What to Look Out for with Cheap Logo Design Services
You may have seen this ad while Googling “Professional Logo Design Services”
And you see an ad:
$38.99 Logo Design Service – 8 Logos With Unlimited Revisions
You think, “Wow! What a bargain!”
It’s important to save money where you can – especially if you’re a small business owner. And it’s tempting to take the most cost-effective route to get a logo designed when presented with so many other options. But in the back of your mind, you’re thinking, “What’s the catch?”
We thought the same thing. We’re pretty damn good at what we do. But we don’t charge $38.99 for our services.
So if these other guys can design logos at a fraction of our price, should we close up shop and open a bakery? The Baking Bull Anyone?
We looked into these cheap logo design services and decided… Nah – we’re good
A logo design is for immediate recognition, inspiring trust, admiration, loyalty and an implied superiority. It is a visual summary and presentation of your entire company, industry and market. It is also the main element of a company’s brand and its economic entity.
This quote says it perfectly:
“If a logo design can build trust, a lot of work is already done for us” – Tina Zoltan
However, a logo design is not to fit your graphic design taste. This is a common misconception in the design industry. A logo shouldn’t be only pleasing the eyes. An effective logo only works if it does its job in your target market.
Do you open a restaurant and serve food that only you like? I hope not.
In terms of cheap logo design services, there are many providers.
Today, we look at freelancer job directories and also online faceless logo design companies.
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The particular freelancer case I am looking at today is this.
It’s a job post for a beauty clinic logo design that was held on Digital Point Forums. Well, the job offers $35.00. Awesome!
The “brief” for the logo design project is:
Below you can see the responses from the contest, which one do you think won? Haha, I hope you know I’m being ironic right now.
If you like any one of the above, I guess you should stop reading this post and just call us for help.
Otherwise, you will notice that nearly all of the logos above use free standard issue fonts, which makes your logic generic from the start.
This violates all the principles that make a good logo. i.e. describable, memorable, effective without colour and scalable.
If the definition of a good logo is too vague, try asking yourself these questions:
- How many of the logos can you describe or remember?
- Are these logos effective without colour?
- Do they gain immediate recognition?
- Can they convey the company’s personality, character or attitude?
- Can they relate to your clients by conveying a feeling of familiarity and credibility?
- Do they have an association with quality and satisfaction?
Or I can answer them for you: 0, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
What did you expect? A good logo always comes with a big price tag. It is not only because the designers won a few awards, but it’s about the processes involved. We will talk about this more after we show you another case.
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That might be all that they do. They may be using logo generating software to create logos. Or contracting out the logo designs overseas. We don’t know. They won’t say (and we don’t expect them to).
The online marketplace makes it easy to buy and sell goods and services. But both buyer and seller need to cover their bases and protect themselves.
The ad we mentioned earlier quotes one company’s basic package. Lots of companies offer similar services at equally low prices.
We looked into a few of them and studied their logo packages, read through their FAQs, and asked their online representatives a few questions.
All these online design companies offer similar packages:
- 6 logo concepts
- Free icon design
- 2 creative designers
- 48 to 72 hour turnaround time
- Unlimited revisions
- JPEG and PDF formats
- The full price for this package is $119. The sale price is $49 for this package. This deal is amazing, 59% off!
One thing that jumps out at us though, other than the low price for the amount of work, is the turnaround time. 48 to 72 hour turnaround time is not just fast. It’s The Flash fast.
Check this picture below. It summarizes your logo shopping experience perfectly.
Professional logo design companies, like ours, have an actual design process that involves research, sketching, conceptualizing, and reflection and this is why they do not charge $25.00.
For The Coding Bull, we take anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks to design a logo (psst~ that’s 480 – 960 hours).
The design process consists of:
1. Design Brief Creation
- Learn about the client’s brand, visual identity, and story behind their business
- Research the industry, direct competitors, indirect competitors, and industry history
- Understand the demographics of the target customers. Do you know people see 100+ logos a day? How can yours stand you, so they would pick you over your other competitors?
2. Conceptualization
- Create artwork from scratch
- Test logo designs in different sizes and on different mediums
- Does the logo work on business card?
- Does the logo work on website?
- Does the logo work on an app?
- Test different colour variations – make sure it looks good in both black and white and colors.
- Work through ideas to find the best concepts
3. Reflection
- Marketing specialist, digital strategist and the designers sit together, they go through all the chosen concepts and see if there is any missing information or missing angle that they should analyze. This gives designers some feedback and allows ideas to mature and be renewed with enthusiasm.
4. Market Validation
- In step 1, we have our target customers. Let’s serve them questionnaires using software like Google Surveys, Amazon Surveys. Of course, don’t be biased. Have a professional draft the questions, so your data is accurate.
- If the test results suck, too back, go back to step 1. We must have missed something. If we need to go back to step 1, this is where the project is going to take 8 weeks.
Do you see how there’s never a step for asking whether you like the logo or not?
Well, let’s look at this example. You own a toy store. You need a logo. Is it creepy that you like a logo that a 5-year-old girl also adores? Yea, right, then why do you want me to ask you.
Our job is to design a logo that works for your business, not you. Sorry.
Now, let me ask you again, do you believe doing all of that costs $35.00? Did you know that the software to make the logo is $700 in itself, let alone the computer.
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SO WHAT’S THE CONCLUSION?
We looked through the designs from many cheap logo design service providers. It’s a rotten bag, but all the designs are passable if you are building a passable company (I know a good lawyer who specializes in commercial bankruptcy).
We don’t mean to dump on these designs, but the results don’t look any better than logos created by logo generators. The results are obvious.
See what people say about the service they got from these cheap logo design companies:
Any professional logo design company should have a wall of reviews looking like ours:
ANYWAYS, HOW MUCH SHOULD A LOGO COST?
This is the single most frequently asked question, though it is impossible to answer without more details of the project (you saw our design procedure, we need data).
We have our motivations for researching these cheap logo design services.
You should know what you are getting into. At the end of the day, it’s your choice what kind of a business you want to people to perceive you have built.
Do take a gander at our portfolio. Invest in a professional logo design and contact us! There’s a reason why we are the highest reviewed digital marketing company in Vancouver.