People outside of the design industry who don’t understand the nuances behind logo design are legitimately confused by logo pricing. Logo prices vary wildly from $5 to millions. How can "the same thing" have such a varying price range? Ultimately, this is the crux of the matter. They are not the same thing...
Yes, cheap logo designs absolutely have their place. They’re for businesses that have little to no brand vision, with a “that’ll do” type attitude. For instance, a local handyman looking to just pick up odd jobs. He has no real business aims or aspirations. Or he simply wants to look cheap on purpose - to suggest his services are really inexpensive and simple. He may choose a cheap logo design. If that's your case check out this article:
How to get the cheapest logo.
Cheap logo design costs much more later on
If a business logo design project turns out unsuccessful, rebranding will invite even more costs. You’ll need to pay for a professional logo design and reprint all promo materials, rebrand your websites, apps, brochures, signage, vehicle graphics, business cards and business forms, etc.
The costs will add up to far more than paying more up front to get it right the first time. This is why bigger and more experienced companies spend more on truly custom logo design and initial brand identity design.
Larger companies, or experienced business owners, have likely experienced the costs of rebranding in the past and avoid it when possible. Saving money by going with a low-cost logo today will most likely mean having to invest more money later to fix it.
If you don’t have the budget for a quality custom logo design today, it may be a good idea to wait and save up a solid budget instead of wasting money on something you won’t be happy with and that will not work in the long run.
But there are also much more tangible aspects that make the difference, which may help you make a decision now:
Technical differences
You get all formats that you'll need, properly prepared for use
If you're doing online research you must already heard about the raster vs vector format. It's a format that allows you to:
- Scale the logo to any size without losing its quality. So if put it on a car or even jumbo-jet, it will look as good as on a business card or website.
- Use the logo in any other graphic design project, or any kind of marketing or promotional material.
- Generate other formats, using appropriate software.
The cheapest logo designers don't provide you with a vector file. Or they offer it for additional fee which doesn't make the logo design cheap any more. However, even if you get the vector, it may be prepared incorrectly. That's because to save time the cheap logo designer will, for instance, use white shapes to cover parts of the logo instead of properly cutting them out, or shaping, using vector tools.
It looks the same on the screen, but once you try to print the logo on a car or even a t-shirt, you'll be unpleasantly surprised. That's because the covering shapes will be printed out too. This problem is faced when people try to use the logo on a different background, in marketing materials, engravings or embroidery.
You'll need to pay another graphic designer to correct the vector file. We get a lot of such requests and they are time-consuming so not that cheap.
Another issue is the usage of color coding. That's a broad technical topic, but in short when coding is used incorrectly your logo images will look incorrectly or inconsistently on screens, and print out incorrectly or inconsistently on documents and marketing materials.
That's why a comprehensive set of final files is not a nice-to-have thing. It's a set that allows you to use the logo design whenever you want, without problems and additional cost, and be sure that it always looks good and presents a consistent brand image.
You don't run into legal and trademarking issues
Cheap logo designers don't have time to draw everything themselves. To save time they often use ready-made elements. And way too often they use elements found on the Internet. They don't care about paying for them, nor do they care about their license. And the license usually says that a given element cannot be used as part of a logo. So even if you paid for such an element later on, you'd still have an illegal logo. In the best case it would be an unoriginal logo.
What are the consequences? You can run into legal issues. And you'll never be able to trademark such a logo.
Logo development process differences
The most important thing that is omitted in a cheap logo design process is the research. Design research is the first step in any decent logo design process. It's an essential step, where the designer establishes what's already present on the market, and how to differentiate the client's business from its competitors. If this step is skipped, the resulting cheap logo design will likely be generic and cliché. It will resemble other logos in the client's market.
Next, in the sketching process, because of the time constraint, the cheap logo designer creates just as many concepts as was promised. We usually create 20-40 concepts before we see any good candidates worth refining. Sometimes a single letter needs to be redrawn multiple times before it gets its intended character. Then the entire logo needs to be redrawn multiple times to achieve proper balance and the desired dynamics. It means hours of work, which cannot be afforded on a tiny budget.
Overall brand development differences
But it's not only about how the logo itself looks. The problem with buying a cheap logo design is that you're really only getting a logo.
When you work with a good freelancer or design studio, they help you create a basis for your brand. They provide you with the basic building block for it. A block that can be used in subsequent branding and marketing projects. A block that's the starting point for any subsequent branding element design. A block that directs subsequent branding efforts.
Ready to work on a professional logo design?
When you work with us, there's no time constraint for the process. We're willing and happy to discuss your vision and provide ideas for your brand at any stage of the project. We devote as much time as needed to it. We go along with the form of communication that suits you best, whether it's email, phone or Skype. You can use the information you get from our discussions as the basis for creating an asset - your brand development asset. A collection of ideas and next moves.
If you want to give it a try, please
contact us, provide your preferred way of communicating and availability. The initial consultations are free. If you decide to start a project you only pay a small deposit so that we may make sure that our payment method works for you. The you don't need to pay anything more until you're absolutely happy. Or you can walk away from the project at any time if you lose patience.
