If you want to start your own business and thrive for fulfilling your dream becoming your own boss, you might face the fact that you have no or only little budget for a logo, business card and a website in the start-up phase. This is why you maybe put it together yourself somehow. Your little brother, your cousin and your aunty might add their design opinions too. In the end, it’s the business idea that counts, right?
That business idea, however, must convince possible clients. The best idea is worth nothing if others don’t understand it or - even worse - are not even interested in taking a look at it thoroughly enough (in case the company looks too unprofessional for instance). This is what happens over and over again in real business life, unfortunately - a big part plays a poor branding.
If you are in the position to invest some money into your logo etc. in order to make your business look serious and professional, you will look for an advertising agency or a designer. But there are probably hundreds of thousands of designers out there.
Here you can find out what you really have to look at when you are looking for a designer.
WHAT DOES A LOGO COST?
Sometimes a low price is the winning criteria for a certain designer or agency. But how much does the corporate design from a "cheap designer" cost? Prices vary from 1000 to 2500 Euros net, I would say. But what adds up afterwards, shows a real life example of a real estate agency.
This real estate agent hired an advertising agency to create a logo, business card and website for 2500 Euros net. So far, so good.
A few weeks after going live, the client received a letter from a lawyer. Copyright infringement! The real estate agent’s logo looked way too similar to another existing real estate agent’s logo. In order to turn away a possible copyright lawsuit threatening the real estate agent’s existence, the lawyer asked for a payment of 800 Euros. Getting a new logo was recommended, too.
WHEN THE CLIENT IS THE F*CKED ONE IN THE END
Of course, you can now argue about the lawyer’s integrity if a payment of only 800 Euros is sufficient compared to a much higher copyright lawsuit. However, the core of the problem lies in the copying of existing logos or using existing logo snippets, which are then sold on as a "new logo" even though it’s not a new logo. This means betraying the client just in order to offer low prices.
The real estate agency’s CEO was very angry, understandably, and asked the advertising agency to pay the 800 Euro fine, as it was the advertising agency’s mistake. They refused to pay the fine.
I would not be surprised if there were cooperations between dumping price designers and lawyers like this out there in order to earn easy cash. Similar scenarios are known from other business areas.
This is poison for the design industry, bad for its image and most of all terrible for the clients that are the f*cked ones in the end.
However, everybody hiring a designer or an advertising agency should think about why some designers are "so cheap" whilst others are "so expensive". As you can see in the example above, low price designers can cost more than expected in the end.