You will look at your mark every day for ten years, and most people are still a little embarrassed to ask what one costs. Here are the numbers.
What does a logo cost?
There are four price bands, and each buys something different.
- $0 to $300. Online generators, contest sites, a cousin with Canva. You get a mark that looks like a dozen other businesses in your category, often in a file the sign shop cannot use. Fine for a lemonade stand. For a business it usually means doing it over in two years.
- $1,000 to $2,000. A freelancer early in their career. Sometimes great. What tends to be missing is everything around the drawing: no color system, no type choice, no rules, and a mark that falls apart on a truck or as a favicon.
- $2,500 to $6,000. An experienced independent designer. That is where I sit. You get a mark that was drawn and tested small, large, and in one color, plus the kit around it.
- $15,000 and up. An agency. You are paying for a team, a strategy deck, and account management. Worth it at a certain size, and not for most businesses under a few million in revenue.
What is included at $2,500?
The mark in every file format anyone will ask you for. A color system with exact values for print and screen. A typeface that works on the sign and the website. A one-page guide with the rules, so the sign shop, the web person, and the embroidery shop get it right without calling you. Two rounds of changes.
Not included: business cards, the website, the shirts. I do those too, priced separately, and when one person does all of it, it matches.
Why not just use the $99 one?
Because the mark has to read on a truck door at forty feet, on a phone at sixteen pixels, embroidered on a hat, and in black only on an invoice. A mark not drawn with those in mind fails at one of them, and you find out the day the sign goes up.
I drew the U.S. Asset Appraisals mark by hand and tested it at every size an appraisal firm uses, from a report header to a phone screen, before anyone outside saw it.
Refresh or start over?
If customers recognize it, refresh. If they do not, or the business has changed, start over. The longer answer has its own page.
How long does it take?
Three to four weeks. One week to learn the business and look at the competition, one week for first directions, then two rounds of refinement. It goes faster when the business is simple and you decide fast.
Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.