Sam McCraw
When it comes to logo makers, you’d be forgiven for not having considered Fotor as one of the top options.
The tool is more widely recognized for being a solid online photo editor, however, they’ve added more tools and templates to the product including logo templates.
We decided to give their logo maker a closer look to see if it stacks up to the best online logo generators.
This article will take you through the main features of Fotor’s logo maker, and also show you how to create your own logo with the tool.
Jump to a specific section:
- Overview
- Creating a logo with Fotor
- Review
- Pricing
- Licensing
- What else does Fotor offer?
- Alternative logo makers
Section 1: Overview
If you haven’t come across Fotor before, here’s a quick overview:
What is Fotor?
Fotor is primarily an online photo editor, it’s deemed by many to be a fantastic free PicMonkey alternative. With Fotor you can easily alter photos with enhancements, background removal, and a whole range of other photo effects.
It’s all done within your browser and much of the product is available to use for free as well.
You can create collages with Fotor, and as mentioned previously, you can now create designs using their online design software (including logos).
Similar to Placeit, Canva, and BrandCrowd, Fotor’s logo maker is template-based. So, all you need to do as a user is find a template you like, and modify it to make it unique to your brand.
Their logo template library has around 330 designs at the time of writing, which is a decent amount but not quite as many as some other logo makers.
Fotor also offers the following:
- Photo editing
- Collage maker
- NFT maker
- Social media content
- Social media profile art
- Presentations
- Flyers
- Banner ads
- And much more.
Section 2: How to make a logo with Fotor
Here’s are the steps needed to create a quality logo with Fotor:
Step 1: Search for logo templates
From your Fotor dashboard homepage, navigate to the ‘Create a Design’ section:
You’ll see an option for ‘Logo’. If you click that you’ll be taken to the editor and can select a logo template from the templates tab on the side. You can also create your design from a blank canvas via the ‘Custom Size’ option (more on that later).
Alternatively, you can navigate to the templates section of the Fotor dashboard, go to the ‘Marketing’ tab and click on logo templates. You can filter the logo templates further by categories such as ‘Food’:
This will allow you to find relevant logo templates faster:
If you hover over a template you’ll see two symbols appear. The star symbol saves that template your favorites list which you can navigate back to later, whilst clicking the eye symbol if clicked on gives you more information about that templates:
After clicking the eye symbol you’ll see a pop-up similar to the image below with more details about the logo templates, and also a ‘Pro’ tag if the template is available for premium Fotor subscribers only:
Step 2: Choose your template or…
Next up, you need to choose your template.
All you have to click on the template you like or go to the more information popup and click the ‘Use this Template’ button. Both options will take you to the editor.
As mentioned previously, you can start your design off from a blank canvas. You can either do this by clicking on the logo option from the templates section in the dashboard or by choosing the ‘custom size’ option and inputting square dimensions e.g. 1500x1500px.
To add elements to your design from a blank canvas you can browse through the illustrations and icons in the ‘Elements’ tab and add a Text element or two as well:
Step 3: Customize your logo
Now it’s time to customize your logo design.
Whether you choose to start from a blank canvas or from a pre-designed template, the steps from here are pretty much the same.
With Fotor you can customize most aspects of the templates and design elements, as well as add additional text and graphic elements to your design.
The interface is very smooth and easy to use as it is with most online logo makers.
Altering the text elements is very easy. With a couple of clicks, you can change the size, color, font, rotation, spacing, and much more.
Simply click on the text element to move it around the canvas and you will also see the additional customization options above the canvas:
The font library of Fotor is fairly similar to most other logo makers, however, they do offer some fonts that are unique to their tool (for premium subscribers only) and they have a good range of Chinese and other international fonts.
You can even upload your own fonts to use on the platform.
Customizing your main logo graphic or icon is just as easy.
You can move the graphics around the canvas, resize, rotate them, etc.
Like with the text elements, the customization options appear above the canvas so everything is easy and quick to execute:
You can also add an unlimited amount of additional elements. However, most of the graphics (particularly the high quality ones) are for premium users only. You can tell if an element is for Pro users if it has the diamond icon over it:
When you’re done modifying your logo design, it’s time to download it.
You can download the design as a PNG, JPG, or PDF file, and Fotor gives you the option to download your logo design with a transparent background if you have a Pro subscription:
And that’s it. You’ve created a logo with Fotor.
You can download some designs for free with Fotor, but we think there are a few better completely free logo makers around at the moment.
Here are six versions of the final logo design we created:
Section 3: Logo maker review
To review Fotor’s logo maker we looked at how it performed in these areas:
Let’s see how it went.
3.1 Templates & Graphics
Fotor has an okay range of pre-designed logos with around 330 at the time of writing.
However, when you compare this to some of the other top logo makers on the market they fall short of some of the other tools, namely Placeit, Canva, and BrandCrowd.
Many of the logo templates on Fotor are of good quality but they don’t have a huge selection for most niches and categories.
Here are some of the well-stocked logo template categories on Fotor:
Food logos:
Gaming logos:
Beauty logos:
The quality of the logos on Fotor is good but not as good as some other tools. We would say Placeit and Canva are currently quite a bit ahead in terms of design quality.
As mentioned, in some categories such as business or photography logos there aren’t a huge number of templates to choose from.
If you’re looking for online logo makers that have plenty of high-quality and unique logo templates, we’d again recommend taking a look at Placeit’s logo maker, BrandCrowd’s logo maker, or Canva’s logo maker.
Additional graphics & icons
If you looking to utilize multiple graphics for your logo design or create your logo from a blank canvas you can utilize Fotor’s good-sized library of graphics and icons.
The quality of the graphics and icons is good, however, the majority of the quality graphics are reserved for Pro users only. There are some good free graphics to utilize but these are few and far between.
It would be great if Fotor released some more of their graphic library to free users, however, the Pro subscription price is very reasonable so if you’re desperate to access the full library it won’t cost you too much.
3.2 Ease of use & functionality
Fotor is incredibly easy to use and intuitive. Most people will be able to learn how to use it in no time at all.
When using Fotor to create your logo you have plenty of control and customization options for your design. You can modify most aspects of it.
Overall Fotor is a solid logo maker but there are a few improvement areas. We cover the positives and negatives in the following sections:
- Resizing & repositioning
- Altering the colors
- Text & font options
- Download options
- Collaborations options
Resizing & repositioning
Resizing and repositioning all the different design elements on Fotor is incredibly easy.
You simply need to select an element (or group on elements) and you can move it around, resize it and Fotor’s guidelines make it very easy to make sure all your elements are aligned perfectly.
You can also easily group elements together to move them around as one unit or resize, reposition, rotate them, etc.
You can also use the customization features such as element alignment options – these are very similar to what Canva offers and make lining up your design and elements super quick.
Altering the colors
It’s very easy to alter the colors of your logo design elements and background too.
You simply click on an element and the color customization options appear above the canvas.
You can choose from color presets, or input your own color if you have the hex code:
A few things that Fotor lacks in regards to their color options are gradients, and color effects similar to what Canva offers such as Duotone filters, and several others.
With a Pro Fotor account you can also create custom color palettes which is useful if you are creating designs for several brands or clients with defined color palettes:
Text & font options
The text and font options on Fotor are solid but not fantastic. They offer a similar range of fonts as most of the other logo makers, but they do offer a few unique fonts for Pro users.
Like Canva and several other online design software, you can upload your own fonts too which is a useful feature.
That feature is for Pro users only though:
Customizing the text on Fotor is super easy. In a couple of clicks, you can resize, reposition, change the text color, duplicate, group text elements, etc.
All the classic customization options that you would expect from a good quality logo maker.
One feature Fotor offers that few other logo makers do is international fonts. They have a library of fonts in Chinese, Japanese, and a few other languages:
The text effects Fotor offers fall short of some of the other logo makers at the moment, particularly Canva.
Fotor seems to be trying to match Canva’s offering but they currently have a much smaller set of text effects, plus they don’t offer uses the ability to curve text which would be a very useful feature for creating logos.
That being said there’s still plenty of features on Fotor when it comes to creating good-looking text for your logos, certainly better than many logo makers around at the moment.
Download options
When you download a logo design from Fotor you can choose between JPG, PNG, and PDF file types – all the essentials.
You can also choose to download the file with a solid color or transparent background (Pro feature only) which is a really useful feature:
Collaboration options
No real collaborations options but you can share your designs:
3.3 Customer Support
If you need any help or customer support there are a few areas you can go on Fotor:
- Contact form via dashboard
- Fotor Help Center
3.4 Our Verdict
After reviewing Fotor’s logo maker we’d say that it’s a good option but currently not as good as some other logo makers at the moment.
Canva, Placeit, and BrandCrowd are way ahead of them at the moment when it comes to the quality of their logo templates, the variety and number of templates available, and the customization options too.
That being said, Fotor has some good templates and plenty of quality customization options too so it’s definitely a decent option when it comes to logo makers.
Here’s what we feel are the main pros and cons with Fotor’s logo maker:
Pros
- Some good-quality logo templates
- Easy to use and intuitive
- Good text customization
- Solid color customization
- Good quality illustration library
- Free logo templates
- You can use your own fonts
- International fonts
- Quality premium fonts
Cons
- Standard free font options
- Hard to find logo templates for some niches
- Not as many text effects as a tool like Canva
- No colour effects for graphics and illustrations
- Can’t curve text
Section 4: Pricing
Here are pricing options for Fotor:
- Free plan
- Fotor Pro: $39.99 /year
- Fotor Pro+: $89.99 /year
Free logo templates on Fotor
As mentioned previously, you can download some logo templates from Fotor completely for free (at a size of 600x600px).
When you’re browsing the templates (or the graphic elements) pay attention to whether there’s a diamond icon on it. If so, it means that’s it a Pro-only element or template, and not for free users.
Section 5: Licensing
Depending on what you’ve used for your logo in terms of fonts, graphics, icons, etc. you might be able to use your logo design for commercial purposes.
It’s up to the users to ensure they have the appropriate license to do so.
Here’s the full answer to the question on the Fotor QnA board.
Section 6: What else does Fotor offer?
You can do a whole lot more with Fotor than simply creating logos, here are some other things that the tool offers:
- App – for Mac, Windows, and Smartphones
- Social media designs – Instagram stories, Facebook posts, etc.
- Print designs – business cards, posters, and much more
- Photo editor – crop images, utlize a suite of photo effects
- Collage maker – easily make photo collages
Section 7: Alternative logo makers & options
There are a few online logo makers that we feel are better options than Fotor at the moment:
With a superior volume and quality of logo templates, BrandCrowd, Placeit, and Canva are fantastic logo generators. Wix is also a really solid option.
If you’re looking for a more bespoke and unique logo design then we’d recommend hiring a designer to create one for you. We did that for Design Hub and used a designer via Fiverr.
It’s an affordable and quick option, and you can get a logo design created with only your company and brand in mind.
Final thoughts
Fotor is a good logo maker with some quality templates and features. Their intuitive interface makes creating a logo and other designs a total breeze.
However, there are some better logo makers out there at the moment, so we’d recommend checking them out before Fotor. If you’re looking for a bespoke and unique logo design we’d encourage you to find a designer on a platform like Fiverr.
So, do you agree? What do you think of Fotor’s logo maker?
Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear about your experience.
