How Much Does A Logo Design Cost?
Here is a guide to better understand the value of this creative service. Let’s find out!
A logo design job is like any other creative and artsy job that has varied cost elements. Several things influence how much a cost for such services should be, and the designer’s skills and experiences are no exception.
The harsh truth about the costs is that they can cost as low as zero. Two possibilities emerge in such situations: 1) The logo designer is doing voluntary logo design projects, which is highly unlikely for any professionals, or; 2) they are committing unforgivable mistakes to the clients that lead to their zero payments.
If there are any situations where a logo designer gets paid for what they do, the minimum payment will be $1. By the “$” symbol here, we meant US dollars as the universal payment currency, regardless of whether the designers work independently or under some platforms.
However, it all depends on the platforms where the logo professionals work. Let’s look at the realities of determining how much a graphic illustrator project should cost.
Different platforms Determine Different Amounts of Costs
An independent designer has more freedom in choosing how much their minimum payments are and what payment methods they prefer. However, such things also mean their minimum payments can be lower than any logo professionals who do their design projects on official platforms.
Fiverr is one of the most well-known platforms for creative workers, including logo designers. Here is the place where you can buy everything starting from $5 before any deductions. Other platforms, including 99designs, also have deductions on their own.
When we talk about deductions in online platforms, we usually mean tax deductions. After all, creative professionals should pay their taxes in most countries. However, many platforms impose other deduction elements, such as fees for the platforms to introduce (and sometimes mediate between) the designers to clients.
Some high-leveled pros even have their on-platform fees deducted less than their less experienced peers. However, their minimum payments would typically increase as their professionalism, skills, experiences, and other relevant factors as logo designers boost.
Newbies Vs. Professionals
Generally speaking, the newbies have more varied cost ranges for their graphic design services. They tend to have lesser knowledge and skills in operating certain graphic design programs. As a result, their margins of error are wider than their pro counterparts.
Such things pose graphic design cost problems for newbies, including their near-to-zero minimum payments. If these people were lucky, they would have to undergo paid designer test projects. The minimum payments for these test projects tend to be around $5-$10, which is 5-10 times higher than the $1 as the newbies’ default minimum project payments.
Contrast these realities with the design gurus, and you will get the differences. According to what we’ve witnessed, these five-star professionals earn around $3,000 a month for their graphic visualization services. If they are handling 10-15 projects, such things would mean they will charge $150-$300 per logo in their picture design projects.
Alternatively, these professionals need not have over-the-top reputations around more than two big-name platforms. Instead, they can be the team leaders over some other logo design pros with different levels. We refer to such practices as subcontracting the projects, and these groups of people can charge more than designers who work on their terms.
The reality about logo design costs for subcontracting projects
In general, subcontracting means assigning your tasks to other people. These days, some graphic design platforms legalize subcontracting practices if you are the team leader of your creative graphic team members and if you are willing to prepare some budgets for your subcontracted logo workers.
As a client in an online platform, let’s say you allocate a $599 budget for designing 50 name cards to a team leader of your choice. Then, that team leader disburses the $599 budget to their subcontracted workers according to how many name tags they can work on, minus the $ amounts the team leader deducts according to the main online platform’s terms.
In such situations, the logo design subcontractors or the team leaders can charge as much as independent five-star designers on reputable platforms. So, projects to draw logos for creative team leaders can cost as much as the same visualization-related tasks for highly experienced and skilled individuals, or at some points, slightly lower than them.
More specifically, a graphic visualization cost that involves a creative team leader with five years of work experience usually has minimum payments of $100, or slightly below the highly experienced and skilled visualization pros’ minimum costs.
It is because the team leaders’ minimum order quantities tend to be larger than individuals. It’s rare to see these subcontractors impose one logo as the minimum order quantity for whatever categories they are working in.
Instead, we frequently see the teams impose around 10-50 logos in one task as their minimum quantities, no matter if they are working on a platform or they are building the teams by themselves.
The costs according to the categories
Generally, 2D designs tend to have lower costs than their 3D counterparts, particularly if the pixel dimensions are smaller and the design pros only need some simple elements and retouches.
The designs for name cards are the affordable yet popular 2D graphic visualizations that we can think about. These design materials are the things that people need the most, along with designs for web interfaces.
These types of logo visualizations usually cost around $10-$20 if we get independent entry-level designers to do our jobs. These logo design tasks are also prone to be subjects for testing tasks due to their simple elements and step-by-step editing.
Even when we choose to work with five-star professionals, the logo design tasks that involve name cards, web interfaces, or other non-complicated 2D elements usually cost around $50 or only a quarter of their usual design fees.
3D logo design tasks have lesser demands than their 2D counterparts. If people ever need these design samples, those people are the people that have Flash attached somewhere in their website interfaces. As a result of their rarity, it’s not unusual for the 3D logo design cost to have far more expensive cost ranges than their 2D counterparts.
Ideally, these 3D visualization tasks tend to cost around $1,000-$1,500 in one project. That’s the average cost range when we decide to save our money by giving chances to less experienced professionals. Else, the same tasks can cost up to tenth-thousand dollars or so.
It is because 3D itself is a moving picture, which means more layers, animation flows, and other software that the logo designers should use, regardless of their experience and skill levels. Fortunately, the pixel dimensions for the 3D elements don’t usually exceed 1000*1000, which helps in “normalizing” the average costs.
What about the nature of the designing tasks?
People usually divide the designing tasks into two categories. The first category is the usual graphic visualization-related gigs that we see on online platforms’ dashboards or job ads in external forums. The second category is competition in making the best and the most representative pictures according to the clients’ determined specifications.
Not many platforms held the second category. However, the second designing task category tends to pay a lot more when the designer gurus are lucky to become the champions. Unlike tasks in the first category, the second category doesn’t tend to permit subcontracting acts, which adds more to their illustration-related costs.
One of the graphic illustrator platforms has an average range of $50-$150 costs for illustrator tasks that require intermediate experiences and skills. The same platform imposes a minimum budget of $10,000 for arranging an illustrating contest before the fees and other deductions.
A factor that answers why regular gigs tend to pay much less than competition-related gigs lies in the bid systems. Lots of these places emphasize the creative pros’ bids to save the gig owners’ budgets. We will discuss the bidding systems and how they can affect how much the ideal logo design cost ranges for all illustrators.
How do bidding systems work in determining the costs for logo design services?
These systems have become popular over the past few years since they give plenty of room for gig owners to save lots of money. In general, bidding systems in illustrator platforms work in several ways.
First, the gig owners post their requirements. Then, they will need to wait for at least five graphic illustrators to offer their best prices and packages. Some illustrators provide promotional bundlings for their services, and they prove their design proficiencies when we have a look at their portfolios.
Take an example of a logo design gig for postcard purposes that has a budget limit of $30. As the gig owner, we can auto-reject any bids that go beyond $30. Alternatively, we can be okay with some deviations, such as illustrators who bid around $31-$32 after applying their promotional codes.
Many times, the biddings don’t have any minimum thresholds. Such things lead bidders to bid way below the prices just so they can win the gigs. So, it’s not rare for the same $30 bid to have people bidding with $10, then let the $10 bids win by themselves regardless of their expertise and portfolio histories.
At the same time, such things don’t tend to happen for bids for more complex gigs, such as gigs that require creative illustrators to illustrate in 3D elements. Not only do these gigs typically require the clients to allocate much higher budgets, but it is also impossible to do the gigs with much lower prices.
For instance, a logo design cost range for 3D gigs is $1,500-$2,000. Bids that go around $1,000 or slightly below (perhaps around $800-$900) are still normal, even though a little bit too cheap. However, you would normally reject people who bid $500 and below because they are so cheap that you would doubt their work quality.
How much do these whole gigs cost based on the designer's nationality or location?
Even though these things are based on external environments, the place where the creative illustrators reside determines the cost of the logo design gigs. If the creative workers are working in teams, it will be the team leader’s home country or city that becomes the benchmark for determining the costs.
Simply, working with creative picture illustrators from developed countries costs more than doing the same things with people from developing countries. The individual and bundling price differences become even more evident when foreign tourists often come to developed countries.
For instance, the United States average living costs per month are $1,900. US people who work with our brands tend to reap at least $19 for every picture they execute, and they need to work on 100 pictures to meet the average monthly living costs.
We don’t tend to find such caps in developing countries. Sometimes, the living cost there is around $300 per month. So, it’s normal to see any independent picture workers from developing countries with less than $10 as their logo design service costs, even though they may be as competent as workers from developed countries.
The same thing also happens in capital cities, in which the living costs tend to be higher than in other cities. Such things make the logo design cost ranges in these cities higher as well. The exception goes to collaborating with creative logo professionals who reside in any cities or regencies with frequent tourist visits, in which the logo design cost can be high.
The service costs could also based on the workplaces, tools, software, and more.
There are reasons why people prefer to work through their brand-related designs with independent illustrators. One of the most evident reasons is that these illustrators often work from the comfort of their homes.
Most of the time, home is a “given” place. So, people don’t need to pay any rent-associated costs when they work inside their own houses. Some people still have other people to pay their monthly bills and feed them adequately. These entire things also make the service costs (including 2D or 3D picture design costs) lower than other people's groups.
A logo professional can still lower their operational costs by utilizing things that they already have. Manual tools, such as pencils, pens, erasers, and paper, are not only cheaper than subscribing to tons of complex designer software and tools, but they are also more universally known and readily available everywhere, including around the houses.
So, an independent logo professional’s operational costs can be near zero if he/she utilizes the resources well. As a result, it will be no problem even if the person takes on $10-$20 2D design projects. However, things would be different if we hired in-house creative design illustrators, particularly the team leaders.
These creative design people usually price their services way above their independent counterparts. Rent costs are the contributors to the cost of their services, regardless of whether they rent coworking spaces or separate office buildings.
Some of these buildings also impose additional charges for workers who bring additional tools into the buildings during certain hours. For instance, bringing in palettes, brushes, crayons, or other required manual design tools can get the person charged around $5 to twice the tools’ prices.
Another thing that makes collaborating to design logos with in-house illustrators cost expensive is that these creative industry workers use paid software-based tools. Often, these tools are more expensive than their freebie versions since these tools consist of brushes, stickers, and other decorations that we don’t typically find in the freebie versions.
As a result, the logo design cost is more expensive when we hire professionals who work in a team. So, it’s not unusual for us to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to design one material that we assign to the creative worker teams.
Final Words
Individual versus group is the primary thing we should consider in determining how much the ideal logo design costs. Ideally, creative workers who work in team settings price their illustrating services higher than people who work individually, regardless of their expertise and experiences.
It is because these people have to pay the rent and split payments between team members. Plus, the groups tend to use paid software and tools more than individually-working creative workers.
We should also consider the nature of the gigs we’re going to create when we decide to collaborate with any types of graphic professionals. Regular gigs pay less than competition-based gigs, particularly when the online platform legalizes bidding systems. So, you can maximize these opportunities to save your money.
Finally, we shouldn’t forget that professionals come from different backgrounds, including the team leader’s home countries. Working with people in developed countries costs higher than with people in developing countries, and designers from capital cities have their services priced higher than in other cities as well.
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