Today’s video is going to ask you some serious questions if you want to become a successful logo designer heading into 2023 so the very first thing you need to do is you need to ask yourself where are you as a logo designer whereabouts do you fit into this landscape and this question is going to be so important moving forward and you’re soon going to see why we have four different levels of designers or logo designers and level one is the total beginner and of course this is where most people start including myself
so some traits about the level one beginner is they probably don’t understand what it means to add value to a company or business or brand with their logo design they think they’re just designing something for our clients to make money basically also people in this first level of designer they don’t really have a strict or you know a actual logo design process in place they just hop onto a computer and start designing what they think is cool or what they like and as we move through the levels take into consideration these
are in general terms and there are exceptions to every single part of this video but yeah the level one logo designer will often send their clients screenshots or just you know a white document with lots of different designs strewn all over the place and I know you’ve probably done that before and I know that I’ve done it before in the past as well level two designer is the novice now the novice might have a handful of clients under their belts but they actually struggle to make a portfolio because they haven’t got
enough jobs in terms of a design process they often do give some importance to research before designing anything but mainly they do head straight into a design project and start scrolling away in illustrator the novice does start to understand a logo should represent the client’s business or brand and often they will send three to five designs to the client at the end of the project level 3 out of four is the intermediate they’re starting to build a real portfolio and they do come across as skilled and knowledgeable in the logo
design space they do understand that research brainstorming keywords concept creation and all of this is important to the design process and they have a vague understanding that their logo should appeal to their clients customers and not to their client as such and when it comes to presenting the logo they often use mock-ups to tell a story and you know they present their logo in a pretty decent way and then the top level designer level four this season the professional they often have a portfolio that does Express their style of design
and it demonstrates how they solve problems for past clients and often pretty high-end clients as well they have a strict design process they know inside out and they utilize various different techniques for brainstorming and just coming up with different ideas now these designers they fully understand that their logo should appeal to a very very strict target audience and that’s obviously achieved and identified through a lot of research now often these designers only need to present one or two designs to their
client because they’re so good at presenting and demonstrating where the design works so they often clinch sales just like that but yeah this is the different levels of logo designer and we’re now going to see why it’s so important to know where you are where you fall into these one two three and four levels the first thing is going to do is going to help you identify your client type you know it’s the kind of client that you are aiming to get the kind of client who wants your services and will pay you money on average there
are three different tiers of clients the first tier of clients often are just one person who runs the business by themselves they might even have a business idea but it haven’t even started it yet and come to you because they want a logo for their idea a lot of the time they’re not even organized and they don’t really you know give much importance or seriousness to their business venture I know you’ve probably come across these people before and I know I have in the past in my career they expect a fast turnaround and they
also give strict instructions because they know what they think they know what they want for their design and what’s going to work they really don’t understand importance of how a logo can help their business or their brand and that’s not good for us designers and a typical average amount they pay this kind of tier one client pays is five to about a hundred dollars now tier two clients often are small businesses and you’ll probably be interacting with the business owner or the co-owner but again
of course this is dependent on each situation because there are exceptions often they’re quite polite and they do understand that a logo designer is going to help their business and often they are a startup or sometimes as a small business that wants a Rebrand they might give you some inputs and some kind of Direction but they do offer quite a free reign and you know free choice they do expect good things from you and often it’s about one two maybe even three weeks they expect for the finished logo to be turned around and the quotes
they’ll offer can range anywhere from say about a hundred dollars to about twenty five hundred dollars now tier three clients the top tier as a designer you’re rarely gonna interact with a business owner because it’d probably be someone from a specific sector of the business that will be helping you and you know traveling with you along the project now these people often have complete faith in you as a designer or a design agency because a lot of the time it is going to be a design agency who works for these clients and that’s
because of their track record and their portfolio and so on these are often large-scale companies that have many bases and branches across the world now believe it or not the expected time for turnaround for these projects can be weeks and sometimes months there’s a heavy heavy emphasis on research and presentation in these kind of gigs and of course they will actually pay anywhere from 2500 upwards you know into the hundreds of thousands now you might be asking yourself okay cool great why have you shown me all these things well
firstly you need to know your skill level and then you need to understand what kind of clients you’re targeting but next we’re moving on to the design process and again you will see how everything we just looked at is going to determine the design process yes you can turn around five ten fifteen dollar logos but you’re not gonna spend weeks or months on the logo design process because it’s just not going to benefit you and it’s not worth the money at a time I’m pretty sure we all know the
basic rundown of the process you know it’s research concept creation refinement and presentation of final designs there’s a lot more to that and I’ve got some links and some videos for you to look at later but that’s the basic rundown of the process but to emphasize my point here have a look at this logo on screen and I’m pretty sure you do recognize by now anyway this was designed for the London Olympics and actually it was designed back in 2008 a four year point before the Olympics and the designer firm wolf
Orleans was paid about 400 grand for this design it’s almost half a million dollars now there are two questions here that determine a logo’s value the two questions are how many people are going to see the logo and how much revenue is it potentially going to bring into the business or the entity and emphasis there on potential revenue and not profits it’s not really a secret that the Olympics kind of cost more money than they make but yeah anyway these two questions will determine the value of a logo if you look at something else say
Reiki can hear his business is probably a standalone single business that’s a brick and mortar kind of business and the logo is probably designed for less than a hundred dollars and we know why because we go back to how many people are going to see it and how much is it going to actually potentially bring into the business the Olympics logo is going to be highly highly viewed by so many different people and the potential for revenue is in the you know tens or hundreds of millions now you need to tailor your design process to the amount
of time you’re going to spend on a design project and the amount of value you actually give to it and the amount of value your client gives to it as well if you are a beginner who is designing for a low tier client your process is going to be very short as opposed to an intermediate designer working for a mid-tier client however you should still aim to do enough research to ensure that your logo meets the brief and the target market and we are going to look at the design process later in today’s video a
bit further but now to answer a burning question where do we find work again this is actually going to depend on your skill level and what we’ve already talked about in today’s video so as a beginner or a novice one of the great ways to find work is to actually find it through friends and family this is a great way to get your foot in the door and it’s a great way to get additions into a portfolio that are real life briefs also competitions online are very good way to work on actual briefs and it
can be pretty challenging and a great addition to your portfolio now beginner novice is also potentially can work on freelance platforms but because they’re so oversaturated it does require that you do have some proof of skill to get anywhere in that kind of game and of course some people Overlook local businesses if you actually get active in your community and go around applying and just you know getting your name out there you can get work as a novice and a beginner in your local environment now intermediate designers they start to
work on things like social media because that does play a role in the marketing of their skills and of course the portfolio website is another extension of just marketing yourself and it’s a great way to pick up clients for intermediate designers and then you have applying to actual in-house positions or design positions and this one is again overlooked but if you do have a good portfolio as an intermediate designer it might be worth applying to an actual business so you learn a few other techniques and a few skills in this
industry and then like before freelance platforms but the intermediate design though have a kind of leg up over the beginners because they’ve got more proof of skill and work and then something else which is overlooked as well is word of mouth if a designer does something really well and effective for a clients they will likely spread the word to their friends and colleagues and you as a designer will become more notorious out there now the thing about professional season designers is that the clients often come to them they are
so notorious and they’re so you know well known in their craft that they don’t really need to Market their services that much and they actually get clients coming to them I know it’s a luxury right but they’ve built a portfolio and they’ve built a kind of name for themselves so it only makes sense that it does happen but yet also word of mouth and media will help a professional designer gain more traction if they need it anyway often professional designers will turn away projects because they haven’t got enough
time or just it’s not you know worth their time to work on something like that now presentation is absolutely crucial guys completely 100 crucial if we come back to the Olympic logo for 20 2012 yeah if you love you to hate it this logo could be probably designed by most of you out there in some way shape or form but why did it sell for 400 000 pounds because of Storytelling because of the presentation as you can see on screen now that is a quote taken from the wolf Islands design team about their kind of Concepts and their logic behind
the concept and why they made the logo the way they did yeah you might not agree with it and yes it might not really have a firm basis but this is the story they would sell in a pitch to their clients and they would really really sell that story because while there are high value high quality design team if you can demonstrate why your logo works and why it’s going to work for their clients you will be on to a winning decision it’s all about selling your ideas to the client in a very effective way and I’ve said it before a
subpar or bad logo can actually be sold for thousands if it’s done correctly and alternatively a really good logo might miss the mark and not actually resonate with the clients if it’s not sold properly and again I do have videos on the presentation if you do want to check that out this video is mainly pinpointing where your skills are and what kind of clients you need to be targeting in relation to those skills to move up the ranks in this industry you simply need to create a portfolio and meet the expectations for each tier
client now it is possible to remain in the low tiers designing logos for low tier clients that can be a profitable business model and it’s completely fine if you want to do that it does simply depend on what you want to achieve as a designer now you can find links sprinkled throughout this video that go into different topics we’ve mentioned in more detail but if you do want to learn something about the design process just click a video on screen guys but until next time design your future today peace