Logo Design

What a logo project includes

The primary mark, the variants it needs to survive the places it will actually go, and the files a printer, an embroiderer or a developer can open without calling to ask what you sent them.

Variants are not an upsell. A mark that only exists in one colour on one background fails the first time somebody puts it on a dark jersey, a fax-quality invoice or a 16 pixel favicon, and it fails quietly: nobody tells you, they just crop it.

The corrections are the part that does not show up in a description. Curves that are mathematically equal do not look equal, strokes that meet at the same weight go heavy where they cross, and a mark drawn at 2000 pixels closes up at 20. That gets fixed by eye at final size, which is the slow part and the reason the marks above still read when you shrink this page.

If the mark is going to move, say so before it is drawn. A mark built to animate is drawn differently from one that gets animated afterwards.

What it costs, and what moves the number

A mark on its own is the smallest piece of identity work I take, and it sits at the bottom of the identity range on this site, which runs from roughly $2,000 to $25,000 and above in Canadian dollars. Four things decide where a logo project lands inside that.

• How many places it has to hold. The SoaR Gaming mark had to work on a jersey, a stream overlay, a favicon and an embroidered cap. Each of those is a separate design problem, not a resize.
• Whether a wordmark comes with it. A symbol and a wordmark that have to sit together, apart, and stacked is three lockups to draw and balance, not one.
• How much has to be decided first. If what the company is claiming is still open, that gets resolved before anything is drawn, because a mark for an undecided business gets redrawn.
• What sits at the end of it. Signage, packaging, apparel and vehicle wraps each carry their own file requirements, and preparing for them properly is real work.

If you are holding two quotes that are far apart, why brand identity quotes vary goes through the same drivers at length, along with the four questions that make two quotes comparable.

Tell me the band you are working in and I will tell you what fits inside it, before either of us spends time on a proposal.

How long it takes

A focused mark and its production files can be done inside a week. Add a wordmark, lockups and a set of secondary marks and it is usually closer to two.

That is faster than most studios quote, and the reason is structural rather than a corner cut. There is no account layer, no internal review round, and no work waiting to be handed between people. The judgements that normally sit until a scheduled presentation get made and re-evaluated the same day.

The usual variable is not the drawing, it is how quickly decisions come back. If you have a launch, a season or a trade show already fixed, say so in the first message and I will tell you honestly whether it fits.

What you receive at handoff

Vector masters, reversed and single-colour variants, and rasters at the sizes you will genuinely use, organised and named so they can be found a year later by somebody who was not in the room.

Colour is specified for screen and for print rather than one converted to the other at the last minute. Clear space and minimum size are written down. So are the misuse examples, which exist to stop a well-meaning person stretching it.

The standard I hold it to is the same one the rest of the studio works to: a designer you hire three years from now should be able to pick the mark up cold and get it right without calling me.

When you need more than the mark

A logo on its own is the right purchase more often than the industry admits. It is the wrong one when the mark is going to be applied by people who are not designers, across things you will never see before they are made.

That is the point at which the rules matter more than the drawing, and it is what brand identity work is: the type and colour system underneath the mark, and the written guidance that makes it survive being applied without you.

Community Moto is the version of that I would point at. The identity is used by staff on apparel, on signage and on a phone at an event, and it stays right because the rules are written down.

Who this is not for

If you need a logo by Friday for a few hundred dollars, that is a real need and I am not the answer to it. The logo marketplaces do that job faster and cheaper than I can, and there is no sense pretending otherwise.

It is also the wrong time if the business itself is still moving. If what you sell or who you sell it to is likely to change in the next few months, a mark drawn now gets redrawn. I will say so in the first conversation rather than take the project.