How Your Cheap Logo Design Could Be A Huge Business Liability

How Your Cheap Logo Design Could Be A Huge Business Liability Cheap logo design consist of stock art elements that have become so over used that they can no longer be claimed as original or trademarked.

You can create just about anything for free or cheap online today.

While, yes, I do find many online ‘DIY Designers’ pretty cool – I don’t think they are a good way to get your business logo.

Cheap stock art logo designs have been a nuisance in the design community for a long time, but they should be a much bigger concern to small businesses in general than they are.

The internet is littered with threads that all deal with logo trademark or copyright issues gone wrong, just like the one below:

Perhaps you failed to notice “Copyright: PureSolution” on the Shutterstock page.

In 99% of all cases you can not trademark or copyright royalty free artwork.

What you “purchased” was the right to use the artwork in a limited fashion not ownership of the image. You should read the agreement for any stock image service you are using. Reading the Shutterstock agreement (http://www.shutterstock.com/licensing.mhtml) would inform you that you do not own the image or have any legal claim to said image.

So, short answer, No, you can not trademark or copyright an image from a stock image service.

Do I Really Need to Trademark My Logo?

Not all businesses trademark their logos and that is fine. What you don’t want is an issue where you CAN’T trademark your logo. Many businesses discover that gaining and maintaining an edge within an industry vertical can be challenging, and Trademarks can be a valuable asset for eliminating confusion in the market place as well as preventing competitors from infringing on your business rights and opportunities.

What Should You Know About Creating A New Logo?

1. You should understand the value of your business logo.
2. You should understand the work that goes into good logo design.
3. You should understand the risk and liability associated with cheap online logos.

Understanding the Value of a Custom Logo Design

It’s not enough to simply know that you need a logo to slap on some letterhead or marketing materials for your new start up – you need to understand the value of that logo and the impact it has on your business. A cheap logo design can have negative impact on your business.

I totally understand wanting to save a buck and I also know a thing or two about trying to market a business on a shoestring budget. I also happen to know quite a bit about logo design and building successful businesses.

My experience provides a unique perspective on the MASSIVE disconnect between what people think about logo design and what professional designers know about logo design.

For Example: Parts + Labor = Cost of Goods or Services Rendered

This is true in every service-based business except graphic design.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a ‘potential client’ ask that I send through several samples of their logo for them to review so that they could decide whether to proceed with us or not.

Umm… Sure, can you send me your complete product line so that I can make an evaluation as to whether or not I can accept you as a client? Or I just might need 6 months free legal services to see if you’re going to be the right fit for my business.

What that doesn’t work for you?

When you call a plumber, attorney, electrician or even visit the dentist they bill you for time and parts immediately upon completion of the service. Now, you may not like getting the bill, but you still end up paying it.

With logo design, most small business owners are shocked at any logo quote in excess of $300. Sites like Fiverr, logocraft, 99 designs and designhill have done both the graphic design community and business community a huge disservice by reinforcing the idea that logos should be cheap.

The Process of Designing a Professional Logo

How much is my time worth? It’s important to understand how much work goes into creating a custom logo mark that will ultimately be the identifying mark for your business. Organizations that take a serious approach to brand marketing certainly do.

Let’s break the process down to get a clearer understanding.

1. Research – Let’s assign 4 hours to research.
   This would be the time it takes to gain a thorough understanding of the business itself, the concept behind the business, the target demographic, and the competition that business will face. Hmm… 4 hours is starting to sound like not a lot of time. 
2. Development – Let’s assign 6 hours to development.
   This would be the time it takes to sketch out some initial concepts. Then once you have some initial concepts you can move forward putting together at least 2-3 original and unique concepts for presentation. Most people want to see at least 2-3 options, but often expect many, many more. Let’s call it 3 for now, so that roughly breaks down to 2 hours per unique concept from rough idea to presentation ready art. I’m pretty fast, but even with over 20 years design experience that’s not a lot of time. 
3. Revisions & Completion – Let’s assign another 2 hours.
   There is always fine-tuning, tweaking and client revisions to get the final logo where it needs to be. Give it a little tweak and 5 minutes later is done, right? Some tweaks are easy, some are not, but 2 hours is still pretty conservative because the designer is looking at outputting multiple variations of the “final logo” for a wide variety of production uses and formats.

Given that the median hourly rate for graphic design services in the US is $72, (according to HOWdesign) that puts the standard business logo right around $864 for the very minimum amount of professional creative process.

That’s still a real bargain, because realistically, any designer or agency worth it’s salt will easily sink a minimum of 20 hours into logo development.

According to Forbes, you should expect logo design price ranges between $4k – $15k from professional design firms and Ad agencies.

I don’t bring up prices like that as a way to say, “see… designing a logo is a lot of hard work so pay me $10k”, I bring it up simply to illustrate the amount of time and work that is charged by many professional logo designers often exceeds the amount of time that is actually billed.

I firmly believe that for many designers, logo design is one of the biggest loss leaders in the…
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What Does Opting for a Cheap Stock Art Logo Mean for My Business? That’s a great question!

Recently I had one of my Adwords clients come to me because they tried to get their logo trademarked and unfortunately they could not.

Why?

Well, it turns out that their logo icon was too common to be trademarked. This is becoming more and more common due to the widespread use of generic stock icons in cheap logo design.

This client, when starting up their business, turned to VistaPrint to create a quick and cheap logo. As their business grew, protecting certain business and brand assets became more important to them. Unfortunately, important elements like their logo couldn’t be trademarked. Needless to say, this was an unpleasant surprise; which allowed certain competitors to take advantage this businesses’ hard work.

How widespread are these problems associated with cheap logos?

Just take a look at the email below from DesignHill, that was sent to a freelance designer 7 times in the past month.

“We repeatedly notify all our designers to not create Generic Logos, despite that we are still seeing some designers continuing to do so. Some of these logo design elements have been used so many times that they can no longer be claimed as original creations, and thus will probably not be eligible for trademark registration.”

In case you’re not familiar with DesignHill, it is one of the most popular websites that allows businesses to hold “design competitions”.

If you’re not familiar with design competitions – they are exactly what they sound like and of course this type of negligence will continue to dominate platforms set up for this churn and burn mentality.

If you just now thought to yourself, “This seems like a great idea!”
HOLD ON A SECOND….

Graphic Design Contests are BAD

But this sounds like a great deal, 100’s of design options and I choose one for a few bucks, this is awesome!

Let me ask you:

• Would you get a tattoo and then decide if you liked it enough to pay for it?
• Would you hire 3 different mechanics to fix your breaks and then only pay one?
• When was the last time you had multiple contractors build homes for you and you selected one winner?

As a business owner, there are tons of reasons why you don’t want to opt for logo design contests or other online DIY logo creators. Using the common sense rule, if it seems too good to be true… don’t do it! It goes something like that anyway.

You should know that these types of online logos come from people who have absolutely no professional logo design experience. Moral reasons aside, the biggest reason for any business to steer clear of logo templates and contests is Liability.

What Liability Could Be Associated with My Logo? These are the 4 Top Liabilities to Your Business with Cheap Logos:

1. The Logo will NOT be unique and most likely not Trademarkable.
2. A Logo contest logo could very likely be stolen; which can be a very costly mistake.
3. You may not own the rights to your logo.
4. At the very least, multiple businesses could be using your same logo; which is very common with stock art logos.

If you think I might be overstating the problem simply because I’m a designer, I assure you I am not.

Using DesignHill to illustrate my point further, they actually had to create a guideline for the ‘designers’ who are submitting artwork.

It starts off by asking, “Have I seen this Logo Before?” as a business owner — you should ask this.

It follows up promptly by saying, “it’s not your fault. Branding is all about originality and the logo is the face of your brand so it should be equally as original. Unfortunately, Designers have overused generic symbols that have become a staple for certain industries.” It then provides hundreds of visual examples.

Shoot, you may even recognize a few:

To sum up this topic, the cheap or free do-it-yourself logo design options should be more than a little concerning to you.

While I think it’s important to invest in good branding, I’m not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars to do it. What I am saying is that you should weigh your options and choose a professional logo designer who can provide a solution that won’t come back to haunt you.

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by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company