REBRAND! What’s in a logo?
For the longest time, I was absolutely ecstatic about my logo and branding. It was minimalistic. Very sleek. It had just a small pop of color, but overall was incredibly subtle.
Cue my girlfriend: “Your logo doesn’t tell me what you do…”
I’ll be damned… she’s got a great point!
So, after reluctantly admitting to her that she was right and after a couple weeks of her hounding me to rebrand/ redesign my logo…. I did!
I’m lucky to be proficient in graphic design and am able to find my way within Photoshop/ Illustrator, however, if I wasn’t, I would most definitely have paid someone to help redesign my logo. This thought got me thinking about the importance of a quality logo/ brand image, and how much it’s ACTUALLY worth.
I recently saw two great videos.
One of the videos was about the creation of the Nike logo. It turns out that the logo was designed for $35 (roughly $195 today) back in the 1970’s. The logo had a purpose, but lacked clarity. The purpose was to be representative of motion and speed as well as something that was able to be placed on the side of a sports shoe. Since there was a physical product involved, this works. For someone like me, however, that just wouldn’t suffice because you wouldn’t know what it is that I do simply based on a minimalistic logo.
The other video was about the pricing of logo design in comparison to the time it takes to actually do the work. This was really insightful and draws a lot of parallels to photography pricing. What I really enjoyed about this particular video was the idea of pricing based on value to the client. If you aren’t able to (re)design your own logo, you have to be willing to go out and find someone who understands this concept and is able to provide you with something you love but based on the value it brings to you. The value to you, as a (presumably) small business, is MUCH less (in terms of dollars) than it would be to a massive corporation like Nike.
In watching both videos and subsequently going through my own (re)design process, I realized a few things that I wanted to point out/ share with you all that can serve as a new perspective or even just a reminder:
Unless you are a household name, your logo should convey (at least somewhat) what exactly it is that you do.
Be cognizant of your abilities and strengths and be willing to spend the necessary money to acquire a high-quality brand image that works for you.
ALWAYS understand that you are paying for the time someone has put in to hone their craft and bring the level of production to the project that they do, NOT for the amount of time put into the project. I know this seems counter intuitive (especially considering some projects are billed by time), but the person who can design your logo or do your headshots in a surprisingly short amount of time, but also puts out a phenomenal product, is only able to do so BECAUSE of the time invested to this point! Respect the craft.
That’s pretty much it for me on this topic. I just wanted to bring this food for thought to the proverbial table!
Enjoy your weekend!
-MA
