There is so much more to Brand design than your logo, and if this sounds to you like a design agency trying to justify the fact that they cost a lot more than sites like Wix Logo Maker and Fiverr, then I suggest you read on.

Have you ever wondered why 99% of agencies start at around £1,000 for a brand design? If this market was truly being cornered by the cheap companies mentioned above, then agencies would be matching their prices or giving up on brand design completely.

But they’re not.

So why is that? The answer comes from understanding the true requirements of a brand.

Its more than just the logo…

So, you go to Fiverr and get yourself a logo designed. That’s it. Nothing more. You spend 20 quid and you have a graphic to put on all your things.

So where should the logo be positioned? Is it always top right, or top left, or maybe in the footer? The logo you bought is sort of weighted to the right, so it doesn’t look right on the left. But you can’t put it on the right because your automated invoice system prints something there. Oh well, you’ll work it out.

You also need a business card. But you don’t know how to build and design that. You suppose you could just chuck something together on Vistaprint or Word. The logo looks great but you don’t know what fonts the designer used, or what fonts would look really great alongside it. So, you just pick one that looks ok. It’s not perfect but it’ll do because you’re saving money. It’s a bit disappointing that your great logo looks a bit rubbish next to a Times New Roman set of contact details but hey-ho, you don’t have time to fiddle with this and you’re saving money, right?

Right, time for your van. You’ve got your logo, so you’re sorted! Right? Well, yes, but you realise you need to add your phone number and web address to the van as well, so that people can contact you if they see your van out and about. So, you contact the van livery printers and ask if they can add on those contact details below the logo. They say ‘no problem!’ There we go. Done.

The van comes back and the phone number and web address are so close to the bottom of your logo that they have overwritten it a bit. It looks like someone put it all together in the dark. But it would cost too much to do it again and the printers are washing their hands of the blame. Well, it looks ok. You can read the logo and you can read the contact details. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do right?

Finally, let’s get that website up and running. See! Getting a logo opens all these doors! You don’t need an agency! You’ve got your company stationery, your van, and now you’ll get a sweet website. Since you’re already keen to save as much money as possible you can get another freelancer to build to your website for next-to-nothing. It’s not the same guy who designed your logo, because he doesn’t do websites, but it’s just a website right? Easy!

You get the first draft of the site back. It doesn’t look right but you can’t put your finger on why. You try to explain to the web designer but he gets a bit defensive and claims that he’ll have to go back to square one to make those changes. You want to save money, so it’ll do. The website is finished and it’s not until a few months go by that you are able to see what’s not right about it. The typefaces aren’t in-keeping, the colours aren’t the same shade as the logo. They’re not big things, but you kind of wish it all looked unified.

A few clients mention in a nice way that your branding doesn’t seem as good as your service. They love the work you do and seem almost surprised that you are as good as you are, they say something about how your imagery isn’t doing you justice. You shrug it off, what matters is you’re doing great work, right? And the logo is great. Everyone says your logo is great. The other stuff will do.

One year later, your business has grown. You have more clients now and you’re on the cusp of hiring some staff, taking things to the next level. You figure its ok to spend money on your brand again as it’s been a long time and you have more money now. It looks a bit dated and unprofessional and you want people to take you really seriously. The old look just isn’t doing it for you anymore. You get a new logo designed. Spend a little more on a freelancer this time, (you’ve learned from the last time!) and spend £100 and get something sleek and modern. You’re very happy.

But then you need to redo your stationery, your vans and your website. It’s worth it, the new brand is SO good! Plus, you have more money now! So, you get it all done. It’s definitely better this time. This is good, you’re learning, things are improving. It’s still not perfect, but you can’t get perfect with design, can you? It’s all subjective. Plus, you got a great deal and you look better now.

Thing is, you paid twice for everything.

Whether you could afford to do it or not, you paid twice. And it won’t just be twice either. You’ll either stop wanting to pay to rebrand and settle for something sub-par, or it will bother you so much you’ll continue to keep tweaking, year in, year out. It won’t be long before you’ve spent as much as the agency was asking for just one. To be honest, you’ll have probably paid that by rebrand number 2.

Wouldn’t it have been better if the brand was perfect from the beginning? If it did everything you wanted/needed from the off?

It’s easy to overlook this and just see it as growth and evolution, but the truth is, it’s a bad investment. A logo is not a brand. A brand is a strategy, a plan, a look-and-feel and message for your whole business. And it might cost more than a £20 logo from Fiverr, but it costs less than redoing your whole look every year.

This might sound like an exaggeration for dramatic effect. An attempt to sell you on agency-service coming from bias, because of course I’m an agency designer. But it’s all stories we have actually heard. All the scenarios mentioned above are either genuine issues that we had to overcome when designing a brand for a client or an actual situation a client found themselves in that we helped them out of.

It all comes down to how much YOU value YOUR business. If you can sum up your business with the words ‘that’ll do’ then maybe operating like that on your creative is the right route for you. But if not, then don’t.

Your creative, your branding, your logo, is the visual translation of your business. A brand that looks high-end and good, makes customers think the business goes the extra mile, produces stellar products and services and has the success and financial security to make themselves look good.

It’s a fact. It’s how human’s subconscious brains react to good looking things. We extrapolate beyond what we can see and make judgements.

When you pay an agency for branding you don’t just pay for a logo. An agency builds a logo that means something, the typefaces, shapes, symbols, colours… all connect to aspects of your product service. It’s considered with years of experience and design understanding. Its researched and tested, in your sector, against your competitors, with your heritage and message in mind. It won’t date for years and it communicates your core principles to your customers, instantly.

An agency does not build your logo in isolation, but part of a brand, a greater picture that includes all deployments, the guidelines for how to execute it and the messaging. Thought goes into how it will be used, years ahead of where the company is now so it is future-proofed and prepared for anything.

Branding is story, message, the whole imprint your company leaves on a customer, before during and after engagement… its everything! It IS your company, just translated into a visual form. If you’re not prepared to pay for that, then it would follow that you’re not prepared to invest in your company either.

A new customer cannot see everything that makes you what you are, your USPs, your mission, your ethos, your premises, your staff, all their experience, your track record, your skill, the quality of your products and services… all of that takes ages for them to see, to truly understand.

So instead you have to take all of that and condense it into one, consumable object. That’s branding. And understandably, THAT… costs a little bit more than a Fiverr.

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