Eps. 08: Do I Really Need a Professionally Designed Logo?

The last piece of brand strategy before we get specific: what are the actual building blocks of a brand? Then Donovan dives into logo design proper — do you really need a professionally designed logo, and what's the real, hidden cost of using a cheap or temporary one to start? Includes the story of the "interim" logo that outlived its expiration date by two years.

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BRAND:NEW is hosted by Donovan, Creative Head & Brand Champion, and author of the upcoming book ‘The Business Owner's Guide to Branding’.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

It's brand new. Welcome back to brand new. I'm Donovan. Before we get into today's topic, one more piece of foundation. Because everything we've covered so far has been building towards this and is worth nailing down before we go anywhere nearer the logo. What are the actual building blocks of a brand? Strip it all the way down, and a brand is built on just two pillars. That's it, just two. The visual and the strategic. The visual, the stuff that we cover in this podcast, your logo, your typography, your color palette, your photography style, website, the visual stuff. The part people can actually point out. The strategic your mission, your vision, your voice, the positioning, the invisible stuff. The decisions nobody sees but everybody feels. Remember we spoke about those feelings before? These two pillars translate what your business stands for into something people can see, hear, and feel. Together they build your brand and your reputation. Strategic without visual is a brand with no face. Visual without strategic is a good looking brand with nothing underneath it. Style with no substance, and people can smell that from a mile away. Remember this. A brand begins as a story, it grows through experience, and it survives long term as a reputation. Let's take a quick break from the show. Everything on brand new comes from somewhere. This podcast is an extension of a book I've spent the last year writing. It's called The Business Owner's Guide to Branding. 150 answers to the questions you're actually asking. Written for business owners, it's a book that finally translates what goes on inside a brand designer's head, so you know exactly what you're paying for and why. Available soon on Amazon, in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle. Now back to the show. Okay, it's time to move on. It's time to talk about your logo. It's the first thing a stranger sees, it is the last thing a client remembers. One mark, a couple of colors, maybe a word or two. Yet somehow it carries the entire weight of your business, your reputation, your brand on its back. Your logo either works for you or it works against you. There's no middle ground. There's no fine, there's no good enough. So question one. Do I really need a professionally designed logo? Yes. Yes, you do. Let's start with an uncomfortable truth. Right now, somewhere out there, a business owner is proudly showing someone their brand new logo. They got it online, cost $50, took two days, they think they got a great deal. Their cousin thinks they got a great deal. But that cheap logo is poison. It's quietly killing their business. And not in the way that you can point to on a spreadsheet, but it's happening. In the customers who glance at the website and left without knowing why, in the investors who move on without being able to say what put them off, in the quote that never got a reply. Bad design does not announce itself. It just hangs around like a fart in an elevator, quietly repelling the exact people you're trying to attract. A professional logo isn't a vanity project, it's a structural foundation. And if you're not willing to invest in the literal face of your company, you're telling the market that you don't expect to be around long enough to matter. Which brings us to question two. Can I at least use a cheap or temporary logo to start? Sure you can. But recognize the hidden tax. A cheap logo looks cheap to customers, and that hurts your conversion before you've even had a chance to make your case. And changing it later means paying double, reprinting, re-signing, rebuilding, re-educating your entire market on who you are now. Let me tell you a story about an interim logo. A client once asked me to design something interim, as in temporary. Yeah, I pretended not to be insulted. They were a holding company for a group of service industry businesses that needed something to use while they waited for their real agency, an expensive name-droppable outfit out of Los Angeles, to deliver the full brand identity. But I did not treat this as a temporary logo. No. I gave them a beautiful combination mark, real presence, the kind of logo that changes a room when it's mounted on the wall. They loved it. And they used it for 20 months. Then the LA agency finally delivered their version. And I want to choose my words carefully here. The new logo was offensive. A letter mark with kernings so bad the letters looked like they were feuding with each other, confident in its inadequacy and expensive in its mediocrity. But it was from LA, and that it turns out was the entire point. Bragging rights. Two years later, my phone rang again. We'd like to start a conversation about rebranding. Of course you would. Except now they had to reckon with the real cost, not just design fees, but the butterfly effect. That offensive LA logo now lives on 20 different partner websites. So the fix wasn't just a new logo, it was a new website. Actually, it was 20 new websites, new uniforms, new safety vets, new hard hats, uh, new vehicle wraps, new signage. Every single touch point is starting completely over. Trusting someone with your business, your future, that's not easy, I get that. But you need to base that decision on talent and experience, not a zip code. In our next episode, we get to that number everybody's asking for. What does a professionally designed logo really cost? That's it for this episode of Brand New. Thank you for spending a few minutes with me. I don't take your time for granted. If this helped you, share it with a business owner who needs it. And if you've got 10 seconds, please leave a rating. It would really mean the world to me. I'm Donovan. This has been Brand New. I'll see you in the next episode. Brand New