You don’t necessarily need a personal brand logo to stick in people’s memories, but it definitely helps—and it’s really part of a wider effort to create a visual identity for yourself, which includes a color palette and choosing an appropriate typography for your portfolio website.
In fact, creating a visual identity for yourself is one of the core services that personal branding consultants offer, alongside creating your professional narrative and teaching you how to create a portfolio website.
Personal brand logo examples
Anxious about starting from scratch, or just not a visually creative type? You don’t need to think of a logo all on your own. I’ve assembled some of the best personal brand logos across the web so that you can take inspiration for your own.
First, it’s worth noting that personal brand experts all use logos for themselves, which should immediately signal that it’s worthwhile to have one. It’s not strictly necessary to build a personal brand, but it sure does help.
They are running their own businesses, so it’s easy to write off those examples as business branding. That’s valid but it misses the larger point of becoming recognizable and familiar to everyone who comes into contact with their personal brands.
And you know what? They’re onto something.
According to a report from CareerBuilder, 50% of employers consider candidates’ “professional image” to be a core component of the vetting process. It’s the second-largest factor that they check, as you can see in the bar graph above.
The takeaway: Using a personal brand logo for that image could help tip the scales in your favor.
What would that look like for you, though? Check out these 7 examples of personal brand logos from real-life professionals to see what yours could look like.
You can see that few of them are fancy. They’re all names or initials, really.
Not a ton of people use personal brand logos for a “normal” job search, which makes it more of a competitive advantage for those who do. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that most people don’t think of it until they realize they need some kind of image for their portfolio websites.
Take a look at my portfolio site here and you’ll see the same thing: I use a stylized signature of my first name as my own “logo” as of writing because I had nothing else to use at the time. It feels authentic and professional at the same time, which is an important part of personal branding.
It doesn’t need to be fancy—just serviceable.
Take the pressure off to create the “perfect” logo for yourself. Just start with something that represents your name and update it if or when a better design comes to you.
Creating a personal brand logo
Good news—you don’t have to create a personal logo from scratch. There are plenty of options out there, including free tools to get you started.
What are those free tools?
This is what Looka’s personal brand logo generator can produce.
Here’s what Tailor Brand’s logo maker looks like. Like all of the other logo generators listed here, it gives you the option to add a tagline to your logo design. That means you can insert your favourite personal brand words right into your logo.
Alternatively, you can add your own personal brand statement to the design as well for an added touch.
This is what Smashing Logo’s software looks like. The designs rely on background colors more than the others, which could work well with a portfolio website.
Last but not least, check out Canva. It isn’t purpose-built to generate logos, like the others on this list, but it’s an incredible graphic design tool that will let you create one quite easily (speaking from experience).
Trying out any of those tools will give you an entire selection of personal brand logo ideas adapted to your own name. They usually ask you to narrow down the selection with a few factors:
- Your industry (if you’ve picked one).
- Colors you prefer.
- Personal brand icons that resonate with you.
- Typography samples you like.
- Traits you want associated with your logo.
Most of them also let you customize any designs served up for you. You could change them to look as similar or as different as you’d like!
That’s how you create the best personal brand logos without the need for design skills. From there you can plaster your logo on your resume, your portfolio website, your social profiles, and any presentations or documents that you create.
It’ll certainly make you stand out.
If you haven’t already, check out these personal branding examples to see how you can put that logo to proper use.
Happy hunting!
