Should you create your own logo or hire a professional logo designer?

Logos

For emerging businesses, choosing a logo can be a lengthy, and at times arduous, process.

Though seemingly simple in its appearance, a logo is a highly important piece of the overall structure of a company.

A logo is the chance to express your brand’s identity and make a lasting impression on your potential customers. It’s an opportunity to embed your company in people’s memories, ensuring it’s you they turn to when they require a service, and not your competitors.

Due to the importance of a logo, decisions regarding who should be responsible for creating its design are not to be taken lightly. Whether you’re contemplating a D.I.Y. approach or considering hiring a professional or a graphic design service, it’s worth mulling over the varying benefits.

Luckily, we’ve given you one less job to think about. By taking the liberty of weighing up some of the pros and cons of each approach below, you can rest assured that you’ve chosen the option that best suits your business.

Creating Your Own Logo Using A Logo Maker

Pros:

If you’re a whiz with graphics and a natural artist, creating your own logo is certainly the cheapest option. However, being good with design isn’t the only prerequisite to creating a unique and memorable logo. You need to have a sense of branding.

Provided that your creative side is married to your marketing mind, designing your own logo gives you the freedom to accurately express your vision. You won’t need to worry about having to communicate your idea to someone who has a different perspective from you.

This option is suited to the business-minded creative who knows exactly what they want and exactly how to make it happen.

Cons:

The reality is, a lot of people simply don’t have the expertise to design a logo. A logo’s humble façade is often the representation of a lot of strategic thinking. Given the effect imagery can have on our psychology, you need to know which colors and which patterns have what effect on the brain.

Maybe you’re a budding artist, but if you’re the primary decision-maker of a business, the chances are your days aren’t exactly overflowing with spare time. If you can’t afford to give it the thought it deserves, creating your own logo might not be for you.

Hiring A Professional Logo Designer

Pros:

If you want to ensure your logo is innovative, interesting and iconic (think the Nike tick level of legendary), hiring a professional logo designer is a desirable option.

The logo is often both the first thing your potential customers see and the thing they see most often. Professional logo designers have dealt with a vast number of diverse clients, so they know first-hand what attracts customers.

Hiring a professional logo designer might not be as cheap as doing it yourself, but if you consider the amount of advertising potential, that one-off cost may, in fact, be highly economical. After all, a good logo distinguishes you from the competition and ensures you are remembered.

Cons:

As well as the significant cost to hiring a professional logo designer, another point worth considering is that it also takes a significant amount of time. You’ll have to shop around and view different portfolios before you settle on the right person.

If you’re after a speedy and inexpensive process, a professional logo designer might not be a realistic choice.

Using A Logo Maker

Pros:

If you’re concerned about hiring an expensive individual to design your logo, yet you don’t have the skills to do it yourself, using a logo maker is the perfect in- between option.

Logo makers are accessible and affordable. A logo maker like logo.com provides easy-to-navigate tools, allowing you to create a logo design quickly and efficiently. . This is ideal for businesses that are just starting out and may have limited resources.

A significant advantage of using a logo maker is that you can skip the time- consuming process of sourcing a designer, and the back-and-forth which comes with ensuring the design meets your expectations. With a logo maker, you get to control the outcome, without needing the background of an expert designer.

Cons:

Substituting a person for a generator runs the risk of limiting your logo’s creative potential.

In saying that, most logo makers give you access to thousands of fonts and graphics, which are the work of real people who have strategically conceived of these design tools.

If you have the patience to tweak your design accordingly, a logo maker provides a lot of choice.

The biggest con of a logo maker is that it can’t offer the same level of originality as a professional designer. But if you shop around, you might find that the right logo maker allows enough customization to rival that of a designer, without breaking the bank.

Conclusion

If you have the skills and time to design your own logo, then there’s no reason to hesitate. Do it! Likewise, if you have the budget to hire a professional designer, the benefits are sure to pay off.

If, however, like many new businesses starting out, you’re somewhere in between, then using a logo maker is a flexible and cost-effective choice.