Many small business owners that are just starting out are inclined towards purchasing ready-made or templated logos from various online marketplaces. If you are in the early stages of setting up your business, read on to understand the long-term impact of taking a cookie-cutter approach to create your brand.
One-size-fits-all results in a generic logo
Premade logos may be designed to look good, but they lack substance. A well designed logo should be tailored to your business and your target audience. A professional designer will ask questions about your brand and research your competitors and target market to create and implement a strategy for your business via the branding, rather than simply creating a symbol that is aesthetically pleasing but meaningless.
Logos are not unique
The same logo can be sold to any number of businesses. This could result in customers confusing your business with another, whether they are your competitor or in a field that you do not want to be associated with. You lose out on the opportunity to create a memorable and distinctive identity, which is the original purpose of having a logo in the first place.
Inability to trademark
This can be an issue as your business scales. Because your logo is not unique, you don't hold the rights to it and you would not be able to trademark it.
Low quality work
Professional designers understand the value of strategy and the design process, and are therefore unlikely to offer their work on such platforms. Templated logos are often incomplete, providing only a basic version of a logo; whereas a complete brand package should include all variations of the logo (full colour, grayscale, with and without tagline etc) in all file formats.
No opportunity for refinement
A ready-made logo means simply taking what has been created and going with it. A well-rounded design process should include regular feedback between the client and designer to truly understand the essence of the business and convey it through the branding.
Branding should be more than a logo
The branding process should encompass more than just your logo: it is important to define typography, colour palettes, imagery styles, graphic elements, etc, so that they all tie together as a single unit. Purchasing a premade logo means you lose out on this part of the process, resulting in a potentially inconsistent and unprofessional brand that may confuse your customers.
Your brand is the face of your business at every touchpoint, so ensuring it is unique, memorable and relevant is essential, and makes for a worthwhile investment.
To learn more about what a well-structured branding process includes, get in touch with us now.