How to spot a fake.
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I'm constantly seeing people offering logo designs for ridiculous prices. I get it! It's totally tempting! Its "just" a logo right? Wrong..a logo is one of the most important aspects of your business, It can make or break your business, especially in that fragile first year, I understand that costs are tight, but if you are going to put all your trust in an amateur you better understand what you are getting into and why this could be a costly mistake.
Here are a few questions to ask your "designer":
1. Where does your designer work? What country? Are the timezones the same? Will you have difficulty communicating?
2. What qualifications or experience do they have? When you engage a designer you are getting the years of accumulated experience and qualifications. This can amount to significant expertise to make your experience worry free, from designing branding to magazine layouts to dealing with printers - this could save you lots of headaches in the future.
3. What questions are they asking you? A good graphic designer will give you a list of questions about your business and your target market? Who your competitors are? They will get to know you and get to the soul of your business. A graphic designer is NOT a mind reader but an experienced one will get in your head, know the right questions to ask and create the perfect logo that will appeal directly to your ideal customer.
4. What file types are they going to give you? A sure way to spot an amateur is if they can only provide you with a JPG image or some other raster file of your logo or there are images in your logo. Images in your logo are going to cause you problems later if you need to enlarge your logo, print it or use it anywhere that it wasn't originally intended for. Ideally, you want your logo to be supplied as vector PDF and an EPS, Click here to find out about raster and vector files.
5. Find out what program they will be designing your logo in? If its anything but Adobe Illustrator you are dealing with an amateur. Adobe Illustrator is the professional standard for creating logos and any other vector graphic.
6. Do some research, read their reviews check out their portfolios. Make sure their values align with yours and most importantly - you like their work. Make sure, their logo designs don't have a "cookie-cutter" feel to them, you don't want to end up looking like everyone else.
7. If you can, have a chat with them to see if they know their stuff. Any good graphic designer would love to have a chat with you about graphic design and what to expect, In my case I'm so passionate it's all I talk about!
Those are the questions I would recommend asking before you engage a "graphic designer".
I'm always happy to chat over a virtual coffee. Click below to go directly to my private calendar and book in a time. Checkout more about branding and logo design here.
*Disclaimer: I'm a great graphic designer, not a copywriter - spelling and grammar is not my thing. See this post for what it is...An extremely passionate graphic designer, that wants to share her knowledge with you (possibly with a couple of spelling mistakes)!