I ran across an interesting infographic today titled “Does Design Matter?” As the owner of a graphic design firm, I would say that design absolutely matters to the success of your business. According to this infographic, it would seem that most people (80%) polled would agree that design is important to the success of their business. If that many people think that graphic design is important, then why do they opt for cheap logos and cheap website designs to represent their business?
My problem with cheap logos is that it hurts both the company purchasing the logo and the artist creating the logo. This infographic was created by 99Designs and although it contains some useful information, I don’t think that 99Designs is a good barometer of what design should be. I don’t want to beat up 99Designs, but I do want to point out that there are some caveats when looking for cheap logo designs from any site. One thing you will notice is that on some design sites that offer cheap, a company can create a design pitch and then receive designs from thousands of interested designers. This sounds brilliant, doesn’t it. For little money, the company has thousands of designs to choose from. However, what about all the work that goes in to designing the hundreds of designs that didn’t get picked? This type of situation is known as “Spec Work” in the industry. I won’t delve into spec work more than to say it is creating designs that are submitted before gaining any type of contract or fees. One of the best resources about spec work can be found at http://www.nospec.com/faq.
Let’s compare this to another service: dining. I have $5 to spend on dinner and I want a steak. What I am going to do is call every chef in the area and ask them to prepare me their finest top sirloin steak with a baked potato. Then, I am going to eat them all, and the best one will get my $5. I will also tell them I am an influential blogger and that they will get so much business because I am going to tell everyone I know about them. Who, in their right mind, would agree to such a thing? Yet many designers do. Why is this?
I think for some trying to break into the industry, this seems like a great deal. They get to practice their craft and possibly land a client. I get that. However, there is more to designing a logo than just coming up with a pretty image. Creating a logo takes time, effort, and research. At Linear Liquid, we take the time to learn about the client, their customers, and their competition before we ever start a sketch. Sometimes the research alone can take several weeks. After our research is completed, we then develop many different concepts before narrowing them down to 3 or 4 to present to the client. Yet, on many of these sites, there is only a few days to a week to do all this. This is not so much a problem with the designer as with the companies looking for the cheapest logo design they can find.
Turning our attention back to the infographic, we can see that 7% of small business owners hire an agency to do their design work, 21% find freelancers, and the rest either do it in-house, create it themselves, or use a crowdsourcing site like 99Designs. Why is it that so many people think graphic design is important to the success of their business but choose to handle it themselves or outsource to the lowest bidder? I would say that because of the availability and lower prices of programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, anyone who can work the program thinks of themselves as a designer. I can install a toilet. Does that make me a plumber? I can take my temperature. Does that make me a doctor? Your logo is probably the first thing your potential clients will see. If you do not have any graphic design training, why would you want to create a logo yourself? If your answer to that question is, “To save money,” I think you are doing yourself a horrible disservice.
When you are starting a business, you need something that will identify your company to your potential customers. That will be your logo. You need something that will help you stand out from your competition. As a business owner you know that you need to stand out and differentiate yourself in the industry. Yet many times business owners create a logo, become personally attached to it and try to build their brand around it. The next place your customers will look to find you is the Internet. If you have an ugly logo, chances are that you are going to have an ugly website. People claim that good designers should be able to design around it, but try asking a makeup artist to make someone with a large third eye covering most of their face beautiful. They can’t do much about that other than try to de-emphasize it. The same is true with your website. Chances are, you are going to want your logo to be the biggest thing on the page. That might not be the best approach anyway, but with a self-designed or cheap logo, the best a designer can do will be to draw attention away. At Linear Liquid, we understand that pricing can be an issue for small businesses. We are a small business too, but we also know how important a quality logo is to starting your brand off on the right foot.
The simple answer is that it depends. There are a lot of factors that come into play when pricing a logo. Some factors to consider are the size of the company, if the company is local, regional, national, or worldwide, and if the logo represents a single entity or a parent company with many companies or products under it. This is why research is important. The brief could say that your company creates high-end jewelry. Well, who are your customers? Who are your competitors? I am sure you have an idea. However, in many instances, the research will show that although you thought your target market was one type of consumer, reality shows it is a different consumer altogether. You will notice that many of the top graphic design firms do not have their prices listed. This is because everything is customized for the client. Sure, we would love to say that every logo we design is $5000, but this alienates many in our target market. Does that mean that we create $50 logos? No! We work with our clients to create pricing that is fair to both parties and create a foundation that the company can build its brand on.
Let’s take one last look at the infographic. At the bottom, it asks how much small business owners would be willing to pay for a new logo. The results are appalling, but when you consider they are from 99Designs, they are to be expected. Fifty-seven percent say they would pay up to $500. Eighteen percent say they will go up to $1000, and only 14% would go above $1000. I have a feeling that most of these small business owners don’t understand the importance of their logo within their brand strategy. They know they need one, but don’t realize its importance.
The short answer is, yes. At the very least, they can portray your company as boring and stale. At the worst, they can portray your company as amateurish. I know it seems like I picked on 99Designs, but this also holds true for the CEO designing a logo or the secretary, or your friend’s cousin who happens to know Photoshop. Do you really want the icon that represents your company to be designed by the lowest bidder? It all goes back to how you want to position your company within your industry.
