It can be tempting to trust your logo design to the kid down the street and his brand new Macbook, or an online logo mill rife with duplicates, but you'd be doing yourself and your brand a disservice. You can't sustain good physical health with fast food, so why power your brand's marketing with fast design?
Only a design agency can give you the results you truly need. Results that have meaning, are executed well, and can stand the test of time in often oversaturated markets. Understanding the value of a design agency can be harder to grasp however, so we've compiled a list of things that should help you recover from sticker shock.
Listening and Learning
You probably have a lot to say about your business and your brand. Insight that, as the business owner, can only come from you. Working with an agency guarantees you access to a team; and that's a lot of ears. This may in fact be the first time you've had to talk about your business aloud in some time, so this time is beneficial for all parties.
Any design agency worth their weight will spend a good amount of time listening. They are going to use the information you share to develop a design strategy. Decisions about font choice, layout, color and imagery is gleaned from learning about your goals and target consumers.
Any design agency worth their weight
will spend a good amount of time listening.
Critical Thinking
Why do you need a logo?
How will a logo design help your business grow?
What are the goals behind wanting to refresh your look?
These are probably questions you hadn't thought about before pursuing the challenge of designing a new logo. Rest assured, your design agency has. Probably before you even walked in the door.
Thinking critically about how a logo will appear and be applied in the real world, along with how color and imagery will be perceived by potential customers isn't something you can accomplish on your own.
You need a dedicated team.
Transparency
I've outlined a couple important ways in which a design agency makes you part of the process, but we're not done yet. Design projects by nature are iterative. Drafts, proofs, and more drafts keep you and the design team engaged during the development of your new logo. The last thing you want as a client is to be hit with a surprise you hate after months of silence.
Scope of Deliverables
That logo you just purchased from Fivver probably isn't going to work on a t-shirt. The design the CEO's nephew turned out probably won't scale from screen to print either.
With an agency the technical details are thought of in advance, so valuable time isn't spent fretting over missing files after the project wraps. A seasoned design agency will produce various versions and formats of your logo including files designed for the web and ones to be applied across various print media.
I said it before, but it deserves repeating:
Only a design agency can give you the results you truly need.
If you're ready to talk about your idea for a logo design, we are too.