Logos are important for all sorts of reasons, and when you have a brand new web site it lets people know that you are a legitimate business – spammers rarely put that much effort in.
It is crucial that your logo looks professional, but how much should that cost? Here are some famous examples:
Microsoft
Microsoft made a surprising move when they updated their logo with a design that many students with Photoshop could have come up with. Their in-house staff made it for $0.
This is probably the most amazing example of great value in corporate logo history. The little bird icon was purchased at iStockphoto for a measly $15. The designer received just $6.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin created their first logo himself, using free GIMP graphics software. The logo certainly looks better these days, but it did the job back in 1998.
Nike
Nike co-founder Phil Knight purchased their well-known swoosh logo from Carolyn Davidso, a graphic design student, in 1971. The price was just $35 – that is about $200 in today’s money.
Of Course Some Logos Are Expensive
…but not necessarily better. Enron’s is a $33,000 disaster – I wouldn’t use that if it was free. Pepsi could have got something cheaper than $1 million. BBC’s 1997 logo change is just three letters using the Gill Sans font. And the most expensive logo (and re branding) of all time was Accenture at a ridiculous $100 million.
Some of my own examples
For my domain name business I created this myself using the budget The Logo Creator software:
For Affordable Web I chose this from 40-odd designs at a crowd sourcing site, for which I paid $200:
I made this myself, using budget graphics design software (I forget which) – for my budget domain registrar:
