A logo is one of the few things you buy once and look at every day for ten years. It is also one of the few things people are embarrassed to ask the price of. Here it is.
What does a logo actually cost?
There are four price bands, and they buy four different things.
- $0 to $300. Online generators, contest sites, a cousin with Canva. You get a mark that looks like twelve other businesses in your category, usually in a file format the sign shop cannot use. Fine for a lemonade stand, expensive for a business, because you will do it again in two years.
- $1,000 to $2,000. A freelancer early in their career. Sometimes great. The risk is not the drawing, it is what comes with it: no colour system, no type choice, no rules, and a mark that falls apart when it has to go on a truck or a favicon.
- $2,500 to $6,000. An experienced independent designer. This is where I sit. You get a mark that was drawn, not assembled, tested small and large and in one colour, plus the whole 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. Not worth it for most businesses under a few million in revenue.
What is included at $2,500?
The mark itself, in every file format anybody will ever ask you for. A colour system with the exact values for print and screen. A type choice that works on the sign and on the website. A one-page guide with the rules, so the sign shop, the web person, and the embroidery guy all get it right without calling you. Two rounds of changes.
What is not included: business cards, the website, the shirt. Those are separate, and I do them too, which is the point. Done by the same person, it all matches.
Why not just use the $99 one?
Because you are not buying a picture, you are buying something that has to work on a truck door at forty feet, on a phone screen at sixteen pixels, embroidered on a hat, and in black only on an invoice. A mark that was not drawn with those in mind fails at one of them, and you find out the day the sign is installed.
I drew the U.S. Asset Appraisals mark by hand. That was not an exercise in cleverness. It was a shape tested at every size an appraisal firm needs, from a report header to a truck door, before anyone saw it.
Refresh or start over?
If customers recognise it, refresh. If they do not, or the business has genuinely changed, start over. I wrote the longer answer on that separately.
How long does it take?
Three to four weeks. One week to understand the business and look at what the competition looks like, one week for first directions, then two rounds of refinement. Faster is possible 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.