What should I expect to pay a logo artist?

I wasn't sure if I posted this in the right area, but what should I expect to pay a logo artist? All I need is a professional looking logo with the company name, Omniverse Productions, and a small picture. Sorry, I know that's a little broad. What would be a good range to hire someone? My budget is rather low right now, btw.

Edit 1: Also, what about hours? I'm guessing you would need more information before anyone could determine this.

Edit 2: I figured I'd at least give what the name means. Anything that normally won't happen will. There would always be a way to make the unimaginable into a physical form. Think about mixing science and entertainment with nature. Very experimental.

Note: I'm not looking for anybody right now. That's why I posted this inside the gossip section. I will be able to pay someone sometime after Tuesday, the 3rd, of next week.

 

Just try it here.
Sounds like the perfect solution for your needs:
http://fiverr.com/

There's interesting blog entry about using that "service" on:
http://www.wildfactor.net/page/8

Also a bit later he used more expensive logo contest services that feature a much better and streamlined logo:
http://www.wildfactor.net/wildfactornews/how-to-make-a-logo-contest.html

Really interesting and he's very open and honest about pricing and the achieved results and outcome

 

Thanks

 

I paid $1000 for my Technicat and Fugu Games logos (and got a business card design thrown in) which I presume is outside your range, but you might find the design process interesting:

http://www.fugutalk.com/?p=913
http://www.fugutalk.com/?p=928

 

about 5 years or so ago, you could get cheap freelancer to do it for 20usd.. (but of course you get what you pay for..)

actually you can get it now for 5usd..
http://fiverr.com/gigs/search?query=logo&x=0&y=0

^ that site has also good cheap voice actors, would be pretty nice to use the voices in unity games..

 

depends, as someone said above they paid $1000, i charge 50-100$(roughly)

 

I'd say between $70 and $200, dependingon how large the company wanting the logo were.

 

Thanks guys

 

No offense but those designs at Fiverr screaming "You get what you pay for".

A good logo costs at least $300 if you find a cheap designer. Your best bet would be a site like 99designs.com or Crowdspring.com if you're on a tight budget.

 

Yeah I thought that too

 

5 years you waited to post that.

 

Is the cat's tail plugged into the wall socket or is that just the viewing angle?

 

Noooo, not you too!

 

The German employment agency changed their logo in 2005. They paid the designers 100,000 EUR (of taxpayer money) to change it from this to this:



OK to be fair, they also had a designed a new color guide for that money too. But of course on top of that there was the cost to change the logo and colors everywhere on buildings prints etc. which experts estimated to a cost of 10 million.

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/image-korrektur-neues-ba-logo-weit-teurer-als-bekannt-a-357007.html

 

Yup, plugged into the wall. That was the designer's idea (the basic idea of a cat facing a computer was mine).

That's a relatively new logo, though. The original one I was referring to is here (along with mockups) https://medium.com/technicat-on-gra...169a?source=linkShare-c0fe17a613e6-1504395850

 

Luckily for us, our game flirts with the Early tactical shooters like Rainbow six Ravenshield so we could get away with a bad looking logo

I paid 15 USD on freelancer.com

 

How do you know you can get away with a bad logo? (not saying it is bad, or that you can't get away with it, but unless you've released and done successful with the bad logo, you're just hoping you can get away with it)

 

Our customers have not shown any negative feeling towards it, The name they think is too generic though

 

I see examples like this raised pretty commonly. The thing is that the price isn't paid for someone to sketch out the finished logo in MS Paint. The price is paid for the hopefully rather extensive and thorough process of deciding which design, from the practically infinite number of possible designs, the new one should be.

It's no good making something that's more complex to draw or whatever if it doesn't achieve whatever the desired goals are.

And as game developers I'm sure that everyone here understands the amount of effort that can go into both making something seem simple, and/or achieving results while working with limited flexibility or functionality.

So, I can't knock the logo designer just based on an image and a number. On the other hand, I can question why a government agency decided updating a logo was a good way to spend that amount of money...

 

I don't know about this case, but usually such jobs go to bigger design agencies with multiple people working on it for several months. The 100k don't seem too crazy if it includes the entire corporate design including all their printed media, forms, etc..

The 10 million for executing the new design seem excessive though. Sounds a bit like sunk-cost fallacy to me. Imho at that point it would probably have been better to just dump it and keep the old stuff, unless there were very good reasons to go ahead in spite of the cost.

A big problem with such projects in Germany (and likely elsewhere too) is that there is no systemic incentive to be sensible with money. It's often the case that government entities like e.g. cities have a certain budget they get annually, and if they don't spend it all in one year, they'll just get a smaller budget next year. So of course they'd rather look for dumb S*** to spend it on than take a cut the next year. This stuff is often set up in such an ineffective way, it hurts to think about it. And also there isn't enough accountabililty for making financially irresponsible decisions.

I'm sure if you look a bit closer you'll find enough examples that make 10 million Euro look like nothing in comparison x].

 

Also, the end result is what the client decided on. The designer might have had a lot of great new ideas, only to have the client say, probably after a whole bunch of meetings with lots of people putting in their two cents, let's just go with a color change. You still have to pay the designer for their time (and their willingness to just grit their teeth and give the client what they want, even if it seems stupid).

 

That is usually the case. You can pour time and effort in to the perfect logo- but the client may just want you to move some things around or add some text or simply change a colour. You're still paid for the time you spent on the other one regardless. It may seem like a trivial change, but that ignores all the work that went into it.

 

When I commissioned my first set of logos, I found the process very interesting. We discussed some ideas, the designer presented me with a set of possibilities in black and white, so the color wouldn't influence me, and after narrowing down what I liked (or redoing it completely when he could tell nothing really grabbed me), he showed me how they looked with various colors. So it took several passes and that was just involving the two of us.

On the other end, Paul Rand had a policy of presenting one design, take it or leave it, but I believe he actually did have to go through some negotation and revision with Steve Jobs.

https://www.logodesignlove.com/next-logo-paul-rand

 

He's probably gone through at least the same amount of iterations, he just doesn't show them to the client. In general if as a designer you truly believe to know better than your client, then you might want to only present what you think is best, instead of letting the client pick his favorite parts from different proposed designs that usually don't fit together at all. Some go really hardline on this, but I guess most go with the "whatever makes the client happy and gets me paid" approach.

I've heard it explained with an analogy along these lines "When you're sick you go to your doctor and trust him to decide what's best for you. You don't tell him which medication you want, he decides because he knows best. This is the same thing. You're design is ill, I'm here to make it well again, but you need to trust me like you would trust your doctor."

 

That's possible. It's also possible that some or a lot of that was going to have to get paid anyway.

The "amount of money" I was referring to was actually the 100k, though, not the rollout costs. Government agencies exist to fulfill some kind of social or administrative purpose. I'm not personally convinced that the logo has a lot of impact on that. I could be wrong, though.

 

As other's have said, you get what you pay for.

My opinion having worked with a company that had a retainer with an art design company, budget about $1,000 dollars if your going with a professional individual or team, or budget about $200 if your going with a freelance-indie designer.

You may request changes for example and it can cost you in the long run.

 

Logos IMHO are fairly overrated when it comes to being perfect. All you need is a decent silhouette. I cant be bothered remembering all the changes companies make and I don't care. I'm not even clear what Disney's logo even is. Is it mouse ears? A castle? I don't care. Their name, however, I'm very clear on.

TLDR - your logo is only worth as much as your service or product. Fapping over logos is something companies do often because they are convinced it will lead to more profits. It probably leads to a spike then a net loss when you factor in all the rebranding costs of vehicles, offices, paperwork, websites and products.

It's stupid, just make your own.

#unpopularopinion

 

I agree with this partially. If the logo looks unprofessional or sketchy, then it may be off putting, but i agree that as long as the logo doesn't look flat out bad then it doesn't particularly matter

 

Says the artistic hippo with the cool logo in his avatar...

I think it's a difference whether you compare logo changes of big companies where all logos already were good logos, or transforming something that deserves the name "programmer art" into something that looks like it belongs on a curated storefront.

 

I think that like most things it depends on how you use it. The nike logo is important because it appears everywhere on shoes, the twentieth century fox logo is important because you see it before every one of their movies.

For games, I guess it depends on how much you expect to drive sales through your logo and how visible you make it on your games. Probably pretty unimportant for an indie or anyone who is not selling tshirts and consoles alongside their games.

 

It's like studio names though. If nike sucked and was in the wrong place at the wrong time the iconic tick would be just a smear.