Companies claim to design stellar business logos for half the price. How good are they? We put four services to the test.
To some business owners, a well-designed logo is a worthwhile investment, a hallmark that subtly speaks volumes about a company’s prestige, authority, or coolness. Even small companies have spent as much as $25,000 to $50,000 for logos from famous designers. And yet, there’s no shortage of websites offering to whip up a logo for as little as a few hundred bucks. These online services — often formatted as contests in which many designers compete to fill a client’s logo needs — are controversial among designers, who fret that stolen work worms its way into the offerings or that, without the guidance of a traditional design firm, clients often make lousy choices.
But how do these services stack up from the client’s perspective? To find out, we asked Steve Whitesell, owner of a home-based marketing company in Park City, Utah, to go logo shopping. His company, formerly the Whitesell Group, creates websites, presentation materials, and trade-show displays. Whitesell decided recently to rebrand the business to reflect the fact that his clients are all engineering firms. In March, he changed the name to Radian — a unit of angular measurement that is a common term among engineers. (To the name, he added a superscript c, the mathematical symbol for radian.) “I want a logo that people will look at and think engineering,” says Whitesell. “Think bold. Think math. I want it to feel strong, like metal, because a lot of my clients work with metal.” Whitesell has some design experience, having advised his clients on logos as well as other aspects of branding. He experimented with four companies: Logo Design Team, LogoSnap, 99designs, and Hatchwise.
Logo Design Team
How it works: Pay up front, answer a series of questions, and the company — which works with 90 designers — sends you a set of custom designs. You can request changes from the designers.
Cost: $69 (two designers, two concepts); $149 (five designers, five concepts); $229 (seven designers, seven concepts)
Whitesell says: “They asked lots of good, simple questions about my preferred colors and styles. And instead of communicating with theindividual designers, there was a single point of contact, which made communication easy. But the results weren’t great. The designs felt amateurish.”
Logosnap
How it works: Choose from thousands of stock images and customize fonts and colors.
Cost: Free to make your own, as Whitesell did, above. (LogoSnap offers a custom-logo-design service for $99 that may well be better.)
Whitesell says: “These seemed like generally low-quality stock images. There was nothing I liked, but if you have a very small budget and need something quickly, I can see using this service.”
99designs
How it works: Describe your project and set the price you are willing to pay. 99designs, which works with more than 60,000 designers around the world, runs a contest over seven days. You work directly with the designers, asking for changes on logos you like.
Cost: $39 to start the contest. You choose the prize you will award to the winning designer: $100 to $600 is typical.
Whitesell says: “I had 34 entries, and a few were pretty good. It seems like the more designers are involved, the better the quality. I communicated directly with designers, which took more time. The company made it easy to look at their portfolios, so I knew who I was working with.”
Hatchwise
How it works: The format is similar to 99designs’s; contests last 10 days and reach out to some 4,000 designers.
Cost: $29 to start, and you must offer a prize of at least $100. Whitesell put up $400.
Whitesell says: “From Hatchwise, I received the most entries — 219. They were also the highest caliber. By the fifth day, I found four or five designers I really liked and started working intensely with them. When I posted a comment for one designer, all the others could see it, and it felt like they were learning about my preferences as a group. I also liked that Hatchwise let me rank the logos as I went along.”
Expert Opinion
How well designed are these logos? We consulted Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and author of a biography of Paul Rand, the master of corporate logo design.
Prefacing his remarks with the confession that he is a “design snob,” Heller criticized online companies for “devaluing” the design profession. Traditional design firms don’t devise logos based on a few client specs and answers to a handful of general questions, he says. Instead, such firms conduct their own research and talk at length with clients, helping them create resonant visual expressions of their design goals.
Logo creation is an opportunity to launch a long-term design strategy, says Heller. “Paying $5,000 is a low amount when you consider that a logo is used in perpetuity,” he says. “The ABC logo has been used since Rand designed it 50 years ago.” As for the logos created for Whitesell, “They’re very competently done, so he didn’t waste his money,” says Heller. “But there’s a quality that exudes template — the one with the gear could be a logo for a car company. The one he chose is abstract enough that he can probably use it for anything. But a logo is supposed to be a mnemonic — something people will remember. Looking at these, there’s no sense of ‘aha!'”
Upshot
After seven rounds of feedback, Whitesell bought the top logo in this group from Hatchwise for $429, including the base fee. “I like the symbol — it has a kind of nuclear look,” he says, “and it’s very easy to read. It will look good on business cards, a website, a lot of different things.” He is glad he persevered. “When you start with these sites, be aware that a lot of what you’ll see is awful,” says Whitesell, who looked at more than 250 custom logos all told. “But if you keep with it, you can wind up with something pretty darn good.”
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/company-logos-for-less.html?nav=related
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