etc. Designers added gears or tools to projects which had a high involvement of man-power like manufacturing industries, automotives and mechanic shops which were labour-driven to show power and superiority amongst others.

Below are some of the logo design inspirations for being creative on gears and tools:

Y-Wave

Tulsa Fixed gear

Tire Land

Pedal Works

Vintage color schemes with strong imagery depiction / illustrations

While most of the vintage logo designs were either black-and-white or grayscale, designs were also created in colors. One of the best promising way to create a vintage logo is to create the logo in a bright color scheme that enables to draw attention of eyes and keep the user’s eye interested.

To achieve this look, designers use a dual or tri colour pairing with a strong illustration of either people, places or rarely even icons to represent their brand. The colors they used were strong and limited to the modern retro printing options those days.

In this world 30 – 40 % of the owners were small businesses , so to make them feel comfortable we are working as an small business logo design company.

The use of very few bright colors, glam up your logo to the late 1950’s or 60’s look. If you want your users to feel nostalgic after seeing your logo, then yes, this style will never disappoint you to help your brand succeed in the ‘first impression’ which is a logo.

Below is a small list of logos that matches this logo form.

Cuppy Cakes

Big Top

Branding Apparel

Papa Bob’s

Ray’s Place

Crowned Traders

Home Front

It’s Organic

King Fox

Naimoli

Typography / lines / Borders

A brilliant typography along with a properly laid out concept gives birth to a well constructed logo. Typography, as discussed earlier, plays a vital role in laying out the perfect logo for any business. Nowadays, there are unlimited options when it comes to vintage typography. Here is a beautiful article that showcases various retro typography patterns.

Concentric lines or borders along the line of the typography brings a luxurious look to your vintage logo design. Floral art, hand-drawn borders, hand-drawn frames, detailed illustration of elements or even an established date or year becomes a part of these logos.

This type of well balanced logo is a truly an accomplishment which will enable your audience remember you for a longer period of time.

Voyage around Americas

Industrial Supply Company

Ashdown

Lake Yakima Wild

Shine Design

Seattle

Jonden & Dru

To wrap things up

Vintage logo designs are everywhere-from marketing, ads, product packaging, websites to graphics- and they are always in trend. Based on the theme it inhabits, a vintage logo depicts the overall business with the creative elements that it holds.

For decades, these have been in trend in either of its form and have always enabled the businesses hold it with pride as their face of the business. Revisiting the forms of vintage logo design every now and then helps a designer to keep themselves updated, while for a business owner, it helps to explore various forms of logo design that are there in the field.

Have a look at all the forms, try to explore more in each of its forms. If you are looking for an exciting, unique logo for your business try to choose best logo design services to achieve your brand popularity, contact us to discuss what best suits you!

Keep experimenting!

Liked This Article? We have a lot more where that came from! Join 13,753 subscribers who stay ahead of the pack. This is required. Yes! Subscribe By entering your email, you agree to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.