How to get an awesome logo that helps your business – Do you have to spend $499 or could you spend just $5?
Image is Everything Online
Many visitors to your site will spend about 0.1 sec before they decide to click the back button. We are all looking for reasons to click back and one of quickest ways you can show someone the virtual door is with a crappy logo.
Having a clean, professional logo is a bare minimum and can be achieved very inexpensively.
HOWEVER a logo can also enhance your brandability, marketability and other impressive things ending with “ility” and sometimes you get what you pay for.
My Testing
I have built three websites in the past few months and in doing so I have been on a mission to get the best professional looking logos at an appropriate cost. Over 6 months I have made three logos for brand new websites. One for $499, one for $99 and one for $5. The services I used in the same order were 99Designs Competition, 99Designs Store and Fiverr.
In this post I will show you which service is best for your project and offer some tips for using each service to get the best results.
You Decide Based on Your Needs:
- How quickly do you need the logo? Custom logos take longer
- How incredible do you want to logo to be? We assume clean and professional, but what about brandability, marketability etc.
- How much time and effort do you (or someone in your company) have? Something I completely overlooked initially was the amount of time and effort I would need to put into getting a logo. For example my $499 logo, I spent many hours reviewing designers’ submissions and giving feedback.
- How inexpensive do you have to be?
- How customized do you want it to be?
I would use all three options again BUT choose based on a few important factors.
Fiverr
For me it is mind blowing what you can get for $5 these days. With Fiverr, the logo design process road might best be described as quick and maybe a little dusty but potentially awesome. Value for money wise… well its a $5er!
Tips to get the best results:
- Always search for designers by keyword “Logo” and by “Rating” for best results. I found the default setting of “Auto” does not necessarily return the best results. You want to know how others rate this person, not “Auto” – whatever that means.
- If you want to turn your logo into business cards or use the logo for any other work brochures etc., aim for “gigs” that include the logo in EPS format or offer the source file in vector format. If you really like a designer who doesn’t include EPS format or Source Files, sometimes you will have to pay an extra $5 or $10 to get them. EPS and Source Files in Vector format allow you to reproduce the design into print without losing any quality. If you have any plans for doing anything else with the logo – like business cards or brochures – get the EPS or Source File in Vector format. Otherwise be prepared to have someone recreate your logo from scratch. The cool thing about Fiverr is that you won’t be charged the extra $5 or $10 investment unless you are satisfied with the logo in the first place. I suspect many designers on fiverr base their business model on upgrades and good on them – but its good for you to know in advance.
- Do not be turned off by long “Est. Delivery” dates. Sometimes this can mean you are just dealing with someone good.
- Finally, make sure the designer has clear instructions on what you are after.
Bottom Line
Choose Fiverr if budget is an issue but you can deal with the possibility of not getting exactly what you want. You could also choose three designers for $15 and then choose the best logo.
99Designs (Store) – off-the-shelf logos
The real advantage of off-the-shelf logos is that you pretty much know exactly what you are going to get. 99Designs has clear guidelines for what they deliver, too, and how quickly (24 hrs). This is without a doubt the lowest stress, lowest risk option. I chose to use this option when I wanted a great logo quickly and without fuss. The main thing to remember here is that when you buy an off-the-shelf logo you are really just buying the rights to use the logo. Theoretically you could run into the same image and coloring with different text. If this worries you, you can buy the exclusive rights to the logo but only if that logo has not been purchased by anyone else. This costs $199.
What you get (from 99Designs website)
- Your business name incorporated into the logo as well as any tag line, basic color or text changes
- Industry standard JPEG & EPS files to use for screen and print situations
- Our money back guarantee – if you’re not satisfied.
Tips to use the 99Designs Logo Store:
- Tag the logos you like as soon as you start looking.
- If you think you are going to want exclusive rights, consider the custom option for $299 right from the start. You can always point your designers to these store logos for inspiration.
Bottom Line
Use the 99 Design Store if you need your logo as quickly as possible and you want the ease of choosing already designed logos.
99Designs (Competition) – crowdsourced
Crowdsourcing Magic. The real power of 99Designs’ custom logos is that you use the magic of a crowd-sourced competition.
Crowdsourcing: crowd + outsourcing = A lot of people competing to win your competition.
On 99Designs, developing your logo is a 7-day process, which requires that you provide a detailed specification at the outset, then people compete with their designs. There is no doubt that this is an extremely good way to get a great logo, but you will spend a fair amount of time managing the process of elimination. Like Survivor, you can vote designs off the island and improve designs that you like by providing feedback. The 7-day time frame is great to help get the creative juices flowing, and it also helps you to get inspired as well.
Tips for using 99Designs Competition:
- You can invite designers you like at any point in the competition.
- This is not a set-and-forget process; you need to be active to get great results.
- There is a lot you can and should do to get best results: provide feedback (both positive and negative); invite designers.
- You will have to deal with the emotions of only choosing one designer and logo after many talented people have put in some hard work.
- 99Designs has an awesome interface, tools and resources to help you.
- Use the sharing features to get feedback from friends of colleagues.
- 99designs offers three price points for custom designs – Bronze $299, Silver $499, or Gold $799. It makes sense that the higher the number you choose the better and more capable designers you will attract. That said, there are a lot of designers out there who are very, very happy to be in the $299 bracket (as we can see from Fiverr). If you have a limited budget, you can get an incredible logo for $299. Personally I paid the extra $200 as some form of insurance.
- Finally, make sure the designer has clear instructions on what you are after.
Bottom Line
If you need a logo that is really unique and also has marketability and brandability, this is most likely the way to go.
Conclusion
Gone are the days of struggling to find a good logo designer, spending $5000 and a week of meetings and emails to do so. Now you can have a logo that gets awesome results for $500 or even $5.
Boy do I love outsourcing! Thanks for reading.
How do you get your logos done?
Any other tips you care to share?
Theodore Nwangene says
Hey Quinn,
I’ve been waiting for this post for a long time now you remembered? But thank God it’s finally here at last and i really enjoyed the analysis.
But one thing i expected to see which you didn’t include is a link to the guy that did your’s on fiverr, how can i locate him?
Thanks for sharing.
cubiclefree says
Hi Theodore,
Glad you liked it! I did not want to recommend the specific person I used in my post because a year from now they might now be around. The tips I offer are more important because you can find many designers that a good using this and the all have different wait time etc.
That said, this is the comments section – look for sorina4ik
Quinn
Matthew Allen says
Awesome information here Quinn. This is going to be a very useful post for me to refer back to later when I am ready to start spending money on my sites, rather than stubbornly doing everything myself. In fact, I might give the $5 Fiverr thing a shot just to see if somebody can come up with something better than I’ve got for a few of my sites that I would find acceptable.
One question about your Cubicle Free logo: Is the guy with the parachute supposed to be implying that he jumped out of a high-rise building where his former cubicle was?!
cubiclefree says
Hey Matt! Really glad you liked it – let me know if there is anything I can improve about the post after you have used it. I think you will find the tips I offer will help you get some good results. Sounds to me like my Cubicle Free logo is having the intended effect too – because that is exactly the image I wanted to convey! I imagine every ones view will be a little different but basically I wanted to convey a sense of achieving freedom and for many people that is flying free from the cubicle. I had jet packs, men riding rockets and lots of other cool ideas. One the the really powerful features of 99Designs is where you can share the finalists for you logo competition with a select group. The feedback I got was that this logo was the best of the bunch for getting the point across. Let me know how you go! Quinn
cubiclefree says
A few people have emailed me to ask about the answers for the logos. They are in the image but a bit small to read.
Cubicle Free – $499, RSA Courses Online $99, and Spark Identity $5
Annette Howard says
Hi Quinn, great post! I used Fiverr for the logo for my newest blog, but I am seriously considering using 99Designs for an upcoming book cover. The information and comparisons you pointed out will be extremely helpful for my decision making process. Greatly appreciated!
Aaron says
THANK YOU!! This saved me a bunch of money. I’ve found a really good logo I can use like right away with no risk!
GeekDummy says
I used Fiver ones to get a logo for one of my websites and I got what I paid for. For 5 dollars you cannot expect some cool and wow design. I got a shitty logo made by an Indian guy. No money return or so. It was a waste of money.
cubiclefree says
Yep it can happen pretty easily. Part of the reason I wrote this post was to improve the chances of getting a good one.
Jan Powers says
This was super helpful and very timely thank you Quinn
cubiclefree says
Thanks Jan!