Designing a logo takes more time than designing a whole website and even when you love your ideas the client hates them.

Logo design needs a different set of skills than website design does, so why are you trying to do it all?

There are simple ways to get a hundred or more potential logos without breaking your brain.

There are thousands of top quality logo designers in this world, but you are not one of them. Your client wants an all-in-one redesign package that includes a top class logo, so what do you do? You know the limitations of yours skills and you know how much team time would be spent brainstorming and coming up with acceptable logo concepts.

The only answer is to outsource the logo design.

Involve the Client

A company logo needs to communicate massive amounts of information. This will include; the company name, what it does, its market positioning and her vision of the future. Ask the client to talk about the love of her life, her company. Listen for key takeaways, for what is really important to her. Find her vision she has for the company, who its target customers are and what their lifestyle is.

Refer your client to this page so they begin to grasp the scale of the logo design task, but point out that you will work within the budget they set, rather than sending them an invoice for $211,000,000. This is the amount BP paid for their logo makeover.

Make it clear that you will involve the client at every step of the design process, that this is not a hands-off process. The investment of time and resources is too great to risk you getting it wrong. It needs to be the client who shortlists proposals and finesses the chosen design.

Use a Professional Logo Designer

You can ask your contacts for names of logo designers they have used and can recommend. Be wary though, because people are often unwilling to admit they have made mistakes in their own hiring decisions.

Search designers’ websites for their portfolios of previous designs. Look for imaginative concepts as well as modern design features rather than particular designs that appeal to you or the client.

This is the highest cost and highest risk option. You will need to pay 50% upfront , have a lead time of a month or more and still not have an acceptable logo design at the end of the process.

Run a Logo Design Contest

A logo design site offers you a way of having scores of design proposals to choose from. You can show the client the five or six that you think best fit the brief and let her choose the one to finalize.

Logo design sites like Designhill all work in a similar way.

You submit a detailed design brief using the information the client has given you, you pay the whole fee and designers submit their draft designs.

You give your client’s feedback to the designers so they can improve their proposals and eventually the client chooses one proposal as the winner. You and the client then work with the winning designer to perfect the chosen logo design.

A design sites usually offers a range of deals at different prices. The winning designer gets about 75% of the contest fee you pay to the site, so if you want the best designers then you will need to take the highest priced package.

The designs that are submitted are always of very high quality. Designers know they are in a competition and only good designs can win contests. Submitted designs will be imaginative and show vision, setting them apart from the designs you will receive from a low-priced freelancing site.

This option is secure with zero risk for both parties. You know the money will only be paid to the successful designer once your client has signed off on the final design. The designer knows that you have already deposited the whole payment with the contest company.

Use a Freelancing Site

Why should you pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a logo design when you can get the same design for less than ten dollars?

You can certainly get logos designed for a few dollars, but the designers who work for such paltry amounts are not the same ones you will find on high quality design contest sites like Designhill.

The designers at Fiverr, Elance and similar sites who are happy to work for almost nothing are highly unlikely to send you a professional quality logo that communicates your client’s vision.

I have tried a few designers from freelance sites and I had to more or less hold them by the hand through the entire design process. I had to send them my rough drawings because they had difficulties with understanding written and oral conversations.

The risk is low only because of the tiny amount invested. The probability of success is infinitesimal.

Conclusion

Clients rarely have any idea of the amount of work that goes into logo design. They will happily tag on a new logo with their website design request with little concept of the amount of highly skilled work that is involved.

You should itemize the cost of a new logo in your quotation. The designer or design contest site’s fees, plus 25% to cover your own time would be a good basis for costing a logo.

Design contest sites are probably the best combination of quality and price in today’s market for most designers who are sub-contracting the logo design.

Your Input

Have you had clients add a new logo onto a website design order without any discussion? Have your clients understood the expertise and work that are involved in this specialist area? Please share your experiences using the comment box below.