Why you DON'T want to use Canva logo design templates for your small business

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I’ve seen more and more business owners referring to Canva when it comes to a logo design for their small business.

As a graphic designer, I cringe at these comments. 

I understand that having a Canva logo design can seem like a steal. Financially, it might be all you can afford right now. 

However, as tempting it may be, I strongly suggest you do not buy into a Canva logo design template for your business start-up. Not only are you limited in its uses, but it will never establish your business as a unique and effective start-up.

With a graphic design background, you might feel like I’m too hard on anyone who uses a Canva logo design for their business. That’s a fair point. I have my packages to sell, and there’s a conflict of interest against others using a Canva logo design template.

To contest my point, here are 3 of my reasons, reiterated by Canva’s help center, why you should not use a Canva logo design template.

Not Guaranteed Full-Rights

According to Canva’s help center, you won’t obtain full-rights to a logo design template made in Canva. 

You’d have to heavily edit the Canva logo design to set it apart from the other template designs to own the design rights to any created logo fully. Despite how much editing and originality you use to create your Canva logo design, it still might not be enough to differentiate it between other designs.

Since you are using a logo design template, you won’t be able to trademark your design. You’d have to create your elements and commission them, which would make it easier to buy a logo from a graphic designer than trying to recreate it in Canva’s logo design templates.

You also aren’t able to use Canva’s picture gallery for your logo design. It won’t matter if it’s a paid graphic or free; they can’t give you those elements’ rights.

You can use fonts, basic shapes, lines, and elements in their free logo design templates for your Canva logo designs. 

1 Logo File Type

Currently, Canva also doesn’t support vector file type formats. Not having a vector file type means that you are most likely stuck with only a .jpg file type format, rather than a wide variety of forms that might serve your small business logo design better for your products.

You should have at least four file type formats when you create a logo design for your small business.

Also, this file type doesn’t allow you to produce your logo design on various marketing materials you’ll need to create. You won’t be able to expand your logo and obtain a high-quality image of your logo. You also won’t be able to have a transparent background.

While a .jpg file type format is great for digital and social media, it is not great when you want to create various products or add your logo to a graphic design project with another background than white.

You can export your logo design template from Canva at a resolution of 300 dpi. This resolution is a larger file format that will allow you to use the file type when you need to place the file when you are creating print or larger files, but it’s not a guarantee that it will keep its qualities across platforms.

Related Content: 4 File types and formats you can create for your logo in Adobe Illustrator

Templates Aren’t Original

One of the most prominent aspects of creating a brand identity is that it be unique to your small business. With a Canva logo design template, you aren’t able to truly get that unique and one-of-a-kind business look.

When you choose to use a Canva logo design template, you sacrifice your small business’ individuality. You might add your color scheme and fonts that you want, but your logo design will still look similar to anyone else who decides to use the same Canva logo design template. 

You might consider that your font and colors are enough, but you still run into trademark problems. You would not be able to register your ‘unique’ logo design because that will always not be enough to make your logo design unique enough for Canva’s conditions.

To create a unique logo design for your small business, you want to say that your logo design fits your brand identity confidently.

The word template opposes the fact that your logo design will be unique in any case. A logo design template won’t help you in the long run. It might allow you some peace of mind and inspire you, but it will not help you establish a brand identity or a small business.

Your business’ logo design is one of the first elements to include in your brand identity strategy. It’s important that you start your business out on the right footing by having a unique logo design.

Are you looking for more help to determine your logo design and how to create an effective brand identity? Join my e-newsletter for more graphic design tips to help grow your business.