How to order and get a good logo and how much it costs

I've been working with logos for 20 years, and in that time I've seen different logos: good ones and bad ones. The bad ones were more.

A logo is an image, a spelling of a name or a symbol that helps you remember a company or a brand. Almost any company has a logo: a relay protection plant, a spa, an animal charity, and even a blogger who sells courses on Instagram.

A logo is not just a branding on a product, but part of a company's image. It helps us quickly recognize a brand visually without having to read the name. For example, when we see a yellow and red shell on the side of the highway, we immediately understand that it is a "Shell" gas station.

I am the creative director of a communications agency and I often work with logos. Clients come to us with big projects, and usually the work starts with developing an identity - a logo and corporate identity. In this case I am a doer for the client: I go into the problem, ask to answer the brief, discuss references. And for designers I am a customer: I give them terms of reference and formulate all the wishes of the client in terms understandable to designers.

My article will be useful for those who have not dealt with design before - for example, a person who is starting his own business for the first time and orders a logo. If you are an experienced designer or have commissioned logos more than once, you are unlikely to learn anything new. In this article I will tell you where and how to find a good designer to create a logo, what questions you should ask him, how much it will cost and how to distinguish a good logo from a bad one.

Logos usually consist of several parts:

The writing, aka the text part - usually the name of the company or brand.

The graphic part - the image.

The descriptor is a clarifying inscription. Most often it is a slogan, a complement to the name or line of business of the company.

It is not necessary to have all these parts in one logo.

This is what a "complete logo" looks like. But a logo doesn't have to have all three components

This is what a "complete logo" looks like. But a logo doesn't necessarily have all three components

The spelling and font. The name of the company should be written in the logo, ideally in a specially designed, original lettering, often combined with some graphic element containing some symbolism. Even if a brand seems to be using only a graphic logo, it's not - the full version of the logo always has the lettering. For example, Apple usually uses only the graphic - the biting apple - but the full version of the logo also has the company name. Famous brands like McDonald's or Nike often do this.

In my experience, most designers use ready-made fonts for writing. There are system fonts embedded in MS Office - not the most professional designers use them. With professionals with experience this is rare. Usually they use a ready-made, but little-known font, at best, slightly modifying it for the task.

A ready-made font does not mean free. Most often, ready-made fonts have to be bought. The most popular font store in Russia is Parataip. On average, a license to use one of the fonts for the logo there costs 2,500. Each font may have 15-20 styles and several licenses, e.g. for web, desktop, mobile application. Together they cost hundreds of thousands of rubles. But you don't need the whole kit for a logo - just one font and the "Logo" license.

Designers often use Google's database of free fonts in their work. These fonts can be used for free only in the web environment: on websites, in mobile applications. In logos, you can not use them. Therefore, first of all, pay attention to what font the designer has chosen for your logo and whether it has a license.

In logos with a long history, no graphics, that is, drawings, sometimes simply do not exist. From the early 20th century through the 1980s and '70s, it was not uncommon for brands to use only lettering done by an artist as a logo. These are typographic logos in which the writing itself is a graphic. Over time, the lettering began to be supplemented by a graphic element, but exactly supplemented, while remaining the main part of the logo.

The graphic part of the logo should be considered along with the writing. They must be combined into a coherent composition.

There is a concept of so-called basic figures. Here they are:

Square, rectangle, rhombus.

Circle, oval.

Triangle.

Well, if the elements of a logo individually can be inscribed in one of these figures, and together they form a single composition. But it happens that the composition does not add up and the logo falls apart. It happens for three reasons: the logo has too many elements, uses more than two basic figures, or there is no visual dominant - the most visible element in the logo.

Inexperienced designers sometimes use a simple trick to save the composition: just circle or square around the logo. Such a tracing may be a sign that the composition is not all good.

Search engine. Finding a designer can also be the most obvious way - just google it. This option works best for finding agencies and design studios.

If you enter a query like "logo design" or "make a logo" in the search box, most likely the output will offer various online logo generators for their own creation - for business this option is unlikely to work. So it is better to formulate a more specific request, such as "order a logo" or "design logos Kazan. Also, you should pay attention to articles in the spirit of "Rating of the best design studios in Russia" - usually there is a list of good agencies with examples of work and links to the site and social networks.

When choosing a designer, communicate with three or four candidates, compare prices and portfolios. Also, pay attention to how quickly the designer responds to your messages. There are freelancers who get in touch after a couple of days, and often disappear. There are those who do not perform from the very beginning simple agreements, such as sending examples of work. This should immediately alert you.

Most design studios do not quote prices, there may not be a price list on the website or in social networks. And if they do, it is within very wide limits. The fact is that the price of a logo depends on many parameters, such as urgency, the number of options and concepts.

Much depends on the designer - his experience and status. Designers on the freelance market are ready to draw three versions of the logo and for 1000, the conditional niece of a friend, who is studying in the art - for 10 000.

In my experience, a logo from a good designer costs 25-120 usd.