I know that a lot of small biz owners who haven’t yet developed a logo or any visual branding for their business will sometimes consider using Canva to create their logos.
If this sounds like you, then watch this quick video because I wanted to share a couple of considerations to keep in mind.
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Transcript
A really common question that I get asked is whether or not you can create your logo in Canva.
And the answer to that is yes. Sort of.
You can use Canva if you wanted to create a logo for your business, but you do need to understand some of the limitations when you’re doing that.
So if you do a Google on “Canva logo license”, you’ll probably end up on this licensing page on Canva’s help center and it’s titled “licenses, copyright and using Canva for commercial purposes.”
So there’s a lot of information on this page that is very worthwhile getting familiar with. I know their licensing can be incredibly confusing. I will say that as a Canva Certified Creative, I am still trying to get some clarity around how the licensing works and what is acceptable and what is not.
But what I wanted to draw your attention to in particular is this area down here under trademarks and logos.
Here it says a trademark has to be a unique symbol. For that reason you can’t use free or pro content as part of a trademark, design mark, trade name, business name, service mark, or logo. Our logo templates are for inspiration, a starting point for your own unique design.
So what this means is that you cannot use the icons and illustrations and components that you might find in Canva’s icon and photo image library as part of your logo design. However, what you can do is if you have a proper commercial license of an illustration or icon that you upload into Canva, you can create your logo using that within Canva.
Additionally, if you had something hand drawn for you or something that was created specifically for you to create your logo, then you could upload that into Canva as well. This is my understanding. The key takeaway here though, is that you cannot be using the icons and illustrations in Canva’s image library as part of your logo.
I know that I have seen quite a few business owners doing this so it is something to be aware of.
