A logo is a must have for all businesses, preferably from day one. A logo that represents the brand. The question is, on what price? It’s recommended to get a few quotes from different graphic designers to find out price ranges. The market is full of logo designers. You’ll find big variety of prices, probably the best to look for the value for money. Believe it or not, even a logo generator has been invented, just a few clicks and your logo is done. It’s a good fun, worth to try! Just enter your name and profession and you’ll get 160 unique logos to choose from. We got these:

 

randomlogogenerator

 

Based on this, Maarsk Graphics can be a transport company (last one in the third row), or estate agent or a roofer company (last in the first row), or detergent agent (second in the last row). We received 10 pages of these designs.

If you decide not to use the random logo designer, the next step is to find a friend with drawing ambitions and ask him to design a logo. This is a better idea.

After finding out prices, we should ask references from the graphics designer to see what’s his style, thinking, are we like-minded? If so, then let’s the work begin!

How can we help our chosen logo designer?

  • being clear about what we do
  • showing examples of what we do like and what we don’t (both are important!)
  • showing colours we like and don’t like (similarly important)
  • thinking of where we want to use our logo (business card, uniform, web, stamp, flag, on a car, on a building etc.)

What should we ask from our logo designer?

  • how many unique plans are to chose from included in the price?
  • in what format shall we receive our new logo?
  • a simpler version is included (e.g. for embroidery)?
  • do we receive a black&white version?
  • are we going to receive the used colours’ codes?
  • when can we expect our new logo to be ready?

These tells a lot about what we should expect from a well-designed logo, that will represent our company, service or product:

  1. to be indicative of what we do
  2. to be unique
  3. if the design is complicated there must be a simpler version made as well
  4. a B&W version must be made (in case we need to use our logo on a B&W platform – this happens more often than you think!) – will the logo still be good?
  5. the logo should only consist of vector graphics elements (in case we need a 5 meters big version of it)
  6. we need to know the colour codes to make sure we can use them consequently
  7. our logo to be made in different formats: .eps, .ai, .cdr, etc; cmyk, rgb color space, on white and without background.

These are all very important, even if you don’t understand some of it.

This is how we do logo design.

Now, let’s go back to the first question: How much?

450 pounds

This might seem a lot, but the value of a logo design is not simply the price we pay for it. A good logo is an investment for the future. A modern logo with classic values should represent our business for a long time. Just imagine if suddenly, your company becomes well-known (and that’s what we all want), we already have a brand to build on. Otherwise there will be a point when a poorly designed logo or brand should be re-designed. If people got used to that logo, we will have to introduce the new one, promote it, and change it on all communication from the web to the last business card or promo pen.

Sometimes it’s necessary to do a face-lift on an otherwise well-working logo (big companies do that from time to time). But it is certain that it’s much easier (and cheaper in the long run) to build on solid basis. Spending on marketing is not an expense, it’s investment.  It might be a stereotype, but it’s very true.

PS. Philip Knight, the founder of Nike, paid 35 dollars for their logo, and he didn’t even like it. Today, that logo worth a fortune: 26 billion dollars!