Ways To Get Your Logo Designed

By Campbell Jof

Logos have always been in the center stage of a brand identity creation. Brands are known to spend thousands of dollar to get that perfect logo design that creates a buzz among their target audience. So, the question now is- is logo that important? Well, let’s take a test. Try to recall a famous brand name. Most probably along with the company name, the other thing that you would recall is it’s logo. That is the power of a high quality logo, it simply gets embedded in your mind without you knowing it.

Now when you know the power of a high-quality logo, the next question is how to get one? There are many options to get a logo designed depending on the budget you have, design requirements, time frame, etc. Following are the few popular ways to get your logo designed:

Logo Maker Tools – Logo maker tools are for people who want to try their hands on design process. Their is a small amount one needs to pay to get the logo for one’s own use.
Freelance Designers – Many companies take help of freelance designers to meet their logo design requirement as this gives them ample opportunity to discuss about the design with the designer and at the same time they need not to provide any resource to the designer.
Design Contest – Design contest can be a great way to get logo design if you do not have any specific design in your mind and want to see multiple options before finally settling for one.
Design Agency – For companies that want the designers to thoroughly research the market, study competitors, etc. before making a design, design agency is the most suitable option.
Hiring a Design Team – This option is viable for companies who have regular design requirements and as such can afford maintaining a team of designers.

Now, the important thing is finding out which process will be most suitable for your company’s logo design requirement. Kind of hard, isn’t it? Well, we have done the tough work for you, which is researching the above mentioned ways for logo design. Thus, all you have to do is to go through the blog and see which one is the most suitable option for you. So, let’s go!!

1. Free Logo Maker

One of the easiest and cheapest way to get a simple looking logo design. These are simple web applications where one can easily try and play with various design elements to create a logo for themselves. Most of these logo creator tools have 4 step process:

Write your business name
Select an icon
Choose a typeface
Pick a color

While some of these tools do allow one to download the logo file, but these files are generally of low quality. To download a high quality file one has to pay anywhere between $10 to $50. Now we went through and tried using few of these tools and here are our findings for each of them:

Designhill Logo Maker
One can easily design a logo in 2 minutes of time! All you have to do is add a text, select an icon based on your industry and add a frame relevant to your icon. After you are satisfied with the logo, you can preview it and download it in .PNG format.

Shopify Online Logo Maker
Easily one of the simplest and fastest logo maker. You enter your company name, select an icon, position it and you are done! But, the problem is that there is hardly any editing that you can do and not to mention the limited number of icons they have. The tool is best suited for someone who want’s to keep the logo simple and don’t want to experiment too much with the design process.

Logaster
While in most of the logo makers you need to select the logo icon all by yourself, things are slight different in logaster. Here, you need to enter your company’s name and activity based on which they would give you some logo suggestion. Select the logo that you think is best suited for you and then you can edit it as per your needs.

Free Logo Design
The best part of freelogodesign.org is that they give certain design tools which one can use to make their logo a more customised one. The tool initially asks you your company’s name and the industry you belongs to and based on it gives you logo suggestions. One can then easily edit the logo as per their need with the tools they provide.

Design Free Logo Online
They have a huge collection of pre-made logo design from which one can choose from. The catch here is that all their logo’s are in 3D which looks like as they are coming out of the screen. They also provide many customisation tool to make the logo as per your need.

Now such tools have the advantage that:

They can be designed by anyone, even when they have zero knowledge of design process.
The design process takes less than an hour
They have very affordable pricing, ranging mostly between $10-$90

While being affordable and less time consuming there are certain drawbacks of using these tools which cannot be ignored. These drawbacks are:

Limited number of customisation option available
The designs are very simple and are hardly a clear representation of your brand
A lot also depends on your design skills , color perception, etc.

So, finally the question is for whom are these tools helpful? We would say for those who need simple designs, are not willing to spend much on logos or the one’s looking for design inspirations before finally getting one developed.

2. Freelance Logo Designers

Freelance designers can be great for someone:

Who has a certain logo design idea in mind and wants to bring it to life with certain iterations.
Who wants to work with a single designer so that to look on entire design process, guide them on every step, etc.

Now hiring a freelance designer can be a tedious task as one needs to be sure that the designer being hired is capable and talented enough to carry out the design task with ease. Mostly when hiring a freelance people prefer the one’s who they get to know via referral from friends, family or colleague. Others, who can not find any known designers among their contacts usually go for freelancing websites. When hiring a freelance designer the important thing to keep in mind is the amount of money they are charging and also the expected time frame in which they would be submitting the work.

Now when one closely follow the work of freelancer, it can be seen that the quality of work varies from designer to designer. Thus, one needs to be sure that the hired freelancer can fulfill their requirements. Here, are few advantages of hiring a freelancer:

One can easily guide the designer in each and every process of logo design. Thus, there is an assurance that the design would be something you love.
Most of the freelance designers have an online portfolio. One can easily review this portfolio and see if the designers suits their need.

Now one might not want to avail the service of freelancers due to following reasons:

They are expensive and sometimes the payment might exceed your budget as the freelancers usually charge on per hour basis and the revision process may take more time.
The process might be tiresome as you have to explain everything to the designer.

Now, for people who like to take control of the design process, freelance designers can be the best options.

3. Design Contest

Design contest are great way to have many designers work on your project, get you several design ideas to choose from and all that too in an affordable budget. There are several companies working in these spheres like Designhill (that’s us), 99design, etc. The process to all the site is more or less similar. The only thing that vary is the quality of service and the price charged.

Let’s take a look at how the contest at Designhill works:

To launch a contest the first thing one needs to do is to select the design category from the various options available like logo design, social media cover design, etc.
Once you have selected the category of the design contest, you need to give a project brief. Try to be as detailed as possible, so that the designers find it easy to make the design as per your brief.
You can then choose the amount you want to commit to the design as per your budget and add any addons if you want.
Proceed to pay for the contest.
Once the contest is live, then within days you can see designs from several talented designers. Get iterations as per your need by contacting the respective designer.
Once satisfied you can declare the winner and if you aren’t satisfied with the result one always have an option of 100% refund.

Now when one looks at these design contest then following are the advantage they have:

Several talented designers from across the world share their views and design as per your requirement.
The design process usually takes a week or less, that too depending on the time frame you alot.
The price is cheaper lying anywhere in between the range of $100-$1500.

With all the advantage we have seen there are few drawbacks that looms over the design contest which are:

You have to invest lot of time explaining the designers about your company’s vision, motto and the purpose of the design as they are not aware of your company and it’s work.
There might be chances that the design submitted by designers are not upto the mark.

Design contests are best for people who do not have much of designing idea and want to see several variations before settling for the best.

4. Design Agency

Design agencies are the one who put a team of researcher, analyst and designers to get a project done. Now, even these agencies services vary. Some of them work with international clients and their offices are spread across the world. While some work in a specific regional area or provide some specific services.

The advantage associated with hiring a design agency are:

They would be giving you a design that you are going to love and would most probably be the best there can be.
The team at the agency would do the research mostly by themselves, so there are minimum guidance you have to give. This would save a lot of your valuable time.

Yes, design agency can unarguably give you the best designs but there are certain problems that one cannot overlook. Let’s take a look at it:

They are costly, mostly above $10,000. So, only avail their service if you are willing to empty your pocket by this much amount.
They take time. For the research they conduct, the analysis they make and then the design work it all takes time. Usually around 5-8 months are spent on the entire design process.

So, only avail the service of design agency if you have high budget assigned for your design process and willing to wait. There service is generally suitable for companies that are at later stage of their growth or are big corporation and MNCs.

5. Hiring a design team

If you have a constant design need, you might hire a design team for the same.

Hiring a design team can have benefits such as:

The designers are a part of company so they can better understand the company’s vision and motto to make an amazing design.
You can easily guide the designers as they would now be working from your office.

The design team can prove to be a permanent resource that you have, but there are certain problems, like:

You have to manage and maintain all the resources, software requirement, etc.
You have to pay the salaries of the team even if you do not have much work.

Hiring a design team can be suitable for companies like training centers, educational institute, etc.

What is your choice

Now, the final question is: Which design service should you avail? Well, that depends entirely on you. Take a thorough look at this post, weigh the pros and cons of each service and then take an informed design. Happy designing!!

About the Author!

Campbelljof is a Creative Head for Designhill, as well as a blogger and designer. He writes on topics concerning design, eCommerce, start-ups, digital marketing, and interactive content. His creative work has earned him several laurels over the years.