How much should I pay for a logo?

It seems every week someone asks me the question – how much should I pay for a logo? We hear of what some logos cost, for example the new London 2012 logo is said to have cost 400,000 UK pounds… but it does come in a variety of colours to the ‘insert name here’ instant logos found on the internet. The question I ask them is – are you looking for a logo or are you wanting a brand?

The difference between a brand and a logo

Though the words are often interchanged, a logo is part of the brand family, but a brand is not just a logo. A logo is the symbol that represents a company, the brand is the company. Everything that a company is and stands for is a brand. How your receptionist answers the phone, how quickly you respond to queries and the core product or service you stand for are all parts of building your brand. But, ultimately a brand can only stand for one thing in your consumers eyes.

There are more and more online logo stores in the market. The type where you pay $295US for 3 logo options and settle on one. Or for $595 they are already designed, you just pick one and insert your company name and you’ve got your logo. Then you have the design company, where you discuss your needs with a graphic designer, they go away and design some ideas for you, and as they’re not really what you’re looking for you ask them to design some more, so they do, but still these are not right. Finally you get a logo that will have to do and you receive an invoice for $1500 for time taken.

Why there are so many price options for logos

As a service industry, designers make their money on hours charged. As a lawyer or accountants prices a job on how long it will take them to complete a job, so it is with the design industry. The only trouble with that is you don’t know how long a job will take. The designer has to guess how many changes the client will require based on their past experience. “But I just want a logo, how long can it take to draw one?” The logo may only take 2 hours to draw, but the real time is in the research, sample logo sketches, refining the logo and finalising colours to ensure it works in as many aplications as possible.

You’ll notice many of the internet instant logos are busy and illustrative. They have gradients in their make up (where it fades from one colour to another) which means they will not be faxable. As they are made of many colours they will be expensive to print (you’re stuck with printing on 4 colours – like on your colour printer – with cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and the very nature of their style means, although it may be ‘unique to you’, it will look in style very similar to every other logo they produce. This is not a problem if you’re willing to weigh up that with the pro’s of what you’ve paid for it, and should not be a problem if you’re a one person business. Where it is a problem however is the evident lack of uniqueness. That is, does it sum up not only what you do, but what makes you different to your competition?

It pays to be different

If you’ve read this website, or indeed any of my blogs, I press the point of being unique in more than price or great service. My company is unique in that it helps business first find their point of difference (it’s there, you’ve just got to know how to find it) before we put it into their logo. When you find yourself admiring a logo of a specific company, and think “that’s clever” keep in mind that the company has spent a lot of time and money making it that way. But in the long run it is worth it, because if you can pay for a logo that will tell a story about your business, then instead of spending money on a logo, you’ve begun to invest in the value of your business.

Whether you pay $300 for a logo or $30,000 for one, it has got to be an investment in your company and not just a necessary cost. If a lawyer charged you $200 to set up a trust, for example, and you know it usually costs $1,000, will you be getting protection of your assets or are you ticking the box? You must understand that if they have only committed $200 worth of their time to your trust they most probably have not made it specific to your circumstances.

And so, if you’ve spent $300 for a logo to represent your business to ‘tick the box’, know that this is the amount of time the design company can afford to spend on your business.

What you should expect to pay

Designers need to spend the time to get to know your business. They look at what the competition is doing and then design something that makes you stand out from them. This takes time, as does getting to know you and what logo would suit you. Much as a stylist could dictacte that in order to get more business you need to dress in a certain way, a graphic designer is dressing your business. But if the stylist was to dress you in something that you just know you won’t feel comfortable in, so it is with you logo.

A skilled designer will know which questions to ask you in order to make sure the process goes as smoothly as possible. This means you need to have the answers to these questions. Expect to pay upwards of $1,200 for this service.

If you really understand that a logo that will just be different to the competition, for the sake of being different, isn’t going to help your sales, or you are getting confused with the competition and creating quotes with not many turning into sales (that’s right, people are comparing you on price with other companys) then you may need a branding company. They should help you first find out what’s working now in your sales and marketing, what’s not and what the competition is saying. They can help you pin point what makes you different so when they do design your logo it says exactly what you do, and appeals to the right people.

Your brand should be something that you can sell with your company as with your other assets – how much do you spend on ensuring you have a new car, smart premises, clever website and the best sales people, then what percentage of that are you willing to invest in your branding?

A reasonable price to pay will start at $6,000, a fraction of what you spend on other things. Remember this is the total cost, and as branding is a process this is the cost over time and not a one off fee. It also means you’ll walk away with a clear understanding of what you should be telling you advertising agency, marketing company and web developer. A small price to pay for the time it will save you, and the surprise bill of hit-and-miss way of having a logo ‘drawn’ for you.