One of my popular freebies over the past year was the collection of 6 free customisable retro/vintage logos & emblems. It has been great seeing those designs out in the wild, helping promote various businesses and individuals. Those original files were designed in Photoshop, so I thought I’d follow them up with a fresh batch of vector vintage logo designs made specifically for Illustrator. Download these free designs and customise the text to suit your own projects.
This pack of vintage logo designs contains 8 vector layouts that can be customised to contain your own wording. Each design has been made with inspiration from classic branding, resulting in a series of trendy logos that can be used for all kinds of projects. Every design comes in black and white modes, along with a version using a simple colour scheme.
How to customise the vintage logos
Open up the file in Adobe Illustrator and choose your favourite design. Basic text adjustments can be made with the Type tool, just edit the wording to suit your application. Keep in mind that some designs may require similar length wording to fit into the existing layout.
To edit the design further, right click and Ungroup the elements. This will release the texture overlay from the Opacity Mask. Move the texture to one side or lock it in place to avoid accidentally selecting it.
Move, edit, re-colour or delete the elements as you please. To tweak the adjustments, all the settings for the Warp manipulations and Roughen ink stamp effect can be found under the Appearance panel.
When you’ve finished modifying the design, you’ll need to reapply the texture overlay. Group the design, then create an Opacity Mask from the Transparency panel’s fly out menu.
Click the square thumbnail on the right to activate the mask, then move the vector texture back over the design. Turn off the Clip setting but make sure Invert Mask is checked.
Activate the thumbnail on the left to return back to the normal artwork mode. Your design is now ready to be released to the world!
What is the copyright on these? They’re fantastic, thanks!
There’s a link to the Terms of Use in the footer, but basically I’m happy for people to use my freebies however they wish (including paid work).
The only exception is you can’t go and sell the resources “as-is”, which most people wouldn’t do anyway.
Chris,
I have CS3 Illustrator.Boo Hoo. Everything breaks up on this old version and I only get a small part of the designs. I was wondering if there is some sort of work around for us using older illustrator. I know I need to upgrade but just not yet.
Booo that sucks :-( I’m also on a fairly old version (CS5.1). I’ll have a play around with the settings to see if they can be made compatible
Update: I’ve saved the file for Version CS and above and it still seems to have retained its editability. Any better?
You are the best! It works perfectly now. How can I thank you? You are perfectly amazing for doing that. You didn’t have to do that but you did. And you did it almost instantly.
Muchas Gracias!
Mark
Thanks, Chris,
Really enjoy your site. I will become a ‘paid’ member one of these days…promise!
Greg
Thanks Greg! I hope you also enjoy what’s on offer to premium members if you decide to give it a shot
Beautiful designs ! It feels like you enjoy your work.
Thank you for sharing all this knowledge. It’s priceless.
I subscribed to both of your Newsletters and it’s such a pleasure every morning or so to discover what’s inside.
I’m not used to leave comments on websites but I’m amazed to see people who are willing to share this much. It’s a little bit of sunshine every day. (sorry for the overenthousiastic comment.)
Keep it up !
Thanks for fantastic freebie. Your blog is one of the best place where i can find awesome freebies.
Chris you are sooooo good, seriously. Thank you so much!
Hi… very nice stuff you make :) One question.. I dont own Illustrator :( what so ?? is it just bad luck for me ? :) You wrote the original files were designed in Photoshop, but I cant open those in PS… Keep up the good work , we love it :)
Lars.
Thank you very much, Chris! These are wonderful.
Thanks Anne, I hope you find a good use for them!
Excellent download Chris! Thank you
No problem! I had plenty of fun making them
Cool article!
Thank you so much for sharing these freebies! They are lovely! I’m following this blog via feedly.
Chris, I always get so pumped when I see an email from you! Thanks for all your help and for the awesome freebies!
These are so good, thank you very much for sharing your work and the great tuts too! Cheers :)
These logos are really creative. Thanks for letting us know how to customize these logos; however I believe that a logo should be created based on the core competencies of its brand. You can see some logo designs that were custom made for businesses at logodesignprosreviews.com/tag/logo-design-pros-reviews . Let me know what you think.
Absolutely fantastic, thanks Chris!
Long time follower of your site just wanted to say a massive ‘thank you’ for all the tutorials that have helped me in so many ways.
Cheers!
I can’t believe chris is replying to comments :o lol nice freebie man! Love your work and artwork.. Thank You so much for this again
Great resources Chris. Beautiful, in fact!
Hi Chris,
I’m a huge fan of these freebies. I especially like the texture that comes with it.
Would you be against me packaging these as bonus content in a digital product? Of course I would put a link to your website and give you due credit.
Thanks!
Good work Chris. Amazing designs and its great that they are available for free.
You really inspire me.
Thank you for freebies it helps us lot.
Thanks Chris!
Great resources! Thanks for sharing!
I really enjoy your logo tutorials, but never got around to do my own.
I used one of your designs to tweak one of my photograps:
imgur.com/RVWkXrR
I had problems with the transparency mask in IL (couldn’t find the texture once I was in mask mode) so I just did a clipping mask in PS.
Also, for some reason, when I tried to import the design from IL to PS, it was truncated (weired cut at the angles)…
Anyways, thanks for these :)
Excellent! That wording fits perfectly. Little tips for the mask, I tend to Cut or Copy the texture so you can paste it in while in mask editing mode.
Wow, you’ve done amazing design work again! I’ve featured this freebie on my blog, hope you like it though.. only in Japanese…
photoshopvip.net/archives/68671
Cheers!
Thanks for the feature Sean