How much should a logo cost?

How much should a logo cost?

The price design agencies charge for a logo can range from £50 to £50,000. That is a huge price range, so what is going on?

Did the cheaper logo take one hour to create and the more expensive logo a thousand hours. I doubt that very much. The time taken to draw even the most complex of logos amounts to tens of hours, certainly not thousands.

There are two key factors that determine the cost of a logo: The cost of getting it wrong and Is it really just a logo?

The cost of getting it wrong

If you are a global sports brand and you find you have to recall a newly launched logo it would be catastrophically expensive.

  • The embarrassment and bad PR of making a mistake
  • The loss of customer engagement, because who wants to be associated with an epic fail
  • The cost of recalling all products with the new logo
  • The cost of changing every instance of the new logo (vehicles, website, billboard, office signage, etc)

All this could run into millions, so perhaps the £50k spent on finding the very best people and have them fully stress test the logo seems like money well spent, despite it only taking the designer an hour to draw the final logo.

So when you are considering the price of your logo, work out how important it is to get right and spend accordingly.

For a list of common logo mistakes, see below.

Is it really just a logo?

A logo is often just a simplified drawing with little meaning or value on its own. It needs to be part of a ‘Corporate Identity’ which is then part of the company’s ‘Brand’.

It is important to differentiate ‘brand’ from ‘corporate identity’ as too many people use the former term when they actually mean the latter.

This is important because when a client says they need a logo the chances are they actually need a corporate identity; one that includes a logo, but also shows the corporate fonts and colours, plus designs for letter-headed paper, business cards, email signature, social media favicon and so on.

Clearly the more you need from a corporate identity the greater the cost should and will be.

Then we come to the question  of brand. To use the analogy of a car;

  • A corporate identity is the wheels, the chassis, the aerodynamics
  • The brand is the pleasure you get from owning and driving the car

So yes, brand is the corporate identity, but it is also the experience of dealing with the company in question.  As well as making fantastic cars, Ferrari work tirelessly to make the entire experience of buying, driving and owning one of their cars equally amazing, and we believe our clients should plan the same for their businesses.

Making every client interaction spot on and consistent.

Common Logo Mistakes

  • Logos that don’t scale
  • Overly complex logo
  • Logos that date quickly
  • Logos that are a difficult shape
  • Logos with colours that are hard to replicate in print
  • Logos with colours that don’t work digitally (metallic colours)
  • Symbols that accidentally look phallic
  • Symbols that translate badly abroad
  • Logos that are too similar to someone elses
  • Logos designed before urls are found
  • Technically poor logo files