Am I Being Charged Too Much?

For the Logo designers here,

I had a simple text type banner created by a logo designer, he sent it to me within 1 hour of asking me if he could design the logo for my website.
He asked for $200. It is not a flash design or anything special, just a simple text style logo.

I'm curious about what a fair payment would be for his service, what are the going charges for logo banner designers?

Thanks
Sylvia

 

It depends on the designer. Some charge $1000 for a simple design, while some charge $10 for the same thing. It all depends where you find them.

 

No, wouldn't say you were overcharged, in general if you look for professional companies doing logo design $200 is relatively cheap. However I do think an hour might be a bit quick.

 

$200 seems a big amount to me, but if you can post the logo here, may be the design proffesionals can appraise it and say weather its worth the $200

 

$200 is a hefty price, by DP standards.

even by US standards, a simple text-only logo by a decent designer should cost around $100.

 

worth $5

you are telling me text only and nothing else...seems
like a worthless logo to me...seems like no amount of
time would have to be put into this as it was not
a unique logo or anything but only text...I make that $1.00
todays market it not the same as it was 5 years ago...

 

Simply put, your being ripped!

 

here are a few examples of what i meant by text-only logos:

google
ibm
coca-cola
nokia
intel

no-graphic doesn't necessarily mean no-effort.

or cheap.

 

Depends on the quality of the logo, sometimes text only logo are worth more than graphic-based logos. It would depend on the text touch ups, typography, colors and time spent working on this project.

First we would have to see the designer's portfolio and see what he's capable of doing, then we will know if it'll be work the $200

 

IMO, let us see the Logo so we can decide.

and tell us the designer, We have some GREAT professional graphic artists here.
By meaning professional, they charge higher.

 

you should of discussed the budget before the project was started. Now he says he wants $200,what can you do. If you like the logo offer a reasonable rate for it, i mean it only took him an hour and not many revisions. Also paying $200 for a logo you should take your time and ask for some variations etc, show friends, business partners and decide on the best version. Finally you should get a vector file(illustrator or High res PSD) so the logo can be scaled up to fit on the side of a bus. Also the psd, and names of fonts used.

 

Thank you all so much for your input,

I would like to post the logo, but is that ok for me to do that, I haven't paid for it yet, so technically isn't it still his property?

Please don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want to pay, I have never paid for such a service and I don't want to offend the designer by not paying what he asked, nor do I want to pay too much for something that isn't worth it.

 

That is just the thing, he offered to create the logo and sent it to me before I had a chance to even reply with a yes - design a logo for me or not.

So, I think I am being very fair by paying for it without actually telling him to design it for me.

 

The prices charged here on DP are not reflective of the prices you're likely to see from professional design houses. After all, very few people could run a business, even without other employees, making $10 per banner or logo - The overheads and taxes alone would at best minimise if not wipe out profit altogether. I'm not saying the designers here are bad - many are very professional, highly talented and either run or work for "real" businesses - but I am saying that the majority here are freelancers doing a bit on the side. I would bet that a lot don't declare what they make as a second income if appropriate, and I'll bet most work from home hence have no additional overheads. That means if they make something in a couple of hours and get $20 for it, they get $20 in their pocket for a couple of hours work. I'd take that.

However, if you're running a bonafide business, you're going to need to be charging more to cover your bases as well as provide a decent income for yourself. That's where you start looking at three or even four figures for logos, designs and websites. Whether paying that is worth it is really up to you. You can get an equally impressive logo, site or design from a talented designer here doing a bit on the side, but just remember if you yourself run a business and want to put things through as a business expense then you're going to want contracts and receipts, something you don't find quite as often round here.

When you purchase a logo or banner you are purchasing branding and advertising - Something that signifies your business, whether you provide services, sell a product, offer advice, whatever. Look at many big brand logos - Google, Nike, eBay, Intel - They aren't particularly complex logos but I would call them successful. People see the logo, they know who's behind it, that's what a logo is all about. I'll bet none of their logos or adverts were developed for $10...

I'm not saying one way or the other - At the end of the day if you get something that's absolutely perfect, then maybe it is $200 well spent. If this designer can create something truly unique and personal to your project/business then why should $200 be unreasonable? Lots of designers here can easily imitate a style or design, fewer can come up with unique concepts. That's the difference between a $200 banner and a $10 banner.

Just my two cents - I don't mean any offence, I'm just laying down what I know from experience.

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EDIT - Just read the above posts which appeared whilst I was typing my response out. My argument still stands but on the basis of what you've said you've got no reason whatsoever to pay for the logo.

Unless it really is perfect I'd send them packing in all honesty - I was under the impression you were just being quoted for a logo, in which case $200 isn't daylight robbery. However, if he's gone ahead and created something without your say-so, that's on his own back and you'd be well within your rights to say thanks for the offer but no thanks.

You're being more than fair to even consider paying him, and I certainly wouldn't hand over $200 without having had some kind of input into such an important item.

I'll get off my soapbox now

 

I'm sorry, I think I opened a can of worms here.

Let me clarify, this is just a young designer, he doesn't even have his own website. He is trying to make some money by designing logo's....THIS IS NOT A PROFESSIONAL LOGO DESIGN by a professional design house.

My question is a little more of human decency, he wants $200...It is a simple text log design, which I like very much.
Would a decent young, new designer with no portfolio charge $200 for a simple logo, with no files, just the jpeg and png image files for me?

Hope that clarifies a bit.

 

He might ask for it, I doubt many of us would truthfully accept to pay $200 without some idea of what we were getting first, though.

Unfortunately many "logo designers" aren't really - They create beautiful looking images that aren't fully scaleable(sp?), which is pretty essential if you want to use your logo to produce adverts, put on headed paper and so forth. I'm with FreeBanner on this one with regards as to what you should expect for $200 - Vector files are really a must. This logo might look nice as it is, but if you ever want to resize it to use elsewhere, I doubt it'll look anywhere near as good if you're only getting the PNG/JPEG.

As much as I like to see talented people get paid a decent amount for their efforts, it just sounds like an amateur jumping the gun a bit. If he can produce vector images then perhaps you could negotiate a reduced price with him given that you hadn't actually agreed to anything - Anything less and I'm sure I'm not the only one that would prefer to see you walk away from this one rather than get left with something that might look nice but be useless to you in the future should you ever need a site redesign or to use your logo on advertising material.

 

With the 2 posts that you just said.

• Him creating the logo WITHOUT your go signal. and
• Him without having his own portfolio

I can CLEARLY say that he's robbing you now. Don't charge for it or just ask to lower his price. $200 is A LOT for a non professional logo design.

 

Twinklestar,

You are right, the more I think about it the angry I get.

This is why I love DP, everyone is so helpful......Thanks everyone.

 

Heck yea, 200$ is way, WAY too high for just a text-only logo, thats even jpg and png provided as final product..Arrgh..

I'd really like to see the logo in question.. Maybe you can watermark it somehow and post it here so we'll know how much its worth..

 

I'd love to see the logo you're talking about... I have a feeling you're getting the short end of a stick...