So the question arises here how much you should pay for a logo? Answer of this question is difficult, because there are several factors behind it. Now, let’s see what are the major factors which influence the cost of your logo?

Price should not be the first consideration

Price is often considered first while going for a custom logo design. It is fine if you go for a cheap logo design. But think before how much importance a logo can have for your business. Your logo is going to be placed on the mediums like stationary, website, promotional material and so on. These marketing collaterals make your customer comes into contact with you and builds an image about your company. Therefore, spending very low amount may not be reasonable, but spending thousands of dollars also doesn’t make sense. The better option is to spend in between $100 to $500. You will possibly use your logo for at least 10 years, and if you divide cost with the number of months, it only comes out to a few dollars a month. By having these thoughts in mind it is clear that price should not be considered as the major factor among other important aspects.

Must check the Level of Service

Service level should be considered on top while selecting a logo design service. It’s usually depends on the package you select. The more you pay the more service options you will get. The service level of a company can be determine by the number of designers who will design your logo, the number of round of revisions (requests for changes), and the number of initial concepts provided at first round. In addition, money back guarantee is also an important element that should be considered if you don’t like the design or if they don’t deliver your work on time.

Design quality is one important factor

Design quality is one other major factor that determines the worth of your logo. If you are agreed on paying $1000, it means you also make sure to get the value of your money back in shape of a great design. To assure the quality of design, you should check out the design portfolio of the company, the testimonials written by the customers, and the experience and knowledge they have about logo designing.

Location of a company saves you from future consequences

Company’s location provides great deal of advantages to the business owners. If you hire any designer who is located outside your country, for example, China or India, it would nearly impossible for you to take legal action against him if you unluckily come under the case of trademark infringement. Moreover, a design company which is located in the country same as yours, it is an advantage for you because they can understand the need of the local market, and at the end you will get a logo according to your local marketplace.

Remember

considering price, hiring a logo designer, and getting the final formats – for all this you pay some amount that may be higher or lower, but besides designing, your logo is that element which give your company an identity, therefore no matter how much you pay but if you don’t get your logo according to your business and target market, all the money you spend will be wasted. Hence, spend considerable amount of time on searching a suitable logo design company before hiring one.

This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.

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I mentioned here the much discussed Pepsi Rebranding.

Fast Company revealed a leaked pdf that outlines the thinking behind the controversial new Pepsi logo.

If with this the designer team is trying to get excuses for their results and 5 months of working or the million dollar invoice, then they should listen to what everybody comment on this: it is a lame excuse.

Mixing gravitation in the Pepsi galaxy, energy fields, relativity of space and time, some mythical perfect proportions, some da Vinci Code and some smiley faces the document is trying, without a final conclusion, to make us stand up in ovation by the end of the reading.

Well, we will stand up…. And leave.

Download the document here.

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I honestly consider it one of the ugliest rebrands, redesigns of a logo, I have ever seen.  The letters which take on different weights, colors and textures are sending me the message of a unfinished draft logo on a designer table that still has long way to go until done.

Animal Planet Logo Change

All these even though the new logo was designed by Dunning Eley Jones, a London-based design firm with plenty of experience in TV branding.  I am just curious if any of my readers here, see any of the message in this logo.

The lucky thing is that the Discovery Channel logo change wasn’t such a failure, on the opposite.

Discovery Channel Logo Change

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The most important elements of a brand should be:

Brand Position

• Who is addressed by company’s branded products or services. What the company does and for whom
• The company’s unique value and how customers benefit from products and/or services
• Key competitive differentiators, what makes the brand be chosen, be different from its competitors

Brand Promise

• The ONE most important thing that the brand promises to deliver to its customers — Every time!
• What customers and partners should expect from every interaction, how should they feel as brand’s customers

Brand Personality

• What the brand is to be known for
• Personality traits that customers, partners, and employees use to describe the company. What comes to the (potential) customer’s mind when addressed about the brand

Brand Story

• The company’s history and how the history adds value and credibility to the brand
• A summary of products/services/solutions

Brand Associations

• Physical artifacts: name, logo, colors, taglines, fonts, imagery
• Ideally, it must reflect the all the above statements about the brand and the company

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Trust means your future customers believe you’re likely to be honest and competent, and will deliver a good experience. Sometimes trust comes from friends telling friends they had a great experience. But most of your future customers wont have word-of-mouth to rely on. They have to decide on their own whom to trust. Thats the mission of your logo, website or brochure, to create your business dress and body language–your visual branding.

Here are a few basics to help your business look credible:

1. Go for simplicity and lack of clutter. (Think Apple, the master of simplicity in branding.)
2. Create or demand a clean, well-balanced graphic design.
3. Use one or two basic colors that go well together, not a hodgepodge.
4. Choose one font and stick with it. You can express almost anything by using variations within a single font family: size, weight (boldness), italics, etc. If you really must, choose a second font for major headlines. But first try it with one font.
5. Coordinate a single look – design, colors, etc. – across everything you do, including your logo, website, brochures, ads and signage.

Read full article in Entrepreneur.com

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It’s not the firs nor the last of big brands that seems to think that their slumping sales will recover by slight changes in their branding. I’m not sure that this is the right answer or just an effort in the wrong direction at not the right time.

It took the designers five months to finalize the (new?) iconic logo. Five months and $1 million dollars for the design.

The purpose of the rebranding? “Making the logo more dynamic and more alive … [it is] absolutely a huge step in the right direction” said Frank Cooper, Pepsi’s VP-portfolio brands

So far, branding experts are in both camps. “It’s tilting the whole brand presentation from a classic expression of uniqueness and quality into something that is much more humorous, almost flippant,” said Tony Spaeth, an identity consultant. “It worries me that it is less durable, less permanent and classic. It comes across as more of a campaign idea than an enduring brand expression.” 

The new logo is Pepsi’s 11th in its 110-year history. Five logos have been introduced in the past 21 years, with the last update in 2002. 

Pepsi Logo

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Band branding appears to know no bounds. The Black Crowes market rolling papers, Bon Jovi offers $1,000 signed canvas art prints and Mötley Crüe peddled Mötley Brüe, a carbonated drink. Celebration Cellars, a California winemaker, teamed up with several rockers, including Bon Jovi, Kiss, Madonna and the Rolling Stones, to issue special-edition wines that feature band logos and sell for $100 or more a bottle.

branding lucre rolling in for those who do choose to indulge, some record labels are pressuring artists to share their promotional and merchandising income as a condition of getting record contracts — so-called 360 deals.

Read full If It’s Retail, Is It Still Rock?

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1. Every company has a brand. The question is, “Is it working for you?” Creating a brand isn’t just for the big companies; it’s for companies of all sizes.
2. Your brand must evoke a strong emotion. Customers buy from emotion and back it up with their head.
3. Your brand isn’t a logo. It’s everything you offer, say, and do.
5.  Your brand needs constant tweaking. You have to start somewhere. So, you launch your company and brand, see what works, and you keep adjusting. What ultimately matters is what the customer thinks and feels.

Okay, I skipped the 4th point, I’ll let you (ladies) go to the original post and find it.

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This is a brand which, through a sea-change in its culture and mental set, is staking everything on a speedy, ongoing, renewal of its products, its technological research, the quality of its design and a new constructive relationship with customers. This new-found philosophy has already generated the Panda, Croma, Grande Punto, and Fiat Sedici and will shortly give birth to the Nuova Bravo.

So a new identity, represented symbolically by the new logo through the retrieval of the colour red and the shield as central element, features that characterised Fiat logos up to the ‘Sixties; and through certain formal aspects, the three-dimensional nature of the logo and colour, which suggest an idea of advanced technology, of Italian design, of dynamism and of marked individuality.

says the official press release of the company.

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Every day we are bombarded by millions of messages. They’re everywhere, from print media to highway billboards, local supermarkets, public phone booths, our mailboxes, radios and television sets.

Add to that the explosive growth of the internet and the new communication opportunities this medium presents, and today’s business owner or manager has a near-impossible task at hand; making his or her message stand out among the noise generated by others.

Next the article is presenting the 5 key strategies for a competitive visual identity (logo) as the first of the two crucial components of branding:

1. Be unique
2. Instantly communicate the nature of the business, product, or service.
3. Be appealing to the target audience
4. Be able to withstand the test of time
5. Be able to work in context of all potential communications’ media

The second and equally important component of branding is a verbal one. It is often referred to as a slogan, tagline or a positioning statement.

1. Be as unique as the company logo
2. Be brief and memorable
3. Be honest

Read more here.

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