With the unemployment rate at a 26-year high, it’s hard to get a brand-new job. At least it’s easy to get a brand-new brand.
Disheartened job-seekers deciding self-employment is better than unemployment can get a professionally designed logo for their budding business from several companies. On the assumption that a jobless entrepreneur would need to hold down costs, we tested four logo-design providers offering packages under $150. (This eliminated industry leader Logoworks because the Hewlett Packard-owned company’s least-expensive package is $299.)
We told our design providers we wanted a logo for a company named DiskFix Solutions. We said our hypothetical company “helps people transfer or retrieve data from hard drives.” We also said we wanted a slogan—“easy remedies for hard problems”—to be part of the logo. We gave the designers little input except that we wanted the logo to look “high-tech.”
Keeping in mind that picking a logo is highly subjective, we mainly tested for ease of ordering, value, range of choices and customer service. We showed the final logos to Glenn Christensen, assistant professor of business management at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management. Dr. Christensen has written extensively about corporate branding and consumer reaction to trademarks and logos. In the cases where we received several initial logo designs from a single company, we showed him only the final design.
Within five hours of ordering our $99 package from LogoDesignGuru.com, we received a phone call from the company giving us the name of our designer and her phone number. Overall, we were very impressed with the company’s customer service.
Because this package allowed for only one concept and one revision, we felt somewhat constrained. Joe Witte, executive vice president of the Langhorne, Pa.-based company, later told us this “starter package” is aimed at buyers who know exactly what they want—a proviso clearly stated on the company’s ordering page. As for the logo, Dr. Christensen liked the typography but found the design too generic. “There’s nothing in the logo that communicates what the company is,” he said.
Our $99 package from Logo Loft also allowed us just one design and one revision. Aaron Carr, president of the Montgomery, Ala.-based company, later told us that the package is best for buyers who have a sketch or a concrete idea of what the logo should look like. In a nice touch, our designer called us directly and walked us through several design templates on the company’s Web site.
Regarding the finished logo, Dr. Christensen liked the typography and said it evoked high-tech, but was mystified by an icon on the lower left. Our designer later told us it is an abstraction of “the hard-drive needle that reads the info off the drive’s platter.” While we would have liked more initial choices, we felt we got our money’s worth.
At $67, the “Superior Logo Package” from LogoDesignCreation.com was the best value. We received three very different initial designs from which to choose and unlimited edits once we picked the one we liked. In addition, we received an animated logo to use on a Web site.
Dr. Christensen said the icon, which depicts a disk, was the best graphic element of all our logos. But he thought the understated typeface was “not that compelling and is probably a negative.” Had we been more pro-active, we could have asked our designer to substitute a more forceful typeface.
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