£20 for a logo? 6 good reasons why going cheap with design is a bad idea

It’s a compelling question. You need a logo for your fledgeling business. Why should you pay hundreds of pounds for this when you can get something designed on the internet for twenty quid?

I think it really depends on what kind of vision you have for your business. If the logo is, for example, for a flyer and you intend to clean windows, then maybe a £20 online logo is about right. You’ll most likely get something professional looking, and suitable for the use you intend. But if you have a vision for your business, and intend it to grow and impress customers or other businesses then I really think that this kind of thing is a bad idea. If you’re considering commissioning a designer to create a logo or other piece of branding for you, here are the reasons why you shouldn’t skimp on price.

1. You really get what you pay for – you won’t get research or meetings. Creating a brand takes time and professional designers aren’t just messing about on their computers all day. When you commission a designer or design company, they will look at your business in the round. They will look at where you’ve come from, and consider the way you’ve been presenting and marketing yourself up to that point. They will research the logos and identities that your competitors are using. They will look into and consider what your target market might respond to. All this takes time, and you wouldn’t expect someone to do this all for free. If you’re paying someone £20 for a logo, you can guarantee you won’t get any of this background work. And you won’t get to meet the designer
2. It takes more than just a couple of hours to design a good logo. Most likely, you’ll be asked to create a specific requirement or brief for your logo, and you’ll get a couple of versions to choose from, then possibly a round of amendments. That’s it. When we work on a logo we tend to spend 10-30 hours on it. How would you feel if someone offered to pay you £20 for 15 hours hard work, and all your experience and skills, and that expensive software you have to pay for? I think you’d agree it would be offensive. When our company designs a logo or brand for a development, we will provide a full presentation with well-researched and worked up options, and allow a couple of rounds of amendments and tweaking to give the best possible result. Depending on the brief, we may also provide examples of how the logo will look on marketing materials going forward, so the client can really understand the vision we have for the brand.
3. You’re helping to cheapen the market. We’ve considered that £20 doesn’t cover the cost of the time required for research. I would argue that it doesn’t even come close to cover the cost of the hardware and software required to produce it. In order to cover even this basic overhead, the low cost designer would have to be churning out at least 5 of these per month. That’s before they’ve even taken anything for themselves, or any other business costs. How they’re doing it and making it pay is obviously their business, but in my view it’s not sustainable even if the designer is living in a part of the world where the cost of living is much lower than where I live and work. 
4. Our bills include the years of study and experience that you’re tapping in to by using us. Becoming a good designer takes time and effort. I learned my craft largely in the trade, but many designers have spent years and no small amount of money studying to learn their trade. And many of us have been doing it for years, and have created and worked with many successful logos and brands. It’s our business, and we know what we’re talking about. In my view, if you want to access this knowledge you will need to pay for it – after all you wouldn’t expect a mechanic to take your car apart for free, or a solicitor to represent you ‘for the experience’.
5. A good designer can help you take it forward. Designing a logo doesn’t end with that task. A good designer will have a mind on the whole brand, and how to take their vision for the company forward and roll it out over print and digitally, over social media, the web, business stationery, marketing collateral, exhibitions, vehicles and signage. If you’re using a one off on-line designer, it’s unlikely that they will have put any work or thought about how this might be done. If you have a vision for your business and really want growth, you need to think cohesively about your whole brand and the way you portray yourself to the outside world. A good designer can help with this. It would be worth noting here, that some of the ‘cheap logo’ offerings out there will be loss leaders to hook you in to purchasing further design and print services. In my view, it’s best to be up front about the true costs of the services to be provided.
6. Your logo has a lot of work to do. A logo is often the first thing people see, and will also have to last many years. Why risk people looking at your logo – the front line of your company – and cringing? It also takes years to build a brand that customers and clients trust. You don’t want to be changing your brand identity too often, rebranding is risky. And what if your cheap logo helps prevent your business from taking off in the first place? What are you left with then?

This article has been largely about logo design as there seems to be a large market out there offering cheap logo design, but these points apply to all aspects of design – marketing material, websites – everything. Why risk going cheap? In the end it could be a false economy.