Insight – 02/05/2021
If you are considering a new visual brand identity for your business then a logo design is one of the most important parts of your brand’s identity. Whether you own a startup or an established business, having a professional logo design is beneficial on many levels. It builds trust, creates professional image, increases awareness and creates an emotional attachment and attracts new customers.
But how much does a logo design cost in Auckland? If you’re not in the graphic design industry, it may be confusing to know what’s reasonable since the price varies by designers and design agencies in New Zealand. You’re probably wondering, “how much value should I put on a logo then?” It depends on your knowledge of what a logo does, how branding works, different marketing strategies, and more.
A good way to determine how much value you should attribute to a logo is the stage of growth your business is in. By breaking that down, you can get a sense of what budget you should be setting for a logo design.
The start-up
If you are considering a new visual brand identity for your business then a logo design is one of the most important parts of your brand’s identity. Whether you own a startup or an established business, having a professional logo design is beneficial on many levels. It builds trust, creates professional image, increases awareness and creates an emotional attachment and attracts new customers.
But how much does a logo design cost in Auckland? If you’re not in the graphic design industry, it may be confusing to know what’s reasonable since the price varies by designers and design agencies in New Zealand.
You’re probably wondering, “how much value should I put on a logo then?” It depends on your knowledge of what a logo does, how branding works, different marketing strategies, and more.
A good way to determine how much value you should attribute to a logo is the stage of growth your business is in. By breaking that down, you can get a sense of what budget you should be setting for a logo design.
Small local business
This is the company that has been around for a while. You might only have two full-time employees, but you’ve proven that the company is stable. At this stage, you’ll be outgrowing the DIY or dirt cheap logo that you’ve had since the beginning. Now is when you’ll especially have great benefits from a logo that makes you look legitimate, because you are!
Expect to spend $1,500 – $3,000. This will get you designers that hav been around the block and know what they’re doing. You won’t risk getting stolen work, like at the places that offer logos for $15. The logo should be custom-made specifically for you, not some generic template that a designer drops your name into. You’ll really just get the logo, probably not a full identity system, but it’ll still be a step up from where you were.
Established branded business
When you start caring about your brand’s identity, you’re moving into the bigger leagues. Your company is steadily growing, but the roadblock is your brand’s visual identity. A brand is the feeling or promise people associate with your company. So every business has a brand, but not every business controls their brand. When you realise that you aren’t controlling your brand, you’ll be ready to invest some serious funds into your company’s visual brand identity.
The return on that investment can be huge. You won’t be looking for someone who’s just cranked out a few logos, you’re looking for a designer or agency who has in-depth knowledge on branding, strategy, identity design, logo design. For a visual identity, expect to pay at least $5,000. For a full-blown re-brand, it’s easily starting at $10,000, depending on all the deliverables.
The franchise
You are an established business and well know business. You could have multiple locations, or a large amount of employees on your payroll. At this point, if you’re looking for a logo designer, you’re looking to undergo a “rebrand.” That’s a little different than a small business tossing out their DIY logo for something more serious. You have a logo that people associate with your company without being prompted. You probably have that logo on countless uniforms, coffee mugs, business cards. So it’s not just a matter of tossing out an unrecognised logo and replacing it with something better. You’re pivoting the look of your company and you want your loyal customers to follow with you.
This requires a lot more research, planning, and stellar execution. There’s also a much higher risk if it goes bad. If you’re at this stage, the range of pricing you could expect is very wide, starting around $20,000 and ending who-knows-where. It would all depend on the intricacies of your company, the deliverables, the timeline, your location, your market, and the agency or designer you hire.
But how do designers know what to charge?
Some designers and agencies operate solely on value-based pricing, meaning the quote they provide is heavily based on how much value the client will get out of the project, it’s not a rule. Most designers can give at the very least a ballpark figure of how much a logo would cost for them to create. So how do they come up with that number?
This is important to understand, because while the value you put on a logo should determine which level of investment you should make, you’ll still get a range of prices when you start shopping around for designers. And there has to be a reason some designers independently decide to charge $500 for a logo and some agencies charge $15,000. So let’s look at a few factors of how designers price their services.
It takes time to design a logo
The first thing most designers consider when pricing out any project is the time they will spend on it. We simply couldn’t survive if we don’t bring in enough money to cover bills, and the best way to make sure we can do that is by making sure the hours we spend working are being fairly compensated for.
While logos need to be simple designs to be effective, it’s usually the designs that looks “simple and “easy” that take the longest. In fact, it’s more difficult to make a logo that’s simple than one that is crammed full of detail and information. Some clients assume that if they have a lot crammed into their logo they are getting their moneys worth. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. It takes time to get the creativity flowing! So, for even the experienced designer, a logo isn’t a quick project. A good logo design involves research, conceptualising and refinements which take time.
I could expect to spend 15 hours upwards on research, sketching, building the concepts in Illustrator, rounds of revision, and exporting the final designs into usable files. To compensate for my experience, knowledge, skill, overhead, and paying taxes, I want to make at least $90 per billable hour. (Designers will come to different hourly numbers based on various factors, but you can expect a mid-weight designer to charge between $70-$100, but could be up to $170.) So for a logo, charging anything less than $1,000 would risk not meeting that hourly rate. And there are additional factors that would add to that price, like the number of concepts provided or the turnaround time.
So for a designer offering a logo for $50, if they value their time, they can’t invest too many hours in making the logo. The price that a designer gives you for a logo can tell you how much they value their own skills and experience. And if you want to receive an effective logo, and have a good experience of hiring a designer, it’s best to avoid the low-end of the price scale. You might think it’s the more cost-effective route to hire the lowest charging designer, but 99% of the time, it will end up wasting your time and costing you more in the future.
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