How To Make a Logo Easily with

Microsoft Word
By Saikat Basu
Read the original article here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-quick-easy-method-tomaking-a-logo-for-your-website/

Professional graphic designers will scoff.

The Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator expert will knock it down.
Even GIMP will wonder why not me? I am free. But when you dont belong to the creative tribe,
then you take whatever tools you need to design a logo in an emergency. Microsoft Word isnt
the first choice for drawing eye-catching logos. It doesnt have the credentials to merit a place in
a lineup of logo design software. But can it gatecrash? Lets take a risk.

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Why Pick Microsoft Word to Design a Logo?

Microsoft Office is a productivity suite and not a creative unit of tools. Microsoft PowerPoint
would be my tool of choice if somebody holds a gun to my head. But before we dismiss
Microsoft Word outright, consider these five factors in its favor:
Is commonplace and easier to learn.
Has multifaceted tools that work with both text and images.
Allows you to use the document page as a canvas to drag and drop Shapes, SmartArt,
and Icons.
Can merge text and images and combine everything into one image.
Documents can reuse the logo directly in a page or letterhead.

Key Microsoft Word 2016 Features for Logo Design

I wont go into the details of all the graphic drawing features Microsoft Word 2016 brings to the
table. But the brief descriptions and the linked help pages should help you if you get
confounded. There is also the helpful Office assistant called Tell me what you what you want
to do on the Ribbon that works as a pathfinder.
Stay with the basicrules of graphic design and stretch Microsoft Word to its limits.
Here are some essential tools you will find on the Ribbon. Do note that some features may be
available with the latest updates on an Office 365 subscription.
The Icon Library.
Insert WordArt or Clip Art to your design.
The Shapes gallery with presets, files, outline, and effects.
Insert and edit Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files in Word 2016.
Gridlines and The Ruler.
Shape recognition that converts hand drawing with ink into a perfect shape (only on a touch
enabled device with Office 365).
You will find most of the tools and effects on the Drawing Toolbar which is automatically
displayed with any drawing object in the document.

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Lets Draw a Simple Logo

This is a simple logo we are aiming for. I borrowed this simple graphic from Shutterstock. Most
of the objects in the vector graphic below can be duplicated in Microsoft Word. Maybe, not
exactlybut close enough to demonstrate the Word can try hard enough!

!
Image Credit: George Chairborn via Shutterstock

Open a new document. Go to the View tab, and then check the Gridlines box. With the grids, you
can align shapes and other objects in your Word documents. The grids can only be viewed in
the Print view. But rest assured they cannot be printed.

!
Turn on the Object Snapping option. Click the picture or object. In the Graphic Tools tab, click
on Align > Grid Settings. Enable both the highlighted settings below for better alignments of
the graphics in the logo.
Snap objects to other objects. Check this box to make a shape or object align with other
shapes or objects.
Snap objects to grid when the gridlines are not displayed. Align shapes or objects to the
closest intersection of the grid even when the grid is not visible.

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!
You can press the ALT key to override the previous settings temporarily when you drag a shape
or object.
The above settings prepare our document for the first shape or object we are about to insert. We
are going to use fonts and basic shapes. We are going to use some of the same techniques
covered when we made a flowchart in Microsoft Word 2013 by aligning and formatting different
shapes. The logo is going to be a bit more artistic to the eye than the business-like flowchart.

1. Insert a shape to use as the background of your logo.

Go to Insert > Shapes and select the Rectangle shape. Hold SHIFT to draw a perfect square on
the Word document that is now your canvas.
Change the color of the canvas. Double-click on the shape to display the Drawing Tools > Shape
Styles group on the Ribbon. Here, I used a Shape Fill with a choice of a color and set the Shape
Outline to No Outline.

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You can also right-click the shape and choose Format Shape. Now, you have more powerful
controls that allow you to fine-tune the look of the shape. For example if you want to use a
gradient instead of a solid fill. For simple logos, a solid fill is preferable to a gradient.

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You can also leave the background for the last part of the design. This helps you use the grid
instead of obscuring it with the colored fill of the background.

2. Use more than one shape to make a compound shape.

In an earlier How to Make an Infographic for Free with PowerPoint tutorial, we had seen how to
combine simple shapes to create more complex shapes. We use the same methods here to
create the outer hexagonal graphic and the anchor in the middle. Shapes are limited in their
scope but the imagination isnt so you can create a lot of different shapes with the basic line,
circle, and rectangle.
Lets try with the available Triangle and Rectangle shapes.
Select and drag a rectangle shape on the background square of the logo. If you have to draw a
square, you can hold down the SHIFT key to make all the four sides equal. Then draw a triangle
to construct the top two and bottom two sides of the hexagon.
Make a copy of the first triangle and drag it into position on the opposite side. Snap each object
to the other. Tweak each shape with the help the handles to get the desired shape.
Set Shape Outline to No Outline for all three shapes.

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!
Select the three different objects and select Group from the right-click menu. And then, set
Shape Fill to white. You can also select Group from the Drawing Tools. Its on the extreme right.

!
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The next step is a bit tricky. Unlike PowerPoint, Microsoft Word does not have the facility to
merge and combine shapes. We have to rely on creatively using another shape of a smaller size
(and different color) to create a hollow hexagon with a thick outline. Of course, you can always
create a multi-sided box with the Line shape and give it a specific thickness too.
Create a copy of the original hexagon and set the shape fill to the background color. Position it
over the original hexagon. Instead of dragging the handles, I find it easier to use the more
precise Size fields in the Drawing toolbar.
The Size field helps you make minute tweaks to any object and is always a better option to
dragging the corner handles.

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Use Other Shapes for The Other Graphics

Follow the same method to add the anchor. The line above the company name, and the two
stars. We will deal with the bird shapes in a little while.
The anchor is a combination of an oval drawn as a circle, a thick line, and a block arc. See the
individual elements in the screenshot below.

Try the Character Map

The Windows Character Map is also a rich source of symbols you can use in your logos. The
Webdings and Wingdings fonts are installed by default and they can supply you with some
creative escape routes in case you arent getting the right shape to use.
In this case, I could have combined two arc shapes to create the seagulls in the logo. But the
Bird character in Webdings looks neater instead of my hack.
So, set your documents font to Webdings. Open the Character Map type map in the search
box on the taskbar, and choose Character Map from the result. Copy the symbol for the bird
from the character set. Set the documents font to Webdings. Insert a text box in the right
location and past the bird in the text box. Like any other font, you can give it a color white in
this case.
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!
The second bird on the right is a mirror image of the first symbol. See this Microsoft Word
support article to see how to reverse a text box and create its mirror image.
Now, the major part of the logo has taken shape.

!
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3. Add text and text eects.

This is the easy part and self-improvement-explanatory. Use Text Boxes to insert each word so
that you can position each word precisely and style them individually.

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Font pairing is an art. I wont be able to go into it in detail here, but there are websites like Font
Pair, I Font You, and Typ.io that can help you out. You also dont have to feel forced by the fonts
you have on your computer. Theres an ocean of free fonts you can download with a click.

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4. Group the text and image together.

Select each individual object in the logo (press the SHIFT key when you select). Stick them
together with the Group command in the right-click menu or on the Ribbon.

5. Save Your Logo as a Picture

You must save the logo as a picture file before you can use it. Microsoft Word does not have a
direct way to save this as a JPEG or a PNG file. But it does have a tool which you can use.
Take a Screen Clipping. You can use any screenshot tool to do the job for you. But for effortless
utility, open a new Word document. Go to Insert > Screenshot. Select Screen Clipping and
select the logo from the Word document. The logo is pasted as a screenshot in the second Word
document you just opened.

!
Still confused? This Microsoft Support page explains the screen clipping steps in more detail.
Right-click on the logo and choose Save as Picture to save your logo in the popular image
formats given in the dialog box.

!
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Use the Windows Snipping Tool. This lesser known tool in the Windows 10 toolbox can be
launched from search bar. Type Clipping Tool to make it appear. It works like a simple screen
capture utility.

!
To take a screenshot, select New. Select the part of the screen that you want to capture. Choose
Rectangular by pulling down the arrow on the New button.

Other Microsoft Word Assets You Can Use for A Logo

Icons. If you have an updated version of Microsoft Word through the Office 365 subscription,
then you can spot the new Icons library on the Insert menu. Choose from categories like people,
technology, or business. Click the icon that you think can be creatively used in a logo.

!
WordArt. The old favorite. WordArt is one of the quickest ways to create text logos that look
stylish. You can combine WordArt with Shapes and Icons to enhance your creative options. The
Microsoft Support page should help as a primer.
I would try to avoid WordArt and keep things simple by using a creative combination of artistic
fonts. And then, enhancing with subtle text eects.

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Microsoft Word Isnt for Graphic Design. But

With your first logo in Microsoft Word, you will realize that the software isnt meant to be a
graphics editor. It is not even recommended as a page layout program. Microsoft Word is good
for typing words and making professional documents. Then what is the purpose of this
tutorial?
1.

You can explore your creative chops quickly.

2. Brainstorm an idea and make a quick mock-up.

3. Use the logo design process to understand Words limitations (and design features).
I have drawn a few logos on Word for my personal blog and just for fun or practice. It has been
an exercise in using constraints. Good logo design is always about keeping things simple (the
KISS principle). Using the right pair of fonts can stretch your imagination all on its own.
How effortless did you find the process? Do you find the graphic and text effect features in
Microsoft Word 2016 good enough for basic design? And, dont forget to tell us about your logo
design stories in the comments section.
Image Credit: Rawpixel.com via Shutterstock.com

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