...But does it look expensive?

Yesterday I got a phone call from a company that had interviewed me a few weeks back. The conversation went something like this:

Them: "We had talked to some other designers, and the last one we hired to do the logo--for $300--didn't work out. So now we'd like to hire you!"

Me: "..."

I'm a big believer in you get what you pay for. Don't get me wrong, I love me some bargains (hello, my whole office is furnished by Ikea, thankyouverymuch), but at the end of the day, a $300 logo is going to look like, well, a $300 logo (just like my desk is just some fancy particle board my husband put together).

I charge more than $300 for logos, because I invest a lot of time into creating them. I research, I sketch, I play with fonts, I purchase fonts. I research some more.

I like to take a page in Illustrator--the program I use for creating logos--and just digitally vomit every idea I have. It usually ends up looking something like this (designed for a totally different client):



This is just one of two pages for this client, actually.

I type out the company name over, and over, and over. And then again. I play with the shapes of letters, the space in between letters, icons, artwork. Sometimes the ideas flow out, and it's like the dam wall broke, and there they are, all over the paper/my screen. Sometimes the ideas take longer. While I wait for the ideas, I sketch. And I type. And I play. And I research some more.

Because of this--all of this--I charge more than $300 for logos. And maybe I'm biased, but I think it's worth it.