Cheap Logos: Not Worth the Cost
Sites like PixelLogo and LogoYes offer incredibly cheap logos, starting as low as $39 — which can seem like a real steal if you look at the average freelancer’s fee. But the actual value of such a deal isn’t quite what a business owner might hope for.
A logo, like other elements of a business’ brand, is meant to set you out from the crowd. The idea is to make your company more recognizable to prospective customers — to create a unique identifier. But when you purchase a logo through a service that just lets you browse through a collection of pre-designed logos, you won’t be getting a unique identifier. It’s still relatively rare to run into someone who has bought the same logo as you have — but it happens. And as more businesses purchase logos from these sites, the likelihood of encountering someone in your city using the same logo is going up.
The moment your logo is no longer unique, its value drops to nothing. Even if it isn’t being used by a direct competitor, having the same logo as another business in your area can actually harm your business. It creates some confusion on just what your business does, assuming that customers don’t just assume that you copied your logo. Neither option is good for growing your business.
The moment your logo is no longer unique, its value drops to nothing.
A logo can be a very valuable addition to your business: the right logo can be a key part of your marketing strategy. The right designer can create a logo that catches eyes in your target demographic, that reflects the product or service you offer and that identifies you in a crowded industry. But a generic logo, with your business name added in, can’t do any of those things. Consider a logo in terms of an investment: if it can help you land multiple sales, you can get a definite return on that investment.
When considering your logo design options, taking a look at what freelance graphic designers can offer you is a good starting point. There’s no cost for browsing through designers’ portfolios and seeing what they’ve been able to do for other companies. You’ll notice some key differences if you compare a freelancer’s portfolio to the offerings of a logo service. One crucial difference is that many freelancers incorporate the name of the business that they’re developing a logo for, as opposed to logo services, which tend to simply print the name below the logo — after all, if the name is closely tied into the logo as a whole, it’s harder to swap in a different business name when it comes time to resell a logo.
You can purchase a logo and put it on a business card or a website, you’ll likely find that they don’t quite seem to go together.
You may also see that many designers will go a step beyond designing just a logo for your business. You can get a complete identity for your business — a logo that matches your website, which in turn matches your business card. While you can purchase a logo and put it on a business card or a website, you’ll likely find that they don’t quite seem to go together. Even little things, like not having access to the font that was used in your logo, can make it difficult to present your business with a cohesive image.
In the end, the upfront cost of working with a freelancer is more than purchasing a logo from an online service. But a unique logo is more valuable in the long run: as your customers associate that logo with your business, and your business alone, you’ll see both increased interest and increased loyalty. You’ll get a return on the investment you made in your company’s brand.
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Ironically people want logo’s to catch your eye, cheap logos do tend to catch your eye, but for all the wrong reasons
Nicely put Thursday Bram, Why cheap logos can be so scary, it’s a bug bear of mine. Just one small thing:
“You can get a complete identity for your business — a logo that matches your website, which in turn matches your business card. ”
OuchH! Which came first? The logo we hope, so it’s the stationary & promotional material that work with the logo. The logo is a visual representation of the business or entity, the expression of it’s personality, aspirations, goals and product or service.
As you wrote yourself, A logo, like other elements of a business’ brand, is meant to set you out from the crowd. The idea is to make your company more recognizable to prospective customers — to create a unique identifier.
I would think just the possibility of their logo being used by another business would scare people off, but I guess they don’t even get to the point where they consider that. Hopefully in a few years the downside of these pre-fab logos will start kicking in, and small business folks will be more wary of them.
I had an old friend contact me about doing a logo. I explained my services to him, but I think the price scared him off. He wound up posting the five logo prospects (and the price – I think $150) on Facebook, and had all his friends vote on them. It was not pretty.
As soon as your logo is illegible, unreproducible, it’s worthless.
Two criteria that seem to get overlooked more than anyone cares to acknowledge, including designers and clients.
Lot’s of logos are just a basic text, the name of the company. Remove the text from Google, Microsoft etc, and you have no logo. What about Intel, for example? People do not recognize the logo as much as they recognize the “Intel sound”. And of course, slogan. Which, in my opinion is THE most important part. It is that little line under the logo, that people recognize the most. Plus, of course, how well people remember your business identity is mostly a matter of marketing and repetition. And that’s where small business cannot compete. It’s not that McDonald’s has nicer logo than Joe’s local burger joint. It’s the constant beating of consumers with their ads. If McDonald’s changed their “M” sign to Helvetica based “M”, people would be confused, no doubt. But if repeated enough, they would get used to it. Just like they got used to McDonald’s new slogan, image, menu etc. Just like Coke and CocaCola means the same. Just like they got used to Cingular now being ATT etc. Repeat it enough, and people will learn.
How many logos do you see in one day? I counted over 20 in my small, uncluttered bathroom. I’ve been told (but can’t find a source at the moment) that the average person sees over 5000 logos/brand impressions on one day.
If that’s true here’s what I wonder:
If people do literally see 5000 logos a day, then how important is a logo?
If it’s hard to get people to notice or remember a bad logo, how hard is it to get people to notice or remember a good logo?
Is the average consumer able to tell the difference between a “good” logo and a “bad” one?
Can a small business really expect to create a logo that’s going to somehow stand out from a crowd of 5000 logos, many of which are owned by companies with huge advertising and marketing campaigns that serve to drive their logo into the consciousness of their target audience?
Have you ever not done business with a company because you felt their logo wasn’t good enough?
Actually, forget about you – because if you are reading this you are probably more visually oriented and pay more attention to branding. Have your clients customers ever done done business with a company because you felt their logo wasn’t good enough?
Articles like this really need to include research to prove the intended point. Logos are important to us because of our careers and our focus – but I’m not convinced they are always important to clients and their customers in their worlds.
If you see 5,000 logos in a day, then it’s extremely important that your brand identity is strong, and relevant. If it’s another throwaway logo created in minutes by an underpaid freelancer trying to get paid for spec work via a “contest”, I can assure you the logo hasn’t had a lot of thought put into it.
It’s not as hard as you think to get people to remember a “good logo”. Branding is all about identifying what practical and emotional ties your product or service has to the consumer. A large part of this is researching the essence of what your product or service is, who your customers are, and where the two can come together–what makes your offering appealing to the customer? If you do this work up front, before even thinking about developing a visual identity, the branding you create will resonate more strongly with your intended audience and create a favorable, lasting impression.
People don’t do business with organizations whose logos aren’t “good enough”, everyday. If you can’t reach your audience, your business will be ignored by them. Taking the time to craft an appropriate brand identity gets your business noticed.
If you need research, here’s a bunch:
My overview of Doug Bartow’s excellent tour of $99 logo sites, in which he tries to get a “good logo” from a number of cheap sites…and fails: http://www.notchcode.com/blog/2009/02/tour-of-99-logo-sites-by-under.html
Another post that summarizes and links to AIGA’s position on spec work (contests that drive a lot of “cheap logo contests” are included in this), as well as the wonderful example of how a logo contest resulted in the Spanish government getting a logo that is remarkably similar (identical) to the German government’s brand identity.
Someone recently did a labor cost analysis of what a logo contest “winner” gets paid per hour, and it came up to something south of the minimum wage.
And, of course, if you are a designer designing on the cheap, why not just rip off someone else’s hard work: http://www.no-spec.com/archives/crowdsink-crowdspring-do-whats-right/
The bottom line is: yes, you can offer a reasonable price to a client for a logo or brand identity. But it needs to be worth YOUR while, and include time for good front-end research, if the work is going to be effective for your client.
Great article! I wrote a similar article on why logos should cost more than $300 on my blog – check out the heated discussion in the comments. I can see both sides of the argument even though I firmly believe that good logos are worth paying for.
http://www.nikibrown.com/designoblog/2009/03/30/why-logos-should-cost-more-than-300/
Left off the AIGA link in my above post. Worth a read: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work
This is a great article and it can be applied to more than just logos. I know at work we have a lot of people calling us up about our prices and how they think they’re too high. We just tell them that although our prices may seem high, we’re offering you a custom designed website which will be unique to you…no one else will have one. That is what sets it apart. Unfortunately you still have those that are all about saving a buck rather than purchasing something that will make them look better.
I know that if you were to take two companies, in the same business, the one with the better quality logo/website/business card will probably be more respected.
I also wanted to respond to Boyink because he brings up an interesting point. People do see thousands of logos everyday but I do think the quality of the logo has an impact on the companies success. If we think about the logos we pay attention to in that world of 5000 logos, the one’s we focus on our ones that we recognize. Why do we recognize them? It is because they have built a reputation but for that mark to be instantly recognizable, it has to be a good logo…a bad logo will have qualities that don’t make it recognizable. I also believe that a decent logo can become a good one as a companies reputation increases but the logo most likely wasn’t bad to begin with…it was just mediocre. So I don’t think a bad logo can become a good logo with the building of a reputation, I don’t think a bad logo company can build a good reputation because they don’t have a memorable mark to represent them.
You look around you and what are these logos you recognize? For me right now at my computer I see Logitech, Dell, Panasonic and Canon. They all have good logos. Why? They’re simple and easily recognizable.
So I think that consumers have a natural ability to recognize a good logo from a bad logo because we all tend to flock to the companies that have a recognizable brand.
I’ll ask again…;)
Do you recognize those logos because they are simply good logos?
Or do you recognize them because you’ve seen them over and over, in many different mediums, over long periods of time?
Put another way, take any of those companies and remove their logo from their brand experience. Would the brand suffer?
I’m open to being wrong here…I’d just love to see some research to base discussions like these on, rather that opinions of admittedly-biased people (including myself in that group..;)
Hi Boyink,
With the logo often being the first visual impression we get of a business, it’s important the design is appropriate e.g. you wouldn’t use a bright yellow Comic Sans logotype to identify a law office.
In order to arrive at the most appropriate design, prep work needs to be carried out — research, brainstorming, sketching, conceptualizing etc. This all takes time, so you can bet if you’re paying $39, said prep work is inadequate.
My $0.02.
I definitely see where you are coming from. I do believe that the brand would suffer if their logo was taken away. People do go for a company’s reputation but if that company has built up a reputation they most likely have paid the big bucks to have a professional quality logo developed for them. I think that is also why most of these corporations have a really simple, good looking logo to begin with. A simple logo can only go wrong in a small number of ways so they have pretty much guaranteed themselves a recognizable brand from the get go.
Same goes for smaller companies, yes maybe they’ll get a cheap logo, because it’s cheap, but sooner or later they’re going to look at it and be like “hey, this logo is horrible, let’s change it” and they’ll rebrand because they themselves probably hate it. You can only love a cheap logo for so long
If we were all to get a professional logo from the get go, we could avoid that possible rebranding when we realize our logo isn’t up to par.
Basically what i’m saying is that sooner or later, if a company ever expects to get successful, something is going to tell them that a cheap logo won’t be the way to go. I think it’s just natural. Better to spend the big bucks now so you don’t have to worry about it later…and it’ll save you 50-100 or however much those cheap logos could run.
Clients seldom present logos for use with their websites that don’t do their businesses’ justice. It is often too complex, ugly and makes no sense; but they don’t know that. I try my best to accept what they have and work with it; sometimes I correct it and touch it up a little; but initially, I always hope that the logo is a quality piece of design.
Too often, people that cannot see a value in a logo are just uneducated on the process identity designers such as our beloved David Airey go through. In one of my post, I discuss my creative process and why it is soooooo important. The logo is the first thing that will position a company its market place, along with the name and the rest of the branding strategy. Even if some will arg that a logo isn’t a brand (and they are right), it however is its symbolic embodiment.
Speaking of cheap labor, some entrepreneurs should definitely take a look at the “50 dollar logo experiment” before considering such solutions for their visual identity. It’s been a popular topic on many blogs such as David Airey’s one as well as on mine. Despite the fact that we cannot compare the service of such companies to what you can expect from real hardcore a brand artist and doesn’t serve the same market, the so-called study highlights ethical issues that shoppers should be aware of.
http://getapowerplay.blogspot.com/2009/02/50-dollar-logo-experiment.html
Cheers, it’s FRIDAY!
David
That’s very kind of you to say, David. Thanks.
What a great article. It’s cool, it can help in our pitch. I was always concern about logo at 39$ or so. When you go to staple you have a big choice for your logo and it is often inadequate.
Also I think that manager are not designer and that’s a big lack when you start someting to have a logo that’s really too cheap.
Is like in a ad to put big red star saying 30% sale off… Every ting that designer doesn’t like.
@Boyink Why don’t you try asking yourself some of these questions you have. Do you really not make any presumptions about a company if they have a logo that seems odd / out of place / doesn’t suite them / ugly / cheap / rushed / made for $5 etc..
You ask all of your questions as if a logo has no effect on you and what you think of the companies you spend your money on.
Sure an average person might see 5000 logos a day, and that is all the more reason for a company to make sure that theirs is unique. When a log it starts to be seen more than once in a day it will start to get recognized over other logos if it is properly done, and that is the point of good logo design.
If you to go to a doctor and you could chose between two that were side by side: One had a sign written by hand on cardboard and taped to the door and the other had a nice logo on laminated sign, which doctor would you choose to go to? Which one would be giving you the impression that they were serious about what the did for a living.
The human mind can remember and recognize a symbol often easier than a written name. Look around you and see how often symbols are used: washrooms, airports, food courts, bank machines …. there is a lot of proof that we relate to symbols and use them in our daily lives because it is easier. A logo is simply a symbol
@Thursday great article! You brought up lots of great points.
To be fair – the LogoYes and other sites don’t produce logos that look like they’re handwritten on cardboard and taped to the door.
They can produce very sharp-looking logos, as long as the person using the service doesn’t go crazy with fonts, colors or other silly things. In that case, it’s the person’s eye/taste that’s the problem – not the service.
Your original point included the argument of originality and that can be an issue. However, the same problem comes along when a designer uses stock photos or images to create a logo. Unless the designer does their own illustration, you are going to come across elements in a logo that may appear elsewhere.
For the record, I’m not advocating such services and have humans design my logos…but just bringing up some points that might not have been considered. I think it often boils down to the operator of the software, not necessarily the software.
Alice Seba
@James Harrison — because my own opinion would just be one more subjective data point, and that this entire discussion is based on subjective opinion rather than consumer research is my main issue with it…;)
One of the cardinal rules in web design is “you are not your users” — and I’m suggesting that applies here as well. Just because you – or I – as highly visually oriented people see high values in logos doesn’t mean everyone else does.
Your doctor example seems (to me) to be a perfect example of a business for whom a logo just has to be “good enough” (pretty much so I don’t take note of it as a “really bad logo”). In order to choose a Doctor I have to first choose from doctors who are available to my insurance plan, then ones within travelling distance, then ones who are accepting new patients. By the time I see their logo the decision has already been made and it -almost- doesn’t matter.
Would I bail if they had some cheesy MS Word Art duct-taped to the door? I guess it depends on how bad I was feeling..;) But past that just something that didn’t catch my eye as being terrible.
Please understand – I’m not declaring that logos aren’t important. I just want to see proof of it by means other than subjective discussions coming from people who have a vested interest in clients paying for custom logos. It’s the same response I had when buying a wedding ring and all the guidelines for how much spend came from……the diamond industry..;)
It is not how much the logo cost it is how much the company spends in advertising. Look…..I am a graphic designer and I would like to think i produce high end work, but a logo cheap or expensive can produce the same results presented in the right manner. More so then not companies that buy cheap logos have a cheap advertising budget as well and are not able to get the logo in front of mass people. Take Nike….that has to be the simplest designs (ugly at that) but one of the most noticeable logos on the market worldwide today. Why….marketing budget
These companies treat your branding as if it where a commodity that you can buy off the shelf.
Branding is a vision, a promise to your customers, a signature for your business, a personality.
It’s so much more than a simple circle on an angle with a drop shadow for $40 bucks…
You get what you pay for, so if you would like weak business growth, then buy a weak logo, but if you want a professional logo that you can truly stand behind then hire the Pro’s
–
Thanks & Regards
Noel from nopun.com
How about some posts about quality and performance standards in non-graphic design areas? Every freelancer is not a graphics person by definition.
There are analogous but markedly different quality considerations in hiring programmers, web developers, and writers, and those folks need talking points, too.
FWIW, I do my own wage-busting of graphic artists by using sites like designoutpost.com.
Just kidding. I have gotten low-end, but original work done there, and it’s a good tool for a client of graphic artists to become familiarized with the creative process.
@Boyink,
Now I understand your perspective better, it is always good to look at things through the eyes of your client. Sorry I don’t have data to provide you, However this article was comparing a “cheap” logo (ie $50ish) to a professional one (example price: $350 – $1000). I think no matter what the business, a cheap logo is going to look cheap, and in North America, that is no longer something that is overlooked in lue of other criteria.
You have a good point , and of course designers are going to back up their profession, however I am sorry we are not anything like the diamond industry. We are not trying to brand something with more value than it is worth. We are simply artists that are available for hire to create something that will help our clients business. Most graphic designers are not overpriced (IMO) and we are not trying to inflate the value of something.
Another way to look at this from the clients perspective is, if they find their business is not doing as well as they would like, they could easily spend $500 – $1000 on one advertisement in a newspaper, that runs for one day, or they could get a new logo that they will always have.
The increase in revenue that good logo design brings to a business compared to other options (example: advertising) actually makes investing in a logo a very good deal.
While I like to think that spending more on logo design is always the best option, I’ve seen stuff lately like the 2012 Olympics logo that makes me cringe, especially knowing the price paid. That being said, I think that logo will still succeed in its purpose, despite its ugliness, because as others have said we’ll be hit with it over and over in a professionally designed context. Of course, that’s a completely different league than the $50 vs $5000 logo. But I digress…
What I really wanted to say was that I think it really all comes down to creating brand trust. I think people will trust a better-designed logo that suits a brand more than a cheap logo that was not custom-created. Beyond that, however, and even more important, is that people will trust a logo that they’ve seen over and over on a quality product, tasty meal, or re-assuring or entertaining advertisement. First impressions are important, and thus an attractive logo is important, however even more important is for clients to be consistently using their logo so that the customers become more trusting of it each time they see it.
I’m starting to realize this personally, and where I used to offer clients a simple logo design, here are the files, use as you wish; I now really push for them to go with a complete branding package, so that I they’ll have a trustworthy, consistent message across all aspects of their brand presentation. I think often that can be more important than the design of the logo itself.
Logo is always a strategic investment. So whenever you can spare out enough money for getting a good logo designed, you should really do that. We started as a very small company and at that time we didn’t have the money to do such kind of investments. The logo you see on our site is something i made pretty quickly myself. It looks ok, but still doesn’t reflect that brand clearly i guess. So finally we spared some money to get our logo done, hopefully we will put it online pretty soon!
This is not how much the logo cost it is how much the company spends in advertising. Look…..I am a graphic designer and I would like to think i produce high end work, but a logo cheap or expensive can produce the same results presented in the right manner. More so then not companies that buy cheap logos have a cheap advertising budget as well and are not able to get the logo in front of mass people. Take Nike….that has to be the simplest designs (ugly at that) but one of the most noticeable logos on the market worldwide today. Why….marketing budget
To further on this conversation and to back up the point that a cheap logo is not worth it, I wrote about how not to design your logo and why logo design does not cost $5.
Thanks for educating the masses.
My clients are too busy to search through bunch of potential logo designs. They’d end up asking me to do it for them.
Don’t confuse large business with small business. A large company like nike spends millions on their logo and their brand so they can drill it into your brain. Small businesses operate differently – they differentiate themselves based on their product and/or service. In that case, a logo just doesn’t have the same value. As it was already mentioned, a good enough logo will suffice – and if people can get that cheaply, of course they will.
Would you buy a gold plated toaster for $1000? Why not? Because all you want is a toaster that makes toast, and you’re not willing to spend a lot more for features you don’t need. It’s just a toaster after all. This is the mindset of many small business owners.
I would also venture to say that if a company does not have at least *some* money to spend on marketing/logo/advertising/website then they aren’t much of a company at all… or their business priorities are messed up.
Nicely put!
In a way, these cheap logo sites are actually a good sifter for us though, as designers. Potentially, they can lure the kinds of potential clients away from us that we’d rather not have to begin with.
Often however, real designers, and ad agencies often get called on to repair this kind of early branding mistake–to fix what was learned the hard way. And without articles like this, the cost of repairing a brand, can be misunderstood. Too often a quick/cheap fix is expected.
Fixing a brand, even early on, is often more time consuming and difficult to navigate than doing things right the first time.
Company and product branding, is something that should NEVER be taken lightly, but is all the time. Even moderately successful companies can be unaware for years as to just how much market friction is caused by mishandled corporate identity, sloppy branding, and unclear messaging. Unfortunately, repairing these things is never easy, or painless. And sometimes it’s more cost effective for some brands to just continue to suck.
So like you said GET IT DONE RIGHT, the first time.
Thank you for writing this!
Side note, what do you think of the Lottery style sites like LogoTournament.com? (Now these scare me for all kinds of reasons)