Logo design is truly an art yet talented designers can rarely make a living designing them. Unfortunately many people have the misconception that (1) graphic designers are also mind readers and (2) that every graphic designer has an enormous collection of clip art, fonts and photographs expertly archived on their laptop that they will happily share for a few Andrew Jacksons. Not true.
Over time I have learned to sit across the table new clients and explain, without flinching, that their “something simple” logo will run somewhere between $300 and $3000. As I have also come to find that this is not often well received, Cathy Lessing of Lessing DesignWorks and I have started pushing clients to some of the DIY tools.
DIY logo design tools are fabulous for helping clients get a head start. You can play with dozens and sometimes hundreds of symbols, test gobs of fonts and experiment with a palette of colors. And while you may not come up with that perfect solution, ultimately you will learn a lot about your preferences for type treatments vs. actual innovative logo designs and you’ll reap the rewards in the time you save working with an actual professional designer on your ultimate concept.
Here’s an example that I created this evening in less than 15 minutes on LogoMaker:
Sure I could have incorporated one of the hundreds of PR and Marketing images they suggested but when it got right down to it, I thought this was a really cool font so I went with a plain (OK not so plain) type treatment. Now I’ve got something that I can share with a graphic designer and ask him (or her) to help me do much more.