How to Make Sure You’ve Hired the Right Logo Designer

Your logo design is extremely important, so if you’re about to hire a freelance graphic designer or other logo design service, here are some factors to consider when making your choice.

When designing a company logo for your small business or startup, you need to make sure that it:

• is high quality—we don’t mean PNG or JPG, but well-designed, creative and impressive;
• is adaptable on all marketing materials and branding efforts—from business cards to office uniforms, your logo should be incorporated into every element of your brand;
• is representative of your company’s values and visual identity;
• is timeless. Styles and trends come and go, but a well-designed logo will look good no matter what.

You don’t get to make a new logo every so often, because that will hurt your brand’s memorability and credibility. That is why you need professional logo designers that understand your brand to create your custom logo design. Here are the most important things you need to know before hiring a logo designer.

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Freelance professional logo designer, design studio, or unlimited service?

Assuming you don’t have an in-house designer since you’re reading this article, we’re only going to go only through the outsourcing methods for graphic design.

Firstly, you need to know where to look for a good professional or design team that can create the perfect logo for your company.

Upwork and Fiverr are undoubtedly the most popular platforms for hiring freelancers and have affordable rates. You can easily see previous customers’ experience with working with them, so you have credibility and success to account for.

However, don’t dismiss Dribbble and Behance either—you can hire graphic design professionals there, and even directly check their projects, influences and appreciations. This will help you understand their style and scope of work better.

If you can afford to hire a design studio or design agency, you can immediately expect a more holistic approach and deeper research from their part. Agencies and studios have art directors, graphic designers, creative directors, photographers and producers, as well as accounts that will help you communicate your ideas and needs better with the designers themselves. They can also create a detailed brand guide and different branding and marketing materials for you. However, they are notably more expensive than freelancers. For a more in-depth look at pricing, check out our article on logo design cost. But, if a business logo is all you need, you can do it with a freelancer.

Finally, you can consider subscribing to an unlimited graphic design service such as ours at ManyPixels. In this scenario, you need to write a detailed brief and attach any branding materials and graphic inspiration, and we assign a designer that best fits your needs. Communication is timely and easy through our app, and the details that make hiring a freelancer complicated (like wages, time management and communication), are taken care of by our team leaders. You can check out our work to see the logo designs our designers created.

Research if their style fits your brand identity or wishes

As a business owner, you probably can’t pinpoint the extent of the design skills of a particular designer you’re considering hiring, but you can narrow down the choice by seeing what that designer does best.

For example, if you already have a brand identity and want a logo redesign, you can’t have a complete U-turn. Even though the new logo will be different, it needs to bear a similarity in style and fit the brand guide (unless you’re updating everything). Or, if you’re yet to have your own logo, you are probably thinking about a particular style and identity you want it to communicate.

If you’re in real estate, you don’t want a cartoonist or illustrator, but a corporate designer. If you’re in the beauty industry, you’d need a designer with an approachable, fresh and contemporary style for a fancy wordmark. Let’s say you’re opening a craft brewery. A retro badge logo with custom illustration fits you best, so you should look for a designer that has that style learned right to the bone.

Take some time to research the previous projects and design concepts of your candidates. A logo is a long-term investment, so apart from judging by the pricing and availability of the designer, they also need to perfectly nail the style you like.

At the same time, if you are completely clueless and need suggestions on what your branding should look like, make sure your designer can advise you and knows how to give suggestions and objective opinions. They are going to create the most important element of your branding design, so instead of someone who diligently follows your instructions, you need someone that works with you, rather than for you.

Check their portfolios and social media

This is connected to the previous step, but once you learn a designer’s style, you can deep-dive into their work by combing through their portfolio. You can usually find portfolios on Behance, Dribble and Pinterest, as well as the designers’ personal websites. Oftentimes, designers for hire have their professional social media profiles, so it’s not unusual to find someone posting their works on Instagram.

Double-checking on these platforms will assure you that a freelancer can truly do what they’re promising in their bio, as well as show you some of their unused design concepts and templates. More than often, you’ll see that their personal projects can be a great example of their talents and full capabilities.

Ask them about their process

Professional logo design takes time and a lot of research. A good tactic to weed out the incompetent graphic designers or beginners that lack the experience you need is to ask them about their logo design process.

Usually, before producing a design, a designer would research other people’s work and logos of similar businesses, to both look for inspiration and come up with a unique logo in the industry. At the same time, they’d need to research your brand and ask you important questions about the style, character of the company, how you want your target audience to perceive you, what is your mission and purpose as a brand… Every detail, from the logo colors to the typography used, can offer a different spirit to the final design.

After thorough research, the designer should supply some first draft logo ideas, which they can further develop after you choose a direction. After your revisions and suggestions, they can finalize the concept and create the best logo. Then, based on it, you’ll go on and create a brand guide.

If the designer you’re considering doesn’t take research and concept development as part of the design process, you might take that as a red flag. Working with someone that wants to quickly produce a design that might not be specific and unique for you, you might end up with a generic, instead of a great logo.

Give them a demo task

We’re not encouraging you to exploit the designer for no payment, but to give them a different smaller task at first or a request to sketch you a draft logo to see if your ideas are tangential. Based on their performance, you can judge if they are able to take on a greater and more important task.

Discuss budget before they start working

If you are working with a limited budget, discussing the costs can be a bit awkward. So, instead of waiting for the project to start developing and then see that there might be extra costs your outsourced designer asks of you, let them know the maximum you are willing to pay. This will greatly reduce lost time and unforeseen costs.

Make sure they’re comfortable with tweaks and revisions

As we already mentioned, the budget can be a problem when working with professionals that have fees per day worked or per project. What happens when you’re not content with their product, and they refuse to revise it as many times as you wish? The result is a discontent designer, even less content employer and perhaps, not the logo you had in mind. It’s good to make sure they are comfortable with tweaking and reiterating the design until it’s perfect.

See if they’re a good character fit

This might seem irrelevant, but except for technical virtue and professionalism, your outsourced logo designer’s personality should also be a good fit. Considering you’re going to have a lot of back and forth communication, they should be easy to talk to, understanding of your lack of technical vocabulary and limited knowledge of graphic design, and respectful of your time and resources.

Ready to design your logo?

If you still haven’t decided whom to hire, ManyPixels has plenty to offer—no matter how many revisions you make and how many days it takes, you pay a flat rate and have a money back guarantee. Our team of 30+ highly skilled designers can create the logo you need. Check out our FAQ page to learn more about our service.