Good portfolio – extensive with a fair number of logo projects already delivered. Client testimonials. Communicative. Online portfolio – also well-designed. Confident. The list could extend to include all characteristics of a good human being but the following points should help cover the basics :

Track Record / Client Referrals / Past Project Feedback

You could always ask for references and then talk to those references. Client testimonials on portfolio websites might / might not be accurate – if the logo designer has a LinkedIn profile, check to see if they have any client recommendations on it – since only other LinkedIn members can write recommendations, you’ll know they are legitimate.

Quality of Logos in the Portfolio

Not just based on what you think – you might not have seen some of the best logo design work. One way of finding out if the portfolio of a logo designer is any good is to pick up a recommended book on logo design and then comparing what you see in that book with what you see on the logo designer’s portfolio.

Quality of the Portfolio Display

Has the designer invested time in displaying their portfolio? Is their website designed well or is it just a bunch of logos thrown together in wayward fashion? Not only should the logos in the portfolio need to be professional, so should the portfolio-display itself. Does it give you the feeling that the designer loves what he / she does?

Case Studies

Can you find links to cases studies of logo design projects that the designer has worked on? These are always a great way to understand how a designer works and whether that process will be comfortable for you or not. If you are unable to trace links to any case studies, write to the designer and ask them. Good logo designers always have more than a few they’ve spent time crafting.

Pricing

If the logo designer’s website does not mention pricing, don’t just assume that they must be expensive – write to them – use that contact form – and ASK. Without asking around, you will have no idea about pricing and your self-imposed budget might be completely askew. Once you have an idea of what it costs to get a logo designed, you will probably have to go back and re-ascertain why you even need a logo in the first place – because it’s not going to be a $100 job. [ If it is, then you're probably better off without a logo till the time you can conjure a decent budget. No logo is better than a bad logo. ]

Geographic Location

Some people prefer to work face-to-face. Some don’t mind working with a designer from another continent, communicating only via email. Put a finger on what you’re comfortable with and why and then seek designers either in your town or abroad. [ The internet will give you varying search results and who you see at the top of the Google Search Result might not be the best logo designer but just the one most talked-about. ] Communicating via email does not mean little / no communication – sometimes, email communication can be better focussed than face-to-face / verbal communication.

the Creative Brief

Most logo designer will share their creative brief questionnaires with you before they ask you for an advance. They will not review the filled-in brief and give you examples of logos that would fit your brand, but they might share their questions. This will give you a great idea of whether the logo designer knows what they’re doing. Ask for the creative brief questionnaire from various designers and compare what you see. You will get an overall idea of what questions are important.

As I’ve said earlier, work with a designer who inspires confidence.

RESOURCES : Links

aside blog : Choosing a Logo Designer
How to choose a design firm
Smashing Magazine : How To Choose a Logo Designer

Yes. Different. Very. A brand is more of a mental image or perception of the company / product / service in the mind of the consumer. It is intangible. A logo is a company emblem or device that represents the brand. It is more tangible. Branding efforts try to reinforce the brand persona on customers / viewers / general public and one of the elements that helps establish a recognition in that process of branding, is the logo. A logo design is a part of the entire branding process.

Your brand is the story behind your product, your company, your idea. You might have a brand name – like “Nike” is a brand name. That name represents what the company stands for – what image it is trying to project to consumers and to the market. The brand name is a part of the brand. The famous Nike check mark logo is also a part of the brand. The logo, in itself, is not the brand. It is one element of the brand. The logo, like the brand name, represents the brand.

A brand can be represented in a multitude of ways. Brand naming, a tagline, brand identity or logo design, brand colors that represent specific ideas from the brand story, billboards and advertising on the television, online advertising, brand ambassadors and even a brand mission statement.

A logo is an identity of the brand. A logo can be a combination of the brand name written in a specified typeface along with an image / graphic / symbol. The typeface or the symbol can be unique separately or their combination can be made unique. Brand colors can be determined from the logo designed for the brand and then those brand colors can be applied across advertising and marketing collateral.

Branding helps establish an emotional side to the product or the company. The logo helps establish the look or visual image of the brand.

The logo supports the brand’s story and helps further propagate the values established for the brand. The logo alone cannot establish a brand but it can be used as a starting point to ask the right questions. The creative brief can be used to ascertain various long and short term goals on the basis of which, the brand’s story and the logo itself can be developed simultaneously.

Ideally, your logo designer should know the difference between branding and logo design. Your logo designer should also have a fair idea of how to extract the creative brief for the logo from your branding story – if you have one. A good logo designer will tell you that they are not a brand consultant but they can help you ask the right questions.

Questions like the following, within the logo design engagement creative brief are branding related questions that help determine the direction that the designer would take while designing a logo :

A logo designer can eventually also be a brand consultant. I’m assuming that would happen after a few years of experience of working with brands who didn’t just want a pretty picture in their logo.

A brand is a lot more than just visual promotional material – it is how business is done. It’s what your employees believe about the company, the product and the organization.

RESOURCES : Links

Businessweek : A Practical Guide to Branding
Ezine Articles : Difference Between Logo Design and Brand Design
BizHelp : What is Branding?
About.com : What is branding and how important is it to your marketing strategy?
Wikipedia : What is a logo?
Lea Woodward : What’s the Difference Between a Logo and Your Brand?
How to brand your company : Trizle

A creative brief is a set of guidelines that will help your logo designer in deciding the creative direction of the logo design engagement. The creative brief would usually contain details like what your company does, who your target audience is, what design styles you prefer and other details that might help the logo designer better understand your requirements. A good logo designer should be able to provide you with a creative brief questionnaire that you can fill in or the logo designer could even interview you verbally.

The creative brief is a set of questions that the logo designer asks the client. These questions are asked to determine the foundations of the engagement before the start of the actual design process. The questions asked pertain to the background of the company or brand – mission, five year goals, set of values, what the company does, the industry it functions in, competitors, etc. The creative brief also seeks to answer questions related to the client’s design preferences. It aims to establish a persona for the brand, on the basis of which, the logo can then be designed.

An lot can be determined about the quality of work the logo designer is likely to deliver based on the quality, thoroughness and depth of questions in the creative brief.

A large part of a logo design engagement is non-design related. Background research into the company, the industry and competitors, by way of interviews or discussions with stakeholders, helps set the creative direction. I have had more than one instance where a client has visibly blanched at filling in the creative brief questionnaire. Some discomfort is expected while answering the more than two dozen questions but logo design isn’t just pretty graphics. It is pretty graphics AND a lot of background research before pencil touches paper. I ask my clients to treat that process and time as an investment they are making for the successful future of the company, product or brand.

Getting the creative brief right is about 80% of the work done. It sets the tone for the tangibles : the shapes, the typeface, the colors, which come together to create the logo. If taken in the right spirit, the logo design creative brief can also help establish a direction for your company’s branding initiative.

The more detailed your answers to the questions in the creative brief, the better are the chances of getting the logo right for your brand. Fill in the brief and sleep on it. Revisit and correct at least three times before finalizing.

If you are a freelancer, independent consultant or contractor, working alone – a one-person team, filling in the creative brief in detail will help you get one step closer to defining a strong personal brand. even if you. eventually, don’t hire a logo designer.

The time you spend filling in a detailed brief, now, will save three times that amount and a lot more grief and money later. If you can’t articulate it, how the heck do you expect a designer to create it?

RESOURCES : Links

GraphicDefine Magazine : Successful Creative Briefs
David Airey’s : How do you write a design brief?
Logo Critiques : Questions to ask before a logo design
David Airey’s : 10 tips for Writing Graphic Design Briefs
Just Creative Design : How to write an effective design brief
Jaymus : How to write a great creative brief
Mozilla : Creative Brief for the Firefox Icon
Creative Bits : Corporate Identity Client Questionnaire

I will be providing a link to the creative brief questionnaire that I use with my clients. It will be in PDF format and free for download.

Ideally, definitely the following : a Vector file format, which means an EPS or Encapsulated Post Script file, which is scalable to any size, which is critical if you are going to get the logo printed on business cards and other pint media. Other logo application media would typically include websites and blogs : a medium to high resolution .PNG file on a transparent background should serve you well for all web and low-resolution applications.

If you are not aware of how to re-size images and are not comfortable with converting file formats from .PSD [ Adobe Photoshop ] to any other format, ideally, you should ask your logo designer to give you the basic formats.

• .EPS : You should have this file format if you want to use your logo extensively. It is scalable and does not pixelate when re-sized to larger sizes. Sometimes, the logo designer will give you a high-resolution .PDF [ Adobe Acrobat ] file with an embedded .EPS file so that you can see the contents of the file. To view a .EPS file, you will need Adobe Illustrator. Ideally, your printer should be able to extract the .EPS file from the .PDF when it’s time to put your logo onto stationery or billboards.

• .PDF : Alongwith the .EPS file, it makes sense to ask for a .PDF file as well with the vector file embedded in it – so that you can quickly see what it is that you might be emailing further to your printer or other media channels. But make sure that the file embedded in the .PDF is not a flattened version of your logo. How to make sure? Ask your logo designer.

• .PNG : This format would be most suitable when you want to use your logo on various colored backgrounds and not necessarily black and white. .PNG files have transparent backgrounds and your logo can be applied to presentations and used online without having to worry about removal of the white from the background when it needs to be used on black. This format is useful for use on the web and on lower resolution documents like an MSPowerPoint presentation or an MSWord document that needs to be emailed.

• .JPEG : This format is also suitable for use on the web.

• Favicon : This can be in the form of a .GIF file or a .ICO file. Favicons are the tiny images used to represent the webpage within the browser. For example, when you open GMail, you will see a tiny red-white envelope on the tab or address bar in your browser. That is a favicon. Ideally, your logo designer should be able to create one for you.

All the above file formats might not be included in the price package that the logo designer first discusses with you. Each format might be available to you at an additional cost. But typically, a logo designer will include a vector file in the deliverables.

You could also ask for a .PSD [ Adobe Photoshop ] version but it’s not quite relevant when you have a .EPS or .PDF file.

Ideally, your logo will be in color. You should ask your logo designer to give you color specifications as well. CMYK, RGB and HEX values as well as Pantone values.

The logo can also be acquired in black and white and greyscale versions, if required. Again, this will either be included in the price package or will be available at an additional cost.

All the more reason you should work with them because this particular logo designer might bring a new perspective to how brand identity is viewed in your industry – thus setting apart your logo design from the already-existing milieu. Remember, the logo designer started their career with nothing in his / her logo portfolio – meaning they had not designed a logo for ANY industry.

More coming soon.

A large number of revisions or iterations could mean that the client and the logo designer did not nail the creative brief BEFORE the start of the logo design process. You’re probably just running around in circles if the number of revisions and iterations on your logo design has exceeded ten. There are exceptions of course.

Depending on who you’re working with, you might get hand-drawn pencil sketches to start with. This is typically not considered an iteration / revision. Revisions usually start when the logo designer has converted the sketch you have chosen into a more final-looking file and has added color to it. In a typical situation, the logo designer will use colors and typeface as suggested by you in the creative brief. Revisions usually include changes to the typeface and the color and in some cases modification of the shape / symbol / graphic.

Modifications to the graphic can include making the shapes sharper or smoother, improving the shape of the curve, putting more / less distance between the graphic and the typeface and placement of the symbol / graphic with respect to placement of the typeface. Size ratios of the typeface and symbol / graphic can also be considered. These are changes that can be considered revisions or iterations.

Changing the entire sketch is not an iteration – that would be an additional logo option altogether. If this is done after the client has chosen a sketch from the set of sketches the logo designer provided, it would be done at an additional cost. This is because this usually means that the client has changed some element of the brief and a change in the brief means additional exploration and work, not within the scope of the original engagement.

Ideally, the logo designer will try and limit the number of options and iterations / revisions while giving you the pricing / proposal. This helps in establishing effort required, and hence the pricing for the logo design engagement.

The answer to this questions is a function of the following variables in varying degrees of importance depending on your circumstances :

Your Budget

Many logo designers have more than a couple of price packages that they offer to prospective clients. Typically, the higher the price, the more the number of options a client has available to choose from. Although, the budget variable and assumption does not hold true for logo designers who are immensely experienced and have been around for a long time – have worked with a long list of clients. For an experienced, good and professional logo designer, even just one option might solve the brand identity design problem – at a much higher price than a less experienced logo designer who might give you twenty options for the same price.

Your Timelines

A larger number of options obviously means the logo designer is going to take more time coming up with those options.

The Logo Designer

Depending on what extent you trust the logo designer’s skill and ability, you could want to see a large number of options or you could be fine with a couple of options.

Imagine a scenario where you have a pipe/faucet leak at your home and after trying your hand at it and being unable to solve the problem, you call in an experienced plumber. You’re not going to ask the plumber for ten different ways to fix the problem – the plumber is going to use his experience and your feedback about the problem and then apply the best possible solution.

Of course, you would discuss options with the plumber before the final agreement – there could be a perfect option but that might involve procuring space-grade material from NASA, which you might not be able to afford – so a mutual compromise must be reached. [ It's a simple analogy - but it should suffice as an explanation. ]

Every logo designer has a different method of functioning. Typically, the logo designer will do multiple sketches or options but only a few will be shown to you. In some cases, the logo designer might choose to show you all the sketches. Even if the price package says “only one option”, a good logo designer will still have drawn multiple sketches but shown you just one.

Ideally, ‘number of options’ is a flawed way of looking at a logo design engagement. This viewpoint has been perpetrated more by the off-the-shelf logo design providers and is now, more or less, indulged in as an acceptable way to determine pricing for a logo design engagement.

Leonardo Da Vinci did not come up with The Mona Lisa using the process of ‘number of options’. He probably has a vague idea, to start with, which he then focussed on and honed into one good painting.

I’m not saying logo design is like coming up with a painting. But it is not JUST about the time spent on the number of options and iterations. If you requested Picasso for a sketch of your face, he might give you a scribbled outline within five minutes. But it will still be exorbitant and worth it. Picasso has the experience of years behind him that culminate into that five-minute-sketch.

Now, the logo designer you’re working with, in all probability, is no Picasso. But if you’re looking for a good solution to your brand identity problem, you should expect work with a logo designer who has been around. It will be expensive – more expensive than that figure in your head, which you might have arrived at without any prior knowledge about logo design. Depending on the value you attach to your corporate identity, at this particular moment, you could of course settle for less.

The answer to the questions is that ideally, there should be no limit to the number of options. Yet, there must be focus.

RESOURCES : Links

Andy Rutledge : Dog & Pony Show : Number of Options
Have you read those articles about which number of design options is best to show the client? I’m sure you’ve seen a few; the issue of design comps quantity is often broken down into a discussion of what would be the optimal presented quantity and combination of main page comps and secondary page comps. These articles always touch on how the offered design comp quantity affects the likelihood of your getting quick and/or easy client approvals …you know, because quick approval is probably why the client hired you.

Unfortunately, apart from Andy’s article, I don’t know of any other online or offline article / discussion that talks about this issue. If you know of some, please share.

Willingness to pay. Ability to pay. What is on offer. Need. There are variables you need to consider before you can decide how much to budget for designing a logo. All price ranges are available to service those variables and budgets. Yes, quality will vary.
If you want to know the options available, I can safely tell you that you will find a logo designer for every price range. Even free.

But then you get what you pay for or as they say in India “Mehenga roye ek baar, sasta roye baar baar”, which, crudely translated, means, “The expensive buyer cries but once, the cheap customer cries again and again.” There might be some exceptions to that rule but the time you spend looking for those exceptions would probably be better invested in readying your brand for launch. With a logo in place.

It is impossible to disregard price as a decision-maker. But driving down price just so you can save some money from the budgeted amount is just going to give your grief in the long run. Research the market, decide on a budget and then stick to it as much as possible.

Know that all ranges of budgets can have an available solution. then decide what value you would attach to your brands’ identity. What is it worth to you, your brand, your company, your employees, your stakeholders? Then try to ascertain a range of real money value on that worth. And then search for a logo designer. Within the first handful of inquiries, you will be able to judge how skewed your valuation is in relationship to the quality you expect and then you can revise your budget or defer the decision till you have sufficient funds. Or you can settle for less. For now.

The last option is not something I’d suggest against. If you get a so-so logo and apply it all across your advertising and marketing material and media, it will cause more harm than using a simple, clean typeface till you can afford a logo your brand deserves.

Working with an experienced logo designer who has an extensive portfolio is going to be more expensive than working with a student fresh out of design school. I would love to say that the more experienced designer will obviously deliver a better logo as well but that is true only partly. I know of enough ‘designer’ who have been delivering the same shit for a whole decade. At least they were students before that decade began.

I’d say the difference lies in a person’s ability to handle a novice client. In this area, the student is more likely to flounder. But a student might also be able to deliver a fresh perspective to your brand – take more risks than an established designer might not. Again, that does not mean your drive down prices so much that the student develops a hatred starting with his / her first logo design engagement.

As a responsible client, ascertain average hourly rates for graphic designers and pay the student. If you have had a logo designed earlier, you will probably be more aware of what the process involves and you could actually guide the novice logo designer.

In either case, the more time you invest in the engagement, the more likely you are going to be satisfied with the end result. Of course the student lacks experience but every designer has had those handful of clients who took a risk with a newbie.

It takes all kinds of clients, logo designers, requirements and price ranges to keep the industry going.

RESOURCES : Links

How Much Is a Great Logo Worth?
Just Creative Design : Why Logo Design Does not Cost $5?
Logodesignlove : How Much Does Logo Design Cost?
]]> http://www.logofaqs.com/how-much-should-i-pay-for-a-logo-design/feed/ 0 http://www.logofaqs.com/why-cant-the-logo-designer-make-the-logo-bigger/ http://www.logofaqs.com/why-cant-the-logo-designer-make-the-logo-bigger/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:40:39 +0000 the Logo Designer http://www.logofaqs.com/LogoFAQS1



Of course the logo can be made bigger or smaller. The answer to this question is more related to the realm of aesthetics than to the realm of possibilities. Of course it can be done. But is it required? Does it help?

The logo designer would like to constrain the size of the logo in context. With relation to a business card, for example, there could be various possibilities when it comes to sizing the logo. The best choice would be something that is visually appealing and more often than not, a large image of the logo, on a business card, for example, would not be aesthetically pleasing. Most clients would want to increase the size of the logo because as human beings, in majority, we assume that if it is big, it will be more visible – which is true – logically – at the same time, as a business-owner or as an individual seeking their brand identity, a large-in-size logo [ in context of course ], might come across [ to the viewer ] as the brand trying too hard – ‘wannabe’.

When the logo is to be printed on a billboard, for example, logically the size of the logo will be larger than when the logo is printed on the business card. Even so, if it is an advertisement, you wouldn’t want the logo to crowd / hog space more than the message of the advertisement itself. There is an exception to this – when you’re simply announcing the presence of your brand in a new geographic spread – and your brand is already well-known internationally – you could simply blow up your logo to 80% the size of the billboard and add a by-line to the effect of, “We’re here.” and be done with it.

How the logo is applied to the medium, would determine the success of the message you, as a business-owner, are trying to convey to the viewer, visitor, potential customer.

So yes, the logo designer CAN make the logo bigger – it needs a flick of the wrist and a couple of clicks to increase the size of a logo in vector format – hopefully without much loss of aesthetics. But when your logo designer hesitates in making the logo bigger, ask him / her why that might be a problem. More often than not, the logo designer’s answer will tell you that they have your best interest in mind. After all, you’re paying them AND they want that logo in their portfolio.

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