AU$375 logo & card design FAQ

Please note that while this FAQ is long, it will not take you more than 10 minutes to read and it ensures the best chance of a successful outcome for your new logo.

View my full logo portfolio at localmike.carbonmade.com

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Do I really need a professionally-designed logo?

Absolutely. It’s often the customer’s easiest way to get an initial impression of your business, and many of them will weigh their next move (i.e. contacting you) on the strength of that impression.

Is $375 cheap?

Simply; yes. Overall, it amounts to about 5 hours of my time (and as a self-employed operator, only a portion of that is ‘profit’).

Logo design ordinarily takes a lot longer than that. Why? Below are some of the steps involved in a full-scale logo project.

1) Industry Research

1. Looking at your industry and determining what elements and factors best identify the services in that industry.
2. Looking at other logos already existing in the same industry. If five companies in your industry have an airplane in their logo, that approach is best avoided.
3. If the industry is in fact all about airplanes, how do we best approach this so that your business and its logo appears unique to all the others?

That’s more than 4 hours on its own.

2) Design Research

1. Fonts - discussing and exploring the best type of font for the project. What perception do you want people to have when they see it? Funky? Professional? Futuristic? Contemporary? Straightlaced and ultra-corporate?
2. Fonts continued - making sure that the font will work well at small sizes, or that it can be easily stencilled or painted onto walls and shipping containers or screen-printed and embroidered onto apparel.
3. Simplicity - As with the fonts, a major consideration in the design of the logo is ensuring that it is kept simple, so that it will work well not only on paper and screen, but also with screenprinting, stencilling, embroidery and even engraving.
4. Colours - Picking the right colours for your industry, for your services, also takes time. If you’re an enviroment-focused company, greens and browns might be preferred, or even blue if it involves water. Other considerations: in some countries, purple is associated with royalty, while red is a taboo colour because of its association with death.

We’re now getting close to maybe 10 or 15 hours worth of my time – on a good day – not to mention your own valuable time in the consultation stages.

3) The Design Itself – at last!

1. experimenting with logo concepts based on what we’ve learned together and decided about your industry, while also making sure it combines well with the preferred font/s.
2. Putting together a number of different concepts, some similar and others vastly different. The more concepts, the more times that Step (a) is repeated.
3. Selecting the best options and pushing those to a presentable stage.
4. Completing the final preferred logo, including setting it in portrait and landscape layouts and creating versions that work in one-colour, two-colour and full-colour applications.

4) Preparing The Logo For Print And Screen

1. Logos need to be massaged for application across different media. For print alone, there are numerous different types of printing, with a sometimes painful process involved in preparing the logo so that it is sharp and in exactly the right shade of whatever colours have been chosen.
2. Because of the technical and complex nature of computer screens, an image will always appear slightly different on screen to how it will look in print, especially at smaller sizes when the logo becomes affected by the physical pixels of your computer screen. Therefore, time and consideration has to be given to ensuring the logo looks ‘just right’ on screen.

All up, this full-scale project could see in excess of 50 hours spent on the above stages, not to mention billable items such as travel (if your office is an hour’s drive away, that time on the road won’t necessarily be free), meetings and consultation, the creation of custom fonts if needed, etc.

Cost? Potentially in excess of $5000.

With all that in mind, $375 is a brilliant deal. You won’t get all of the above, of course, and while it will be sharp and professional, the final result won’t be as super-creative as it would be if you were spending more.

So what DO you get? Below are some further FAQs.

View my full logo portfolio at localmike.carbonmade.com

Are revisions included in the deal?

Officially no, although basic revisions may be made at my discretion, depending on complexity and available time. In any design project, $375 worth of time (about 5 hours) is gobbled up very quickly, and free revisions would quickly push the project towards being a financial loss for me.

Will the colours look different in print than they do on my screen?

Yes. Because screens are backlit, and also rendered in a different colour formula and calibrated to vastly different standards from one manufacturer to the other, the colours will vary not only between print and screen, but even from my own screen to your screen.

In a full-scale project, this is countered by offering printed samples for you to review, but I do not include this service in my deal.

What does the deal include?

• ONE logo option, occasionally two - if time permits
• basic business card design. This is more of an ‘added bonus’ and not much time is given to it, though it will be sharp and professional.
• basic print prep
• basic web prep
• basic colour check
• no printing. You must yourself arrange the application and printing of your logo and cards.
• no training/tutoring
• no on-site consultation unless negotiated, may incur extra cost
• no time-tracking. I’m squeezing a lot into 4 hours, and sometimes you even end up getting more time than you’ve paid for. Frankly, I don’t want to know how much free time I’ve given.

Do you offer further design services beyond the logo and card deal?

Only as time permits, charged at regular $70p/h rate.

What do you need from me?

• Examples of logos that you like (and what you like about them),
• Fonts that you like, colours that you prefer, etc. Occasionally I will advise against certain colours and fonts depending on how they will be used, as some types do not translate well to different types of media, or work effectively at small sizes.
• The more you give me, the lower the chance of you being disappointed with the end result. This is particularly important, as I do not offer revisions
• Details about your business and the industry you’re in.

Do you need a deposit?

- Yes, a non-refundable AU$80 deposit is required before works will proceed.

Do you invoice?

Yes, all works are invoiced.

What is a release fee, and do I need to pay it?

A release fee is an amount that is billed before a designer will ‘release’ fully-editable versions of the logo to a client. This is because the prospect of future ongoing work with that client is often factored into the cost of a project, allowing for the project’s initial costs to be lower as a result.

If a client wishes to take their future design needs elsewhere, the designer will have lost income because of the disappearance of future work that had originally been factored into the project’s intial costs. To compensate for this, a ‘release fee’ is charged, which releases not only the files to the client, but the full rights to the logo.

I do not require a release fee, and full rights are transferred to the client along with the editable files at the end of the deal.

When do I get the graphics files?

Fully editable files are transferred to the client upon receipt of final payment.

What is the turnaround time for my logo once you receive the deposit?

One to two weeks. My design services are not a full-time occupation. I have a ‘regular’ day job, and that role is my top priority, so that means I work on design projects in ‘after hours’ time only.

Remember: a sharp and professional logo, and the professional image it evokes, goes a long way.

Contact me at hello@localmike.com