A logo is an important part of your brand identity. It serves as your visual ambassador and gives your company or organization a face that people identify you by.

We’ve all heard the advice: invest in your logo. And while it may seem obvious to some why it’s important to invest in a well-designed logo, many entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t really understand why logos are so important.

In the simplest of terms, a logo is a graphic mark, emblem design, icon, or mark that identifies your company, organization, or you. If you run a business, your brand is more than just your company name and logo, but a logo is an important part of a company’s brand. It’s the visual cornerstone of the brand.

The most important job of a logo is to help customers and customer prospects identify your company. That’s why the best logos are simple and memorable. Just think about how many logos you are able to recognize in your everyday life! Those logos serve as a reminder that Nike was the brand that made your shoes, or that Apple is the reason why you’re reading this on a Macbook.

Another important job of a logo is to draw attention to your organization and its products and/or services. Logos don’t only identify what your company does or stands for, but they also catch people’s eyes. People remember great logos! Again, it’s all about association. If people associate a specific symbol or font with your brand, then they will instantly recognize it wherever they are. It's one reason why businesses regularly use their logos on social networks and in social media.

One of the best parts of a logo, assuming you’re not using generic templates or a free logo site, is that it can only be associated with your business. It doesn’t matter if a different company is similar to yours, what matters is that your logos are different. Your logo must be your own. You have an opportunity to make a unique first impression and you can only do that with a custom logo. Often, a logo is one of the first defense barriers against competition. Besides your company’s name, it’s the first difference customers and prospects will notice. That’s why it’s important to avoid generic and cliche logos.

Most entrepreneurs, businesses, agencies, and other organizations create a logo in one of four ways: by running a design contest, hiring a design agency, working directly with a freelance designer, or making their own with an online logo maker.

Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages.

Online logo makers give you generic, template-based designs that looks like thousands of other designs. Agencies and freelancers can be very expensive and you get little choice.

Design contest are, for most, the best option for a custom company logo because you set your own price and pick your favorite business logo from among dozens of unique, custom designs submitted by designers from all over the world. Logo contests provide a lot of flexibility and creativity.

Want to learn more? Check out our business guide to creating the perfect logo and this comprehensive guide to creating a strong brand identity.

Computers don’t understand how people think and give you generic, uninspiring templates. If you want professional logo design, work with real people - designers who understand human psychology and who can help you create a unique logo for your company or organization.

When you set aside all the design trends and fancy fonts, at its core, a logo must:

1. Embody your brand
2. Be instantly recognizable
3. Be versatile
4. Be timeless

Everything else is optional.

In fact, we’’ll go one step further. Every design choice in your logo should exist only to serve and strengthen the four items listed above. And, if you meet these four requirements, many other commonly cited logo must-haves, like simplicity and memorability, naturally follow.

The best way to get a logo that does all of these things well is to work with a professional logo designer. They’ll recommend the right type of logo design and suggest appropriate colors, shapes and fonts that create a strong brand identity and communicate the message you want to send to customers and prospective customers.

If you don’t care about building a strong brand, you can get a generic, uninspiring logo from a online logo maker or logo generator. They all use generic templates and fonts and while you can get a logo for free or for a few dollars, your logo will look like thousands of other logos. It will not be unique and will not help you stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Logo design contests are simple, effective, and affordable. Here’s how logo contests work on crowdspring: tell us what you need (we walk you through an interactive Q&A customized for logo projects), work with dozens of talented professional logo designers from around the world, and pick your favorite design. You’ll get full rights to the logo design via a customized legal agreement, and all the files formats you’ll need to use your logo. All protected by our 100 percent satisfaction guarantee.

We have you covered! Take advantage of bundled pricing and get a logo and business card, or logo and social media assets, or help with just your letterhead or business card design. Save hundreds of dollars by picking a bundle and create a strong brand that people will love and your competitors will envy.

A good logo design can take anywhere from a few hours to several days or even weeks. On crowdspring, logo design projects can run from 1 to 7 days and you can always extend any project without cost if you need a little more time. Generally, the logo design process should take no more than a week to finish.

Like everything, there’s a big price range when it comes to custom logo design. If you don’t care about building a strong brand, you can get a generic, uninspiring logo from a online logo maker or a designer willing to give you a template design for $5. Agencies can charge tens of thousands of dollars for a brand identity. And, of course, you’ll find options in between $5 and $50,000. We recommend that entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses should expect to pay anywhere from $300 to $1,500 for a good logo designed by a professional logo designer. Custom logo design projects on crowdspring start at $299 (including all fees!).

You will get a professionally designed custom logo design. Additionally, you’ll get industry-standard ready-to-go files that you can use in print and online. And your project will be protected by a customized legal contract transferring the full legal rights to the design, to you.

Experienced freelancers typically charge $1,000 to $5,000 for a custom logo design. Well known freelancers and small design studios will often charge $5,000 to $15,000 for custom logo design. Mid-size agencies will typically charge $5,000 to $50,000+ for custom logo design. And, if you don’t care about building a strong brand, you can get a generic, uninspiring logo from a online logo maker or a designer willing to give you a template design for $5.

There are a number of important factors when you evaluate whether you have a strong logo.

A logo should be flexible. There are so many mediums in which your logo will be employed: digital, print, physical products... it’s important that your logo looks great when used in each.

If your company uses a logo that solely relies on color, your logo will lose it’s effect when it’s in black and white. Similarly, if your company intends to only use your logo in a specific way (such as on a web design, signage, shirts, letterhead, stationery, custom t-shirts, decals, or business cards), then size may not matter much. But if you’re like most companies, you’ll need a flexible logo that can be placed on multiple products, presentations, graphics, and websites. Versatility is important because it helps you reproduce your logo in a wide variety of ways.

The most successful logos are flexible enough that they don’t get lost when changing sizes, backgrounds, or mediums.

A logo should also be simple. The distinction between an overly simplistic design and a minimalist design is an important one. Overly simplistic, generic designs should be avoided, as they tend toward being overused, overdone, and not at all memorable. Minimalist designs, on the other hand, are popular for good reason. They are eye-catching, memorable, and timeless, but still function as creative pieces.

The minimalism trend grounds most of the other current trends, which are increasingly focused on sleek, tight designs. Ornate, overworked design has been replaced with cleaner, modern concepts that retain simplicity without forgoing originality.

One reason for minimal design’s broad-based appeal? Any business can incorporate a minimal look into their existing design scheme! If you find that your existing brand is tired and out of touch, maybe it’s time to take a look at what other businesses are doing with minimalist design on crowdspring.

A logo should be memorable. The most memorable logos - like Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola and Target - have key characteristics in common with each other. These logos are all clean, memorable, and foster positive brand associations for their customers. Consumers are more likely to associate positive attributes to logos that incorporate memorable design elements, and find brands with these characteristics in their logos to be attractive, trustworthy, and respectable. Those are qualities worth remembering!

A logo should be timeless. A great logo walks the line between timelessness and trendiness: designing a logo that is both can be a challenge. A logo that’s unique, attractive, and adeptly communicates your brand values requires an understanding of the current design trends and the skill to use them to your best advantage.

Finding a designer who can assess the personality of your brand and convey it in a timeless logo isn't out of reach. Here at crowdspring, we have hundreds of thousands of designers equipped with the knowledge of current design trends, and the ability to incorporate them into a logo that is modern, relevant, but still timeless.

A logo should be unique. A unique logo design can be the difference between blending in and standing out from the competition. Generic logos have become extremely problematic. That’s why in the long run, a free logo will end up costing you much more in brand value and confusion than paying a few hundred dollars for a professional designed one.

The epidemic of too-similar fonts, glyphs, and swishy people leaves a weak first impression on customers and is unmemorable. Even though some of these generic logos may help a person identify the industry itself, generic logos also detract from the originality and story of your specific company. Generic logos even break the core elements of good logo design: memorable and unique, making them poor choices for any company.

A brand’s logo is its principal design element, acting as a visual representation of the company and its values. There are plenty of things that go into a well-designed logo, but one of the most important of these is color. It may seem like an artistic decision, but the primary color you choose for your logo actually has a serious psychological impact on how people perceive it.

In a widely-cited study called “The Impact of Color on Marketing,” research found that people make a subconscious judgment about products within the first 90 seconds of seeing it. Consumers place color above other factors such as sound, smell and texture. Almost 85% of consumers cite color as the main reason they buy a certain product, and 80% of people believe color increases brand recognition.

Even if they’re not consciously thinking about it, people associate color with different things and feelings. Making sure your brand effectively capitalizes on positive color association will make the difference in how impactful your logo is.

Good logos are not just about creative illustrations and drawings! Many companies use typography in their logos either instead of or in addition to images and symbols.

When incorporating words or phrases, logos often play with the font, style, size, and even letter spacing. Some logos include the company’s full name, while some just include an initial. Some don’t include any letters or words at all, but traditionally use a specific text style for those elements. Either way, typography including the choice of serif or sans serif fonts and typefaces, is essential to making the words behind your company work well with the other graphic elements of the logo. Can it be read at small sizes? Is the letter spacing or word spacing well adjusted? Typography is a craft in itself - it's the first voice of stating who you are.

Is your logo going to be printed on paper? Business cards? Billboards? Physical products? Today, there are a lot of mediums and sizes and our logos have to perform well across all mediums. Therefore it’s important to consider where and how your logo will be displayed so that you can specify colors and file formats. At crowdspring, we have you covered by making sure you receive vectorized logo designs, which are useful in any medium.

You should always request vector based graphics. It’s often tempting to ask for complex illustrations in a logo. However, unless you plan on never using your logo outside of an on-screen/online application, a JPG or PSD isn't going to cut it. A properly drawn vector design in an SVG, EPS or compatible format will provide you with the ultimate flexibility.

Instead of copying or mimicking famous logos, the best designers look to create a unique brand when creating a business logo or a logo for another type of organization. The breakthrough designs they create often come from the deeper meanings they find within the company, which is the reason why so many companies have logo origin stories or hidden meanings.

The secret is to uncover that deeper or hidden meaning before designing the logo. A unique logo design will stem organically from whatever makes your company unique.

You don’t. Logos should be vectorized, which means that you can size them to match your needs. Special software is required to create vectorized logos, even if you have great design skills to create a logo you love. Simply clicking WordArt in Word and typing some text, or coming up with a design in Microsoft Paint won't create a logo that will serve the interests of your business. More importantly, this isn't something that you should do yourself. It’s incredibly difficult and expensive to re-brand later and ultimately, spending a few hundred dollars now on a professionally created logo design will save you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few years.

Adobe illustrator is commonly used for logo design. Illustrator is a vector graphics editor tool. As we wrote above, you always want a vectorized version of your logo so that you can properly size it for small business cards or large billboards. That's why software like Adobe Photoshop are not proper tools for designing logos.

Every company has a brand. This is true for your company whether you’ve made a single conscious branding decision or not. And that’s why it’s vitally important to make conscious, consistent branding choices. The decisions left unmade, and a brand left untended may hurt your business.

Your brand is your company’s public identity. Ideally, your brand should embody the best (and most essential) attributes of your company. That’s pretty unlikely to occur if you leave your branding to chance. Your brand name is just that - the name of your company or business. The logo is a graphical representation of that brand. Sometimes, the logo is just letters, like the logo for crowdspring you see above. Still, even in those cases, you’ll see that there are design elements to those letters because a specific font was selected and in crowdspring’s case, customized for the design.

A logo is a word, symbol, or a combination of the two. A symbol is a mark - typically a pictorial graphic. The Nike swoosh is a symbol, as is the apple in the Apple logo. But for both companies, you’ll often see the name reflected in a graphical format where the letters are using a very specific font. Sometimes you’ll see the name by itself, while at other times you’ll see the name together with the symbol, or just the symbol.

We created a powerful, proven service that works for businesses of any size. Tens of thousands of smart marketers and business owners have trusted crowdspring Since 2008 for professional logo design. That’s because crowdspring is home to the world’s best creative team.

Unlike the traditional freelancer or agency, crowdspring is a crowdsourcing marketplace for graphic design. It’s like a logo design contest - on crowdspring, thousands of designers from over 195 countries around the world compete for your business to create an online logo design you’ll love. You’ll get choice for your logo design that you will not get anywhere else. In fact, we guarantee your satisfaction 100% – no questions asked.

Our unique model and design process addresses many of the concerns encountered when pricing the design of logos. We take a lot of the work and stress out of the equation for you: you won’t need to get quotes in advance for the work, or interview designer after designer.

Your set the price for your project, and designers from around the world will post their designs to your project for you to review. When your project ends, you choose the design you like the best. It’s that easy!

Logo makers and generic templates will not leave a lasting impression on your customers and prospective customers. A logo maker works by picking random pieces from pre-drawn templates. At the end of the day, they will not give you a one-of-a-kind brand identity. There’s nothing unique, custom or brilliant about instant logos created from templates. And it doesn’t matter whether you create them yourself from templates or if an AI computer creates it for you. In the long term, generic design is bad for business. And, importantly, you won’t be able to trademark a generic design. Instead, invest in your business and your brand identity by working with professional designers to create a unique, custom business logo design.

Crowdspring guarantees your satisfaction in logo projects. There’s NO fine-print. We are not happy until you are. People are so thrilled with the designs they receive on crowdspring that we are proud to stand behind the work and make you an unconditional promise.