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Logo Design Online vs. Traditional Ad Agency.
by Grace Conlon
We’re all familiar with the fact that logos are used for two purposes - to identify a company or division of a company or to represent a specific product or service. Logos that reflect the image of a company or one of its operating units or its products are destined to exist for as long as the company does. Hopefully, that will be for a healthy, extensive span of time. Reason enough for making sure the company logo and product logos will be effective image-makers over the generations.
It’s important, at the onset of logo development, to share key facts about the company, its products and product usage, the benefits for the customer, the market segment the company is part of; in fact, any pertinent market research that relates to the company and/or product image.
Advertising agencies, the traditional source for logo development, approach the process of logo development from a viewpoint that is different from that of an online logo service. With ad agencies, the logo is comparable to a side dish served as part of the campaign meal. With an online logo design service, logo development is the entrée.
Is this an important difference or just a nuance that doesn’t affect the outcome? Technology tells us this difference is of monumental importance, both artistically and financially.
Tracing the development of a logo through its stages in an ad agency, we find this task is not usually addressed as an upfront, key feature of an overall campaign. Before any decisions are made concerning the design of the logo, agency researchers and planners work with the client in developing company and brand strategy. Positioning with its implications for image, advertising themes, objectives and goals are all discussed at many meetings between company and agency executives.
The agency’s logo designer rarely is involved in developing overall strategy for the test marketing or launching of the new product. He receives the assignment to create a logo after all these critical decisions are made. Taking off from there, he brings back to the agency’s contact person several renderings of a proposed logo - different iterations but all from the same source, a single designer’s creative core.
These logo choices are then presented to the client, who may or may not be satisfied. If the budget allows, another round of logo ideas may be initiated. Time and money are expended in the back and forth process, which has layers of agency people between the client and the designer.
Cost is relative to the overall financial commitment a client makes to the agency for representation, for developing advertising strategy and implementation. Thus, fees in the thousands for logo development are not unusual.
Before the Internet made its mark on how business is conducted, ad agencies and public affairs representatives were the major sources for logo design. Not so in today’s international marketplace.
Technological advances that made the Internet possible are also the reasons why online logo companies come to the task of logo development from a completely different perspective than do ad agencies. Available to online companies are graphic artists from all over the world, artists who, in their lifetime, have been influenced by different cultures, different art - a convergence of experience which maximizes the scope and depth of the overall creativity available from Internet sources.
A traditional ad agency, using its current approach of one artist/one logo design with variations, could not afford to maintain a studio of some 50 artists from whom to obtain logo designs. This is what agencies would have to do to be competitive to online logo developers.
All of the critical information so necessary to communicating a company’s image is gathered from the client at the initiation of the design process. The client fills out an in-depth online questionnaire which will let the graphic artist know exactly what applications will be used for the logo, e.g. business cards, building signage, work trucks, website.
Via the questionnaire, the client shares with the designer just who his customers are. He describes the image he wants to project with his logo, lists his color preferences and, in addition to detailing items he wants to see in his logo, he also spells out what he doesn’t want to see. Thus, every artist who participates in the design has a wealth of information available to him. The customer reaps the benefit of logo designs from different talented individuals, not different variations from a single brain.
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