Category — Pricing

The process for hiring logo design services can be an awkward one.

I feel it’s especially awkward and tenuous compared to other services (like hiring a CPA to do your taxes) for 3 reasons: 1. clients are inexperienced in hiring logo design services. 2. many purveyors of logo design services are generalists (usually focusing on other services) and treat it as an after-thought or lost leader to other higher-fee marketing or advertising services, and 3. treated throughout the sales cycle as just an artistic process and not as an outcome-based way to further a strategy’s success. 

In a nut shell, client’s don’t know how to constructively ask how to hold logo design accountable to their strategy, and designers don’t aggressively position their services as accountable to client’s strategy. And so awkwardness abounds.

I’ve outlined an outcome-based agenda that I feel yields a constructive, lively, valuable discussion that aims at addressing such key issues as performance, value, and expectations. During the meeting focus on a few examples (not one and not dozens) of previous design solutions to discuss the following:

1. A logo’s performance (legibility and reproducibility). Simply put, how well does the logo appear in all applications. For example what happens to the logo’s integrity when very small (or very large), in one-color applications, on a fax, when cut our of vinyl, when embroidered, etc? Can people not familiar with the logo easily read and understand it? This is the most basic and most critical benchmark for any logo design.

2. A logo’s meaning relative to strategy. It’s easy to to get caught up into the subtle aesthetics and symbolism in something artistic, but it’s important to contextualize the discussion strategic. One easy test for a strategically aligned logo is to discuss it in terms of performance (see above), color and typography as it relates to the company’s strategy and/or personality. Color and typography have more archetypal connotations. Red means something different than Green for instance. Helvetica connotes something different than a script typeface. These connotation are easy to talk about and more obvious in relation to strategy. Other imagery and stylistic elements may not be so straight-forward or accepted as archetypal. And is why you don’t see ephemeral styling on many timeless identities like ABC, IBM, FedEx, etc. If done right, they last a lifetime.

3. A logo designing process. Apart from the logo’s accountability in furthering a strategy, the process of how you get there is key in setting proper expectations. Both designers and clients would be better served with a fruitful conversation on the subject of process and scope vs. the cat and mouse game that plague budgets and work scopes (see note below) estimates.

The money question. Questions about how long it takes and how much it will cost are expected but difficult to answer without a healthy discussion. This is mostly because designers feel setting standard prices for (repeated) services is something akin to blasphemy. And clients don’t have a proper baseline to assign a budget for proper logo design, and if they did it’s almost equally profane to share it. So, the issue of money tends to be left to some arbitrary practice of guessing. Guessing how many hours and concepts and revisions it will take to complete - which basically is an act of prejudging how much of a pain in the ass the client is going to be. In the end, this practice rarely leaves either party equally served or satisfied. But in many ways it’s viewed as the best way for both parties negotiate through it. 

A small but helpful tip I’ve picked up is to share your 3-item agenda before the meeting and write it down on a pad of paper in plain sight at the meeting. It’s not only setting expectations ahead of time, but it’s also there during the meeting to guide and even debunk the subject for the other party who can also plainly see the straight-forward agenda.

One tip (of many) I’ve glommed from David Baker is addressing design as a verb, not just as a profession of nouns (a.k.a. business cards, brochures, artifacts - anything printed). He made this point by comparing how similarly design services and print services are sold. He pointed out that if you watched a designer present their work without the sound, they would look just like a printer. They both show pretty printed artifacts and point to particular aspects of ink on paper. No wonder clients ask for things when they hire designers, and not for “systematic ways of solving business challenges visually.” I remember the bottom line from David’s point was, and I’m paraphrasing, if you want that “seat at the grown-up’s table” you first need to look and sound like you belong.

Interviewing doesn’t have to be awkward if you stick to more outcome-based talking points. Logo design services usually isn’t thought of in those terms, but hopefully the three agenda items above can help shape more fruitful conversations and mutually beneficial success.