Cheap Logo Design - a business owners dream and a very achievable one. Below is a list of some ‘cheap logo design’ websites I found, and my accompanying comments of course

Lets start with an in-depth look at the cheap logo design services of…..

£25 Logo
On the surface of it a professional looking website, not quite sure what the swirls are around their own logo however, and how they interact with the ‘eye’ (is it an eye?) in the ‘O’ of the word Pound.

£25 Logo declares to be the home of ‘affordable logo design’, crikey, they are a bit more than affordable aren’t they! Most likely they want to avoid the word ‘cheap’.

£25 Logo offer a rather generous six concepts to choose from for their affordable fee and an 100% money back satisfaction guarantee. So even if you find that you have wasted your time with them, at least you don’t waste your money eh? Unless of course you consider that time is money.

For some reason when I click to their portfolio the meta title on the web page changes to 50dolla logo - so clearly they have a US version and the web developer has confused the page titles between the two.

For £35 you can upgrade to their Elite package and get 12 concepts! Really one would hope they could get it in the first six to be honest if they have correctly compiled a design brief.

One wonders how the four designers working up these original concepts are able to feed or cloth themselves.

One also wonders how it’s physically possible to have 12 ‘original’ concepts created for just £35 - that means that even if they spent 10 minutes on each concept, they are working for 2 hrs, and thus earning only £12.50 an hour. Barely enough to heat and light the office, pay for the software licences, and keep the machines powered up let alone feed and house a designer and their family.

The scariest bit being that they are only spending 10 minutes on each concept - in theory (or even less maybe). Even if they take four hours to create 12 concepts, that’s still only 20 minutes worth of thought and physical execution for each design.

That doesn’t even include ‘consultation time’ - where they hopefully spend time finding out about your business and the type of customers your logo design is supposed to appeal to, or administration, or communication through the project…..

If you want to pay an extra £14 they dish up three different business card designs for you.

and some more…

Cheap Logo Design
Not as cheap as £25 Logo design, but still darn cheap. Note that revisions are not unlimited however, thus it could actually end up being not so cheap using this service.

Actually some decent designs in the portfolio as far as ‘looking attractive’ is concerned, however I fear the designers have a noted lack of appreciation of the practical requirements of a good quality logo design and don’t understand that design is about more than being pretty. They commit some of the following crimes:

- Not all logos will print well in all situations such as fabric/promo goods (faded graphics, transparency areas, gradients and such like used in many of the designs)
- Some are very tall in height, this would be an issue in many situations where the logo needs to fit in a more confined vertical space.
- One design I can barely read the company name.

If they would just let their creativity meet with practicality considerations they could charge more for their work as it would have more value to the business owner as a solid brand.

Logo Maid
Ok, really really scary cheap. I didn’t think anyone was going to beat £25 logo.

I was wrong.

At Logo Maid you can literally buy a logo (have to share it with god knows how many other companies however) for as low as $19. Or you can buy an off the shelf exclusive design for around $149/$199 for most designs. I presume by exclusive they mean you can have the copyright. I could be wrong though.

Fairly decent designs for many of them, but if you’ve been reading this blog, understand anything about branding at all, and don’t know why you shouldn’t buy a logo ‘off the shelf’ and just Frankenstein your company name into it, I just give up with you, I really do.

Logo Fresh
First of all what is the meaning behind that circle in their own logo design? I don’t get it.

With Logo Fresh you don’t even have to bother with a pesky designer….just design the logo yourself!

- Pick your cookie cutter logo design ’symbol’
- Randomly pick the colours ‘you’ like whilst neglecting to consider colour psychology or your target market.
- Save up to six designs and decide which you like based on how pretty it is.
- Ask Logo Fresh to make some Frankenstein-like adjustments to the design if you require it ‘altered’ to better suit your business message.

Of course you can also opt for the Logo Fresh custom design option should you so choose. When I visited their custom design option, it transpires that they won’t give you any actual design ideas for your logo design, but instead can do things like;

- Draw the ideas you give them.
- Change the colours on your chosen symbol.
- Add a gradient to the text.
- Add curves or perspective to your name.
- Other 1990’s design techniques….

Finally I’d like to direct you to an outstanding article on a competitor website >> Cheap Logo Design The Truth

According to Black Dog Square design;

- Cheap cheap logo design firms often use royalty free clipart that one can of course not copyright own.
- Apparently over 200 of these sorts of designs have been found to be copies or existing company logos, and there are currently 17 companies being sued over copyright issues.
- After checking through 120 designs at cheap logo design companies, they could only find 1 design that they could attribute to a ‘geniune’ company.
- They have had their own designs stolen by cheap logo design companies.

Black Dog Square are my new heros for so thoroughly researching the potential pitfalls of cheap logo design services

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Thoughts on Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.