Logo Design

Logo Design options

There are several ways to have a logo designed for your company. Here are the most frequently used options:

• You can try to design it yourself for free. Unless you are the creative type, this may not be your best bet. Remember, your logo is your brand identity and needs to be both professional and appealing and uniquely yours (no copying!). If you happen to lean to the creative side, go for it, it could save you some money if you can design something you love. Most people are unable to design their own logo, so don’t worry if this just isn’t your thing.
• You can hire a local designer and spend a few hundred dollars for a handful of logo options (cost depends where you live as some larger cities will cost more).  Usually if you contact a local advertising agency, they will create a logo for you.
• You can hire an established “branding firm” who will sell you a comprehensive corporate identity package. The package will typically include naming ideas, logo, business card and stationery designs. This approach will cost you thousands the vast majority of time, but you will get a truly professionally designed logo and materials. For most small businesses, this is overkill, a local ad agency will do.
• You can use a tool like www.freelancer.com to hire a creative person who will design your logo for you.  we love this option for small businesses who want a nice looking logo for not a ton of money. Freelancer.com has designers from inside and outside the U.S. who are really quite skilled. Of course, it also has many who are less skilled. How do you know which designer is which? We have a trick.. read on to learn more!

the trick to using freelancer.com

On freelancer.com you can either hire a specific freelancer and pray they are good (not what we suggest)…or you can run a “contest”. For as little as $40-$50, you can run a logo contest and if you “guarantee a winner”, you will likely get over a hundred entries. Yes, over a hundred entries. In fact, we have run contests in the past and had over 400 logo entries for that amount! Nobody really needs hundreds of logo designs to choose from, but about 20-30 will be ones you might actually consider.

Going through the entries is super easy as freelancer.com loads all contest entries and you simply scroll through and rate each with a star value on how much you like it.  We like to give 1-4 stars at first pass, then sort so that the highest ranked logos are first. Then go through and only give 5 stars to your top few. It just makes it easier to decide among all of those entries.   

choosing the final logo on freelancer.com

If you like one logo a lot, but want it tweaked, go ahead and ask the designer to make the desired tweaks. Freelancer.com has an easy chat system.  Once the logo is perfect, then mark that designer’s logo entry as the winner! You sign off on a standard Freelancer.com transfer agreement saying that you own the logo outright, then the designer sends you the final files of your logo over the platform. You pay the designer through freelancer.com and all communication is done through the platform as well so you never have to provide you personal information to the freelancers.

The Bottom Line

Unless you or someone you trust is a creative genius, we suggest hiring this task out. We have found the best way is to use freelancer.com.  

Freelancer.com is a great go-to source for getting lots of logo design options to choose from at a low price.  Remember, once you have your logo, if you need business cards (or even old school stationery), printing will cost extra. So just keep that in mind as you budget. We have always used Vistaprint as our go-to for printing business cards. Call them on the phone so they can set up your business card upload and make sure it is aligned as they typically don’t share a test print with you. Your logo will be looking good online and in print in no time!