Your source for mastering Kittl. Learn more about vintage design, stay up to date with new features, or find amazing inspiration for your next project.

Vintage Design

On June 18, 2022, a Twitter user named @culturaltutor made a thread titled “The Danger of Minimalist Design (& the death of detail).”

Today’s minimalist design style is devoid of the character and identity vintage designs offer. The current logo design style trends mean everything (from logos to architecture) looks the same. 

His thread, like this one above by Jonathan Howard, went viral. 

Since then, designers and other people alike, have responded to the question Jonathan asked in the tweet above:


“Why do so many logos look alike these days?”

This response by David Perell, Founder of WriteOfPassage, captured it best:

This article by Radek Sienkiewicz on Velvet Shark, and this piece from 2020, amongst many others, addressed the same question.

There is a homogenization of logos today. For instance, in the fashion world:

Despite this trending “sameness” in logo styles, some designers crave creating something different and memorable. And according to Wix, logos that induce nostalgia (vintage) would make a comeback in 2022.  

It’s probably why you turned to vintage designing. 

There’s just something captivating about a vintage logo. 

You’ll see, step-by-step, how to create unique vintage logos like the ones above in this guide. But first, do you recall what David Perell rightly observed to be why almost all logos are looking the same these days? 

“My best guess comes down to two factors: Software and the internet... Designers are using the same tools, which exert the same unconscious forces on their creative process.”

In other words, design software has a lot of influence on the end result of a design.

Most designers are either using Illustrator, the oldie, which takes so much time learning how to manipulate to your heart’s desire. Or, Canva, with its me-too templates that’s a turn off for pro designers like you. 

The vintage logos you see above were designed with a different software, Kittl:

You’ll learn more Kittl and how it makes creating unique vintage logos seamless as we proceed. 

Outdated is not a euphemism for vintage designs, yet a lot of designers fail to grasp this. They tend to make vintage logos that are visually dull and unattractive. 

In the words of Sarah Giffrow, Creative Director of Upswept Creative:

“The big challenge is to create something that recalls a vintage era but in a way that doesn’t look dated”

See below an example of an outdated or bad vintage logo:

The logo example above was probably created with dated visuals and effects which is why it looks dull. A good vintage logo is one that functions in today’s world i.e one that perfectly strikes the balance between old and trendy. 

As Grace Fussell, Graphic Designer &, Head of Creative Agency, Blue Whippet Studio says:

“Vintage graphic design styles are far from stuffy—the best examples reinterpret retro graphic design styles to create something new and exciting.”

Here are three elements to consider for creating a lasting vintage logo: 

Typography: Using modern fonts like Helvetica or Bodoni will not give you that vintage look and feel. A good vintage logo uses typography like Hollywood vintage font, Bignord typeface, Blackriver, Victoria Fonts Collection, etc. For more typography inspiration, check out the Vintage Font Bundle.

Color: Vintage logos are typically in light, and subtle colors like beige, brown, green, pale blue, etc. Using colors out of this range won’t give you the distinct vintage look.

Geometric shape: Geometric shapes and vintage logos go hand in hand. If you picture 5 vintage logos right now, chances are 4 of them have geometric shapes like circles, squares, rectangles, etc. In essence, a good vintage logo should have any of the above shapes.

Now that we’re clear on what constitutes a good vintage logo let’s look at the…

This design was popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and they often look like this:

This flat, colorful and bold design was developed in America in the 1930s and inspired designs up until the 1980s:

It came about in the 1960s due to the influence of psychedelic music like The Beatles on hippie artists. This type of vintage design has whirling shapes, intense colors, and free-flowing lines:

This is a 20th-century (1980) design style characterized by the use of curved lines and intricate flowery detailing:

That’s it for the types of vintage logos. 

Let’s look at the steps involved in creating a memorable vintage logo and how you can easily do it in Kittl, The Ultimate Vintage Design Hub.


I’ve broken the process of creating your vintage logo into three phases: Groundwork, Design, and Feedback.

Before you start any design in your tool, you need to do some groundwork. 

Therefore, in this stage, here’s what you should do:

Research: This is the most important aspect of any type of logo creation, and Ian Paget, Specialist Logo Designer and Founder of Logo Geek agrees:

“Research enables you to fully understand the problem at hand, which in turn lets you design a solution that can be presented with confidence, armed with the knowledge you need to back up your decisions.”

You must conduct in-depth market research, company research, and competitor research. This will help you determine the era your logo should come from (as this depends on the target audience’s age group), and how your logo can be different/unique from what is out there.

Why should your logo be unique? Aga Grandowicz, Team Lead – Marketing Design at Web Summit, has an answer:


“In order to meet the highest standards, a good logo needs to be properly conceptualised, well designed and unique. In particular, the aspect of uniqueness is often underestimated. In the current crowded market, making sure that a company’s logo idea hasn’t already been implemented in some similar form by somebody else is pivotal.”

Study logos associated with the era you’ve chosen and find inspiration for your design. Kittl’s template library is great for this. Just type in the era you want to replicate, and you’ll see design ideas:

Also, studying your chosen era will help you determine your vintage logo’s color palette and font.

Make a list of all the places/items the logo will be used as this will inform the design concept. 

The next stage is the design stage. Ideally, before embarking on any serious design creation, you should first brainstorm by sketching a rough outline or draft of your design. This sketch doesn’t have to be perfect; you can do it directly on Kittl.

Once you have this sketch, it’s time to bring it to life. If you brainstormed on Kittl’s community feed, you can easily import the design template and adjust it for your use like this:

However, if you sketched it elsewhere, you can create a blank template and upload your first draft or start afresh:

Now after designing your vintage logo and what next? 

Seek feedback. 

Creativity thrives under collaboration, and great designs are borne out of actionable feedback. As the first sentence of this DesignLab article states,


“The best way to improve the effectiveness of your designs is to always be seeking quality design feedback.”

You can seek feedback by showing your friends and family or submitting your design in communities like Kittl’s discord community.

Full disclosure: We’re not claiming Kittl is not the only software you can use to create vintage logos. x

Below, I’ve shown how you can create vintage logos with these three tools and why Kittl should be your preferred option.

Founded in 2012, Canva came in and disrupted the design industry. How? They made it easy for anyone to design with their ready-to-use templates.

However, their strength- thousands of drag and drop template designs- is also a weakness for a vintage enthusiast like you because their vintage templates are basic at best. You cannot produce professional vintage logos like this even on Canva’s paid plan:

Instead, these are the vintage logo templates available on Canva:

These are not so stunning for a vintage enthusiast like you, right?

Not only can you not create unique vintage logos on Canva, but it also is not even advisable to create a business logo of any type on Canva.

One of the major reasons why is because you won’t have access to the vector format of your logo. This isn’t a problem in Kittl, as with a pro or expert account, you have the option to download your design in a vector format. 

Now unlike Canva, Illustrator can be used to create some pretty cool vintage logos, and it is the go-to industry standard for many designers. This is because the tool has a lot of features and functions to help you whip up complicated designs.

However, there is a catch. 

Illustrator is quite challenging to learn to use, and achieving cool designs like this is no mean feat for a newbie or mid-level designer. June Escalada, an experienced designer, opined on this in an article:

“Adobe Illustrator has so many tools, and yes they are useful and easy to get started, but it takes time and practice to be good. It’s easier to draw circles, shapes, trace images but when it comes to logo design, that’s a different story. It can get very complicated.”

The ease of use of Kittl when compared to Illustrator is why Eric Hatheway, a Design Professional vouches for Kittl:

Even Ember Blue, a devout Illustrator user, testified to how simple it is to create complex vintage logos on Kittl:

Also, Illustrator doesn’t have in-app templates. You’re literally going to be staring at a blank slate unless you visit their stock website. 

On the other hand, there are templates available in Kittl, and not the canva-kinda templates either. I’m talking about really sophisticated templates to help you avoid the blank page syndrome.

Finally, Illustrator is quite pricey as it starts from $20.99/month for individuals with only 7 days free trial. 

Kittl has the upper hand in this area as the tool has a forever free plan which gives you access to over 90% of the tool at no cost:

Is creating logos in Photoshop a good idea?

Many design experts emphatically state it isn’t. Sure, Photoshop is great for other design needs, but not for logo designing:


As seen in the screenshot above, you need a vector program. Again, Kittl has this function: 

Never Run Out of Vintage Logo Creation Ideas 

Kittl brings the best of both worlds to vintage logo designers: a tool to create unique vintage logos and a community of other designers. It is why Kittl is known as the ‘Vintage Design Hub’:

With Kittl’s community and news feed feature, you won’t run out of design ideas again even if you’re a newbie like this user:

Feeling stuck, just scroll through the feed and get inspired by other designers:

Love someone’s design? Like, and comment to let them know! Spread good vibes always:

Are you a vintage designer or enthusiast? Here’s a practical vintage logo design guide to help you create stunning vintage logos.

The Complete Vintage Logo Design Guide for All Vintage Enthusiasts

You probably weren’t born. Adobe had just turned its attention to graphic design. And charged Mike Schuster, an engineer, to invent an easy-to-use drawing tool with its PostScript software language. 

About 12 months later –in 1987– they launched Illustrator. 

At the time, Adobe Illustrator was revolutionary. Compared to what graphic designers had access to, it met its “easy-to-use” goal. 

But 35 years later, and with the likes of Canva on the scene, can we still consider a tool that takes months to manipulate “easy-to-use?” 

If you’re like most designers, it’s a no. 

Complex designs like vintage styles take time to create. 

The last thing you want is to waste that time, not on the design itself, but learning and mastering a tool. 

As observed by Eric in the review above, that’s the case for those using Adobe Illustrator to create vintage designs. 

Is Illustrator good for creating vintage designs? 

Illustrator is good for creating, not just vintage styles, but other amazing design types only possible with its tool. 

But take the beautiful t-shirt and logo designs below: 

To create or recreate the designs above, it’ll take you days, if not weeks, if you’re a pro-Illustrator user. For a newbie, maybe, several months. 

You don’t need to learn and master Illustrator’s pen tool to achieve the designs above.  With a few clicks, you can hit the ground running in minutes. 

For instance, let’s decorate the text in the logo design above: 

It took just 6 clicks and less than 20 seconds. 

As we proceed with this comparison, you’ll see other areas where using Kittl as your design tool makes more sense. 

But just in case you’re eager to play around…

Illustrator vs Kittl: How do they compare? 

Just because you’re reading this on our domain doesn’t mean we’ll do the typical we vs. them comparison. We’re not trying to force Kittl is “better” than Illustrator down your throat. 

Every product is unique in its own way. 

There’s a reason why most designers keep several in their arsenal. One tool may be good for one thing, but not so good for another. So it’s best to know what design outcomes are easier achieved with one software over another. 

The experienced designer below, for instance, used Illustrator for several years. It didn’t stop her from using Kittl to get about 90% of her work done before rounding them up in Illustrator: 

We’ll compare both products in five areas (leaving a crucial area for the conclusion), so you’ll see for yourself where to employ each. 

The core one is freehand drawing via its trademark pen, brushes, and pencils. Its advanced color options for filling spaces, creating color palettes, etc., layers for guided editing, and an extensive library of fonts, which you can manipulate at will, are just a few. 

Derrick is an expert Adobe Illustrator instructor. In an article before he outlined the tool’s several features, he wrote: 

The keyword here is that while it has many features for achieving the design types Derrick listed above, it is “sophisticated.”

Kittl, on the other hand, doesn’t have as many features. 

For now, there’s no freehand drawing via a digital pen. 

Instead, you have pre-designed, DIY templates and design assets, and a drag-and-drop editor. While this may come off as limiting to those who like drawing from scratch, the reality is that Kittl lets you manipulate these assets as you would on Illustrator. 

For instance, you can curve texts, do typographic transformations, or make them follow a path in your design. Features like these were unique to Illustrator, but now they are possible with Kittl. 

Take the typographic transformation in this vintage logo design:

And you can give it a try by tapping the green button above. 

Individually, they are all easy to play around with. 

But manipulating or combining them to achieve a specific design outcome is where the trouble arises. June Escalada, an experienced designer, observed this in her article for IllustratorHow. 

For instance, it’s easy to start with the rectangular tool. But getting it into a desired shape isn’t straightforward. 

You’ll need to master manipulating the selection tool in combination with your mouse to achieve that:

Ease of use, not just in the use of tools available in the software, but in using them to create designs, is at Kittl’s core. 

Kittl makes this possible via elements (shapes pre-made into useful assets) already designed for you. 

Say you want to manipulate a rectangle into a badge or banner. No need to waste time learning to use shapes. Just browse the various elements, choose what works for you, and adjust it to match. 

This ease of use is why Charlie Pangus, a design influencer with over 230k YouTube subscribers, thinks Kittl beats even Canva and Adobe PhotoShop. 

Well, why not see why Charlie thinks so? 

Illustrator blows Kittl out of the water in this area. 

It offers about 20 different formats for saving your work after designing. These include psd, ai, cdr, etc., all of which allow you to import your original design into other design software. 

Unlike Illustrator, we keep very specific use cases and the completion of designs for the same in mind. So be it for logos, t-shirts, labels, tattoos, cards, or banners/posters, the aim is to get your completed designs downloaded for printing or digital use:

Another advantage Illustrator has over Kittl per file type download options is its unique vector graphics output. Vector graphics (compared to raster images like PNG, JPEG, SVG) lets you can scale designs made on AI to any size without losing their quality. 

Although not at the same level, Kittl tries to make up for this by adding the “Optimize Quality” toggle option just before you download your work. 

The first day I opened Illustrator, I couldn’t find my way around. 

I watched a few YouTube videos on how to start a new project. Finding the various features and tools or applying changes to achieve anything meaningful required watching other videos. 

 A couple of years later, I still watch YouTube videos to find things. 

My experience says a lot about Illustrator’s UI. 

You don’t need tutorials to navigate Kittl’s UI. 

To the left, you’ll find DIY templates organized by use cases (logos, t-shirts, labels, etc.), and design assets grouped for easier discovery: 

To the right, options for manipulating a design asset chosen from the left panel pop up only when needed. 

This one pops up only when you select texts: 

The design canvas on Kittl has some more interesting capabilities.

For instance, it automatically detects a project’s colors and creates groups of variations. Also, design assets in use are layered as you have on Illustrator. This workflow makes color adjustments and editing each element by turning others on or off way easier:

There’s a visible and clickable shortcut bar with all the quick navigation to help you expedite design creation: 

All these make the UI on Kittl clean and super easy to use, meaning you’ll never get lost or need tutorials to find things. 

And those are the exact words of Alex, a happy Kittl user: 

Professional design software isn’t cheap. 

Either Adobe Illustrator or Kittl will cost you a few hundred dollars yearly. But it’s an investment worth its price, considering how much time they’ll save you and design value they can help unlock. 

Prices start at $20.99 per month for Illustrator alone (or $54.99 for full access to Adobe’s entire Creative Cloud suite): 

There’s a cheaper pricing tier of $19.99 per month, but this is exclusive to students. Next is the business plan, starting at $35.99 per month for Illustrator alone and $84.99 monthly for Adobe’s entire Creative Cloud license: 

Adobe Illustrator only allows for a 7-day free trial. 

Considering the steep learning curve needed to get anything done with this tool, a 7-day free trial may not get you anything. Also, some consider it overpriced and not worth it except for large-scale print designers: 

Kittl, on the other hand, offers a free-forever plan. 

Unlike Illustrator, you get 100% free access to its full design library even on the free plan from day one, no credit card required. 

Its two paid tiers start at just $10/month if you grab the 33% outright discount via the yearly plan. Going with the pro version lets you download your designs in higher resolutions, increases the number of projects you can work on at a time, etc: 

If you can’t justify expensive and hard-to-use software. 

And you’re looking for a tool with increasing capabilities to achieve design outcomes mostly only possible with Illustrator before now, you should go with Kittl. 

Veteran designer, Tom Kenny, observed this in an interview with Creative Market. 

But a community of designers is a refreshing place to draw new inspiration or get feedback on your work in real-time.

For Adobe, its community is more of a resources hub of livestreams, video case studies, how-tos, challenges, etc., related to design. 

While watching videos or listening to others share stories is good, it misses one thing. Adobe’s community isn’t a place where members can share their work, get feedback on them, or use other people’s work as inspiration for theirs. 

As designers turned builders of Kittl, our founders knew firsthand the importance of having such. 

It’s why, from the ground up, we built Kittl to bring software and a design community into one hub where anyone can share their work: 

Think of it like a design-specific social feed:

Once you join Kittl, you get free access to the community to follow designs shared by other creators. You can duplicate designs shared by others as a template for creating or recreating something new. You can also share yours for the same. 

He’s had some designs he shared duplicated over a hundred times: 

In short, designers are raving about Kittl’s unique take at building a design community, which isn’t available with Illustrator. 

Take Toni Schreirer, who reviewed Kittl on PH:

See how Adobe Illustrator and Kittl, the new design tool on the block, compare for creating complex designs.

Illustrator vs Kittl: What Makes Vintage Designs Easier?

Illustrator vs. Kittl: Finally, an Easier Vintage Design Software

In a little over a decade, they grew to more than 60 million monthly active users. The startup now has users from across 190 countries. In short, they’ve become the fan-favorite of newbies overwhelmed with the more complex Adobe Illustrator launched in the 80s. 

What's the secret behind such meteoric rise, you ask? 

Canva aims to "empower everyone in the world to design anything."  But keeping this promise comes with a sacrifice: Reducing all design types to millions of simplistic, me-too templates. 

And that’s a problem, per award-winning designer, Smith Robbins:

As observed by Smith, Canva isn’t for amazing design outcomes. 

The templates you get on Canva for this are so basic and cliche. Despite being too basic, you can’t access most for free:

Now, compare those very basic vintage templates you can’t access without a paid Canva subscription to the ones you can start customizing completely free below: 

The designs above may look complex. And yes they are. 

Yet, they were easily achieved with Kittl. 

Like Canva, anyone willing to put in a little work can create designs for free on Kittl. But unlike Canva, there’s enough flexibility to design things mostly only possible with Adobe Illustrator before now. 

As you’ll soon see, Kittl brings the ease of Canva without sacrificing the ability to flex your design muscles as you would on Illustrator. 

Per the review above, you shouldn’t think of Kittl as just another Canva competitor but “an easier-to-use cloud-based Illustrator.” But you shouldn't swallow those words because an influencer said them. 

So we’ll compare both tools, so you’ll see their specific use cases and what’s better for achieving complex and vintage-styled outcomes. 

Canva and Kittl: Some Basic Similarities 

Canva and Kittl differ from traditional design software like Adobe. 

Unlike Illustrator or PhotoShop, they’re both cloud-based design tools anyone can access online without remote installations. Although Canva now has desktop applications, most people still use the product via web browsers, just like Kittl. 

Both design software has these similarities:  

As shown above, Canva and Kittl may have similarities. But they differ sharply in what they can help you achieve. 

Before we go into more detail on those…

Canva’s free plan comes with limited access to templates. 

You’ll need one of its two paid plans to unlock their entire, mostly templated design library. One starts at $12.99 per month for five (5) people while the other begins at $30/month per person: 

Kittl, on the other hand, only limits the number of projects you can simultaneously work on its free-forever plan. Unlike Canva, you get 100% free access to its full design library even on the free plan. 

Its two paid tiers start at $10/month if you grab the 33% outright discount via the yearly plan: 

Canva vs Kittl: Comparing What Each Is Good for

How do you determine what Canva or Kittl is good for?

You can do this by examining each software’s capabilities such as assets in its design library, creative flexibility allowed, features unique to each, etc.

Canva is, without doubt, leaps ahead of Kittl per the number of free assets in its design library. On the free plan, for instance, there are about 250k design templates. 

It goes up to 610k on the pro plan, and this also gives you over 100M stock photos, videos, audio files, etc. 

Unfortunately, all these only pass Canva as the classic “Jack of all trades, master of none” design tool. In other words, you can spin up anything from its millions of templates (from social media posts to presentations, phone wallpapers, and everything in-between): 

You can’t achieve professional design outcomes in any particular area. And that’s due to the limitations on how much you can customize or manipulate Canva’s templates and design assets. 

Hear that from an advertising manager probably in charge of design:

Kittl, on the other hand, is different. 

You’ll not find millions of templates and design assets as you would on Canva. But the thousands available are desirable for two reasons: 

All templates and design assets are intentionally created to help designers achieve professional outcomes such as logos, T-shirts, tattoos, posters, tattoos, and cards: 

Does that mean you can’t use Kittl for other designs?

You can still manipulate each template or design asset as you please, which brings us to the 2nd reason: 

2. Advanced customization and manipulation of all templates and assets in Kittl’s design library. In short, most designers who come to test-drive Kittl’s templates end up staying for the endless customization possibilities. 

Curious to see some endless possibilities with Kittl? 

Here’s a short video showing a couple of design manipulations you can easily create with Kittl:

On Canva, you don’t have the creative flexibility to achieve design outcomes worthy of a professional designer. 

The most advanced label design templates you’ll find on Canva are basically flowered borders with italic fonts: 

Say you wanted to customize one of the templates above. 