HOW MUCH DOES LOGO DESIGN COST?
Answered here - How much does logo design cost?
Hi there, if you have reached this page then my guess is that you are googling the question “How much does logo design cost?” and thinking of hiring a logo designer or logo design company and have probably done (or are currently doing) some initial research into how much you should invest. During that initial research I would guess that you have noticed the rather wide range of logo design prices on offer and you are now probably pretty confused about how much you should be paying a logo designer.
If you bare with me and keep reading this article you should at the very least have a much better idea of what you are paying for.
So how much does logo design cost?
The reason that this article is so long is that the answer to “How much does logo design cost?” is not straightforward. There are many factors (all to be explained below) which you need to consider that you may not have even thought of yet; the first and most important of these is that you are currently asking the wrong question.
The correct question is:
How much do I need to pay someone to create a logo that will help me achieve the goals I have set for my business identity?
This question is significantly different and more accurate, because the second thing you need to realise is that not all logos are created equally.
Just like we as people are all different, businesses and brands are are all different too. Because each business is different with there own unique goals and challenges the price each individual company/brand needs to pay to achieve their goals will differ, often greatly.
Even companies operating in the same market will have their own individual challenges that will affect the amount they will need to invest in there logo or identity design. The goals the owners set for their business is another factor that will affect the level of investment required.
To illustrate how a companies individual goals and challenges can affect the cost of logo and identity creation lets use this simple example:
Scenario 1 – Bob
Bob has just set up a small plumbing company in a relatively small town. Bob is self employed, he has no employees and has no intentions of employing anyone or expanding. Bob has a small van and works from home with no office or shop. Bob is not technologically savvy and is not interested in having a website designed or anything like that. In fact the first time Bob thought of having a logo was when his sign-writer (for the van) asked him if he had a logo to put on it.
So now Bob is looking around trying to find someone to design a logo for his business, Bob places no real value on design he is focused purely on getting a logo designed as cheaply as he can that will look “OK” on his business cards and van. Now there is nothing wrong with this, Bob has enough customers from his previous job and he is running adverts in the local newspaper that bring him more than enough work each month. However, this stereotype when compared to the second one below goes a long way to explaining why logo design prices can vary so much and why different business need to invest different amounts (bare with me!).
So even from just this brief description above lets now list what we know about Bob’s logo design needs:
- Small local business.
- Rural or small town location.
- One or two similar local competitors.
- Not looking to expand.
- No website to consider where the logo will be used and not likely to be one in the future.
- Bob places no real value on design and shows no appreciation of how this could help differentiate him from his completion and win him more work.
- Bob is motivated by price alone and just wants a basic logo designed to put on his business card and van.
Now lets look at a second fictional business…
Scenario 2 – Peter
Peter has also just set up a small plumbing company in a large town with an even larger city nearby. Unlike Bob, Peter is ambitious and he plans to employ other plumbers and sub-contract work to them growing the business and expanding into new areas.
Peter understands the importance of having a website and places a degree of value in good design, at the very least he appreciates that having a professional looking identity for his business will help differentiate him from his less astute competitors and help him build the brand he one day hopes to own (lets hope Peter doesn’t live too near Bob or Bob might find he has problems in the future!).
Peter also thinks that it would be a great idea to have his logo printed on a work uniform. Then he can give uniforms to all the plumbers he subcontracts work to and when he sends them on a job this will help build awareness for his brand and present a unified identity to customers.
In addition to this Peter is going to reinforce his brand by making sure that his logo and identity is the same on all his customer facing promotional materials such as his website, his business card, his invoices and so on and so forth.
Now from the short description of Peters business lets summarise his logo design needs:
- Small local business but with ambitions to expand.
- Peter is setting up his business in a large busy town location with an even larger city nearby, this means more prospective customers but more competition as well.
- There are already probably 5+ established competitors with loyal customers already operating in Peters town and even more in the city.
- Peter will be getting a website designed so we need to consider that the logo needs to work in the digital space as well as for printing.
- Peter is pretty switched on when it comes to technology so before long he will probably realise that he can also leverage social media to his advantage as well as his website to generate more business. In which case we should consider that the logo needs be adaptable to work for social media icons as well.
- Besides just working for the website (and perhaps social media) this logo is going to need to work on business cards and all of Peters promotional material as well as his work clothing. If it is going to be embroidered onto the clothing rather than printed then we might need to make some considerations there as well.
Hopefully, now by looking at these two very similar businesses with very different goals, challenges and requirements you can see how my refined question above is more appropriate.
In short Bob is looking for cheap and cheerful, any logo will do, he would be quite happy paying any logo company (probably the cheapest) to design a logo for his business and to be fair, given Bob’s ambitions, that is perfectly acceptable.
Whereas Peter has more lofty goals and some appreciation of how great design can help him achieve them. Peter knows that a £100.00 cheap logo design will probably not be of sufficient quality to separate him from the existing established competition let alone have enough research and thought put into it to appeal to his target market and help him build his brand vision.
So… I hear you say if I am like Bob then I should be looking to pay about £100.00 but expect to pay more if I am ambitious like Peter? Unfortunately it is not quite as simple as that, I know you have had to read a lot already (I am sorry!) but there is an argument to be had that even Bob should be looking to invest more than £100.00 in his logo design and I will get to that as quick as I can, but first there are other factors that need to be explained.
Lets now quickly address another separate question which is related to how much does logo design cost:
Why do different logo design companies prices vary so much?
I wanted to just answer this quick question close to the top of the article as it is relevant and the answer is related to what we have just discussed above. If you have read the two examples above (and not just scrolled to this question, cheater!) then you will have noted that in the logo design industry, just like any other market, there are different types of customers with completely different sets of requirements.
Lets use a simple analogy to explain this:
Buying a Drill? Some people will purchase the no frills cheapest option because they need it to hang a picture right now but don’t really care about the quality of it. Others will consider the purchase more and think “I need this now to hang a picture, but I am not going to buy the cheapest option because I will want to hang another picture in the future and it has many other uses as well”. Then other people (who have money to burn) will buy the Ferrari of drills just because they can and because it looks cool.
I know stereotyping again! But whatever works to get the message across huh?
As a result, because there are various types of clients, inevitably you get different kinds of logo design companies targeting them. Some of these companies are targeting the cheap and cheerful clients like Bob at £100.00 a pop (for what I would describe as logo design in the loosest sense of the word) whilst others are targeting the Ferrari owners and then you have a whole myriad of pricing in-between.
Logo design pricing factors.
Right now that we understand why different logo design companies charge different amounts lets get back to the main question and try to work out specifically how much you need to invest in your logo design project. (And at the same time I will tackle the question of why Bob in scenario 1 above should probably invest more than £100.00 in his company logo design.
In order to do this you need to consider a lot of factors some are probably quite obvious but others might not be. So I will list out below some of the things you should be considering, these are challenges and goals which will affect the level of investment you need to make in your logo and identity design.
FACTOR 1: How competitive is your market?
This is a massive consideration and one you need to be realistic and honest with yourself about.
FACT: The more competitive your marketplace the harder your logo designer is going to have to work to create a logo and/or identity package for your business to help you stand out from the competition.
More competitors means more work for me to create something to help you stand out from the crowd, simple really. As your logo designer I need to know who your competitors are and I then need to look at how they position themselves in the marketplace. Then I need to use my creativity to come up with something that will help set you apart from them whilst still aligning to the rest of the brief.
This takes time and it is something that you will not find even mentioned in cheap and cheerful logo design packages.
FACTOR 2: What are your brand goals and ambitions?
This is (to some extent) linked to competitors above but the point I want to make here is that you need to consider if your competitors will always stay the same? You might be a small business now, but in 12 months time are you planning on expanding into new markets? And if you are, when you do this, will the number and quality of the competitors you have change?
I would say in most cases the answer is going to be yes. So you need to be thinking about the long term vision of your brand right from the outset.
Trust me it is far more difficult and expensive to re-brand and re-market later down the line. It is much better to invest properly in your logo and identity design at the start so that all the brand equity that you build up along the way is not lost or diminished. Which it might be if you find that you have to change your company identity later to remain competitive in a larger and consequently more competitive market.
As demonstrated in the examples of Bob and Peter above we have seen that two very similar businesses in the same field can still have very different goals and ambitions. These goals and ambitions can and will influence the cost of a logo design so if you are ambitious (like Peter) and plan to grow your business then please consider who your competitors might be and how many of them you might have a few years down the line and use that figure from above instead when considering your investment.
Your logo shouldn’t just be designed to suit where your company is right now, it needs to be strong enough to stand up to any competitors you might encounter along the way and when your business is competing in your intended endgame market.
FACTOR 3: What industry does your company operate within and who is your target audience?
OK, moving on this is another really important factor for you to consider. What industry your company works in will definitely affect the level of investment you need to make into your logo design project. The main reason for this is because some businesses operate in industries that are what I like to call aesthetically driven, more visual marketplaces.
What does that mean?
What I mean by this is that a fashion brand, for instance, operates in a very design orientated and visually demanding industry as opposed to lets say a car mechanic.
Consumers who are interested in fashion are image conscious, when you buy a piece of clothing (besides price) the other defining factor is how it looks, feels and how you look and feel wearing it, in short it is often an emotional purchase.
When someone wants their car repaired they look at things more practically, they NEED this service so they look at reviews and the reputation of the garage as well as prices. So a car mechanic logo would be more focused on conveying a fair price, reliability, professionalism and trust because that is what the consumer is looking for.
Yes they are very different but why does this affect the cost?
It will affect the cost because a logo design created for a visually driven industry where aesthetics are critical to consumer adoption requires a LOT more thought and development time in order to be successful.
The consumers in this market place are very demanding and often whimsical. Brands fade in and out of fashion all the time and to create one that will stand the test of time and compete with other designer brands is a very big challenge indeed.
In contrast, whilst it is still important that the car mechanics logo looks great, their consumers are easier to predict and they are far less demanding. They are not looking for something they are going to walk around wearing on a t-shirt for example, they are looking for a company that looks professional and reliable and whilst it is important to get this right in your visual communication when designing the logo, it is a very different and somewhat easier challenge.
This is probably the hardest factor to convey to a non-designer, it is difficult to explain the challenges that a logo designer faces but I hope that I have gone some way to getting this across. It is even more difficult to quantify and translate this for you into specific costs. Obviously I cannot list out here every different industry and just put a price against it.
As we have discovered in the 2 scenarios outlined (near the top of the page) even designs for the same industry can differ greatly, however, what I have done below is list out some examples of industries that are, in my opinion, more aesthetically driven or who have more athletically driven (and therefore more demanding) consumers.
If your company operates in one of the more visually demeaning sectors, or something similar, then you should expect to pay more for your logo design.
Examples of more aesthetically driven industries and consumers:
- Fashion
- Apparel and clothing such as sports or gym wear
- A design company of any kind including: Interior designers, graphic/web designers and architects
- Hair dressers and salons
- Restaurants and Coffee shops the food and confectionery industry in general (people eat first with there eyes!)
- Cosmetics and perfume
- Motor industry (as in new car brands)
- Jewellery, watch brands and anything else that people wear
- Technology and Gadgets (Apple are the king of this!)
- Music
- Photography and Wedding related services or products
- Hospitality
- Entertainment
For any of these kinds of businesses expect to pay more, lets say a base price of around £1000 but can rise from there significantly.
Now here are some examples of less aesthetically driven industries and consumers:
- Tradesmen (Plumbers, electricians etc.)
- Accountants and the financial sector (to a point)
- Recruitment
- Independent shops e.g. butchers, grocers, newsagents that kind of smaller retail and wholesale sector. Although that said, even this sector has now seen more and more discerning boutique style shops appear, all courting new more eclectic consumers who are buying into organic high end brands and such like.
- Engineering
- Manufacturing
- Agricultural
Expect to pay less, lets say a base price of around £500.
Honestly the lists are almost endless but hopefully these examples will help you identify if you will be operating within a more visually demanding industry.
Factor 4: The experience of the designer you are looking to hire.
This is a huge factor and you would be surprised at just how few people even consider it when selecting a logo designer.
Experience is the one thing that really sets designers apart, as a designer you can only earn your stripes through years of practice and working within the industry. Personally I have over 25 years commercial experience as a designer. The experience and insight that I bring to any logo and/or identity project is worth its weight in gold. The benefit of this hard earned experience is a large part of what you are paying for when you hire me.
I could talk about this for hours, but I won’t.
It is really important however to convey that you are going to be paying a 25+ year veteran logo designer a lot more than you are a beginner. However, that experience is invaluable and underestimating this has been the downfall of many of my clients who have turned to me only after already wasting a a lot of money on cheap, inexperienced logo designers/companies.
Just to put my own prices into perspective here are examples of what some big brands paid for there logo designs in the past:
- The Pepsi re-design in 2008 cost a cool $1,000,000
- The Australia and New Zealand Banking logo cost $15,000,000 in 2009
- And the Accenture re-branding project price tag was a whopping $100,000,000 back in 2000.
Factor 5: Do you require additional identity work?
Logo design is just that, you will receive a final professional logo to use as you see fit.
If you require business stationery designed or any other supporting identity work then you will usually need to pay extra for that. Some companies do offer free stationery design in their logo design packages as an incentive but I would warn you that if you are paying less than £500 for your logo design in the first place then you are likely just going to get a pretty standard template based design for your stationery. This might well be fine for some applications but if you want something unique then you could end up disappointed, so just keep this in mind.
So there you have it…
Firstly, if you have managed to read all of this article then I applaud your dedication!
I know it was long but thank you for your time and I hope that it has given you some idea of how much you should be looking to invest into your logo design project or at the very least given you some insights into exactly what you are paying for.
There is no calculator out there that can tally up exactly how much does logo design cost, because there are so many variables that can affect the cost and every client is unique, but this article is as close as I could write to give a prospective client a really good insight into what affects the costs associated with logo and identity design.