A modern logo is a graphic visualization of a product, service, or company concept. A logo It may consist of symbols, illustrations, inscriptions and a lot more. Professional logo design is not comparable with amateur sketches because it gives your business identity and helps build your brand A commercial logo is visually different. It is bright, informative and there is nothing superfluous in it. The ideal logo is the one that easily conveys the concepts of the business. It speaks for itself so anyone seeing the such a logo should, at first sight, guess the kind of business it is designed for.
Every business should start with a well-designed logo which attracts and holds the target consumers’ attention on the spot. When running a business in very competitive markets, logos should be created with the future in mind and should also match the design of the website.
But… What can you say about the cost of logo design? Do you think a $ 1,000,000 logo is better than a $100 logo? How much does a logo design cost? Let’s discuss these issues.
Did you know that:
- Coca-Cola did not spend a penny to create a logo!
- In 2008, Pepsi updated its logo previously created for $ 1,000,000!
Logos are essential for companies, public organizations trademarks, brands, political parties, and even public figures. In a word, a logo represents the company’s history, its objectives, products, goals and field of activity.
The main types of logos are as follow:
- Informational;
- Political;
- Image;
- Dynamic;
- Commercial;
- Elegant;
- Youth;
- 3D.
Each type of logo is applicable to a particular company.
The Informational logo is most often used by public organizations, charitable foundations, and the media. It is designed to convey the institution’s message through visualization. A political logo usually conveys any ideology while a commercial one can be undescriptive, but still easy to remember and recognizable.
The Image logo is preferred by companies that wish to emphasize their reputation, status, prestige. Youth logos emphasize on brightness, abstractness and are usually used in the line of products targeted at young people.
Graceful logos are refined fonts and combinations of colours which are most often used by designers and creative people. Dynamic and 3D are used to highlight the company’s philosophy.
Logo design and development are based on a creative approach, analysis and elaboration of every detail. A logo is the representation of an idea that is brought to life in a very beautiful way.
The steps to creating logos can be divided into several stages:
- Setting a task — filling out a brief, studying materials about a product or company;
- Preparation — choice of colours, competitor analysis, development of the idea of the future logo;
- Creation of a sketch based on the brief;
- Creation of multiple logo options;
- Approval of the logo by the customer;
- Finalization of the final version;
- Transfer of the logo to the customer.
Well-designed logos, or logos designed by professionals, represent the stepping stones to every business success and should therefore not be overlooked.
What determines the price of the logo ordered from the designer?
If you decide to buy corporate symbolism from a specialist, then its pricing may depend on a number of factors which include:
The scope of work. Often, designers offer not to dwell on only one logo but to order a full-fledged corporate style — a set of original graphics, colours and fonts for the design of printing. Of course, such a task will cost you much more than just a logo;
The number of options and edits. The cost of any graphic signs directly depends on the number of developed options. Most often, the contractor provides the customer with two to five variations of the logo, if they are needed more, this can significantly affect the budget. In addition, the amount often increases with multiple edits of the same option;
The Designer’s experience. The services of an experienced specialist (or, moreover, studios) will cost significantly more than the work of a beginner, but this will increase the chances of getting the perfect logo — attractive, memorable, accurately reflecting the ideas and values of your business;
The Timing. If you need an instant result, you will have to pay extra for it. Conversely, you can save your money if you agree to wait. But most often the time to create a logo is regulated by the designer.
Thus, all these factors significantly affect the value of the logo.
How much cost logo design in different ways?
The cost of the logo design either depends on its complexity or the way it’s developed. In some cases, it can be you absolutely free while in others it will be very expensive (up to several tens of thousands of dollars).
Here are three options to look at:
Ordering logo design from a freelancer. One of the most popular methods to get a logotype for a moderate budget. However, very often its quality and originality may be in question. Logo design cost: $ 150–450 (based on average market rates);
Making the design yourself. Creating a logo yourself won’t cost you any penny at all. However, will need to be experienced with graphics editors, and be ready to sacrifice a significant amount of your time for your logo.
Ordering from a design studio. This is the more reliable but the most expensive method, compared to hiring a designer. And almost always takes a lot of time especially on coordination and editing. Logo design cost begins from $1000;
Buying at auction. You can also create a tender for the development of a logo with a fixed budget on one of the specialized sites (99designs, DesignCrowd), and then just pay for your favourite option. Logo design cost begins from $100;
Creation in the online service. Finally, it is possible to quickly and easily get a logo on one of the site-generators. An important advantage of this method is the minimum cost of work — from $10. But you must understand that talking about “corporate style” in this case would be at least silly.
How much is a small business willing to pay for logos?
We conducted a survey among start-up entrepreneurs in order to find out — what cost and period of logo production they consider adequate? We were also interested in the balance of price and quality acceptable to them, as well as what they are willing to sacrifice when ordering a logo.
According to the results of the study, we found that small business representatives prefer low-priced products, which is quite natural.
Thus, 25% of respondents would pay no more than $ 30 for a logo, 27% — from $ 31 to $ 100, 18% — from $ 100 to $ 500, and only 12% of respondents agreed to part with the sum over $ 500. At the same time, 18% of the participants stated that they would like to get a unique logo for their new business absolutely free. As for the desired timeline for the development of a trademark, the majority (43%) of respondents are ready to expect it not more than two weeks, and 27% generally agreed to set aside a maximum of 2 days for this.
To sum up, it is important to know that the cost of logo design is subject to the country where the logo is made.
For instance, the pricing per hour of logos designed in the USA and Canada can approximately be the same. Whereas a designer or web agency from the UK can have a completely different rate per hour. In a word, the cost of a logo design can be expensive or cheap. It all depends on where you are located.
Thanks to the internet, people who need logos but can not afford to pay too much, have the opportunity to hire qualified designers in countries such as Ukraine where the cost of labour is lower. There are plenty of professionals that offer quality services but at cheaper prices. Many American companies do hire designers, freelancers or web agencies from Ukraine.
The difference between the $100 logos and $10.000 logos
based on the examples of some famous brands *
Google’s logo is well known and everybody can recognize it, but only a few people know that Google did not pay a penny to design its logo. As opposed to Google, BP (British Petroleum) spent about 211 million dollars on its logo but is still not a well-known company.
The cost of the Google logo is $0.
The original Google logo design was created in 1998 by co-founder Sergei Brin in the free GIPM graphics program. Further, Ruth Cedar, a common friend of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, studying at Stanford University was engaged in the changes (font, outline).
The cost of a Coca-Cola logo is $0.
The logo was invented by Coca-Cola’s founding partner, accountant Frank M. Robinson (1886). Robinson just thought that the two letters C would look good in advertisements. The logo is based on a special handwritten font Spencerian, which reflects the handwriting characteristic of that time.
Twitter’s logo design cost is only $15.
Twitter acquired the world-famous bird Twitter in a photo bank for $ 15 stock photos. The author Simon Oxley (Simon Oxley), a British artist living in Japan, got about $ 6 for his work.
The cost of the logo Nike 35 dollars.
In 1971, co-founder of the company, Phil Knight, bought from Carolyn Davidson, a student of graphic design, her work for $ 35. Their acquaintance was accidental: Knight lectured at Portland University and accidentally heard the girl sharing with her friends, which she does not put up in oil painting in galleries. Phil offered her a side job: draw graphs, charts for $ 2 per hour. Ultimately, she drew the Nike logo: “I don’t like it, but maybe it will like it in time,” said Knight, reluctantly giving $ 35 for the Nike brand tick.
NeXT’s logo design cost 100.000 dollars.
After leaving Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs) founded the company NeXT, the logo for which he hired the famous designer Paul Rand, who also created proprietary emblems for IBM, UPS delivery service, ABC TV channel, etc.
The cost of the logo of the Olympic Games 2012 in London is 625,000 dollars.
The logo was created by the agency “Wolff Olins” back in 2007. But the logo turned out not very successful. It was rather a casual image, with something which looked like two figures engaged in oral sex.
The cost of the Pepsi logo is 1,000,000 dollars.
In 2008, Pepsi paid $ 1 million to the Arnell Group studios to design its logo.
BBC’s logo cost 1,800,000 dollars.
Everything is simple here: black and white, simple letters in small squares, Gill Sans font. For this, the company paid almost $ 2 million. The logo was lastly adjusted in 1997.
The cost of the Accenture logo is $ 100,000,000.
The largest consulting company Accenture paid $ 100 million for its logo.
The cost of the logo BP (British Petroleum) 211.000.000 dollars.
In 2008, the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather finished work on changing the logo, slogan and image for the company British Petroleum. Their goal was to “portray a company you can trust and rely on.” The guys coped with the task perfectly well, and took 211 million dollars for their work, not less.
*All data regarding the logo of the above companies were taken from open sources and may partially contain unreliable information.
How we created F5 Studio’s logo
The idea of creating the F5 Studio logo was to visually portray such an abstract concept as “innovation” or “update”. We combined the theme of “Web Development” and the term “update”, which quite logically led our team to choose the F5 key on the keyboard, which allows us to update the web page. In addition, the number “5” symbolizes our company in the sense that we provide exactly 5 main services: web development, web design, project management, quality assurance, customer support.
We also wanted to portray the dedication, perseverance, and hardworking character of our team, but the symbol “F5” alone, was not enough to convey the message. So we thought we should further develop our logo by using a beehive, which many people often associate with cooperation hard work.
In total, the development of the F5 Studio logo was carried out throughout a whole month and the initial idea was subjected to a lot of changes. The overall concept of the logo has been discussed innumerable times. At first, there was an idea to depict 5 honeycombs, but they didn’t look very harmonious against the blue and purple gradient, so we had to arrange a serious brainstorming among all the team members. After discussing dozens of diverse ideas, we have a dozen new ones.
At the same time, the idea of integrating the Roman numeral V into the logo existed, but since the Arabic numeral 5 had already been used, the additional digit would only overwhelm the logo, but the brilliant idea arose spontaneously as always. It was decided to depict 5 “elements” (it was something only quite resembling honeycombs) in the form of the Roman “V”. But only having fully thought out the concept of the future logo, we were able, thanks to the efforts of our chief designer, to create in a week what we had been striving for all this time.
By the way, our bid for web design is $ 10 / hour, and one may assume that this rate was inspired by the cost of our logo. However, since we designed our logo ourselves, we prefer to keep its cost secret.
