One of the first things a company needs before taking their first steps in building their online presence is a logo. It seems like a small detail, after all, if you're opening up a garage, you need space, tools, clients. What does a logo get you?

This is a conversation I've had with many of our clients. The larger, successful clients that come to us for re-branding often already know the reasons why they need to update their logo before discussing any other aspect of a new design. Small clients, however, often make the mistake of cutting corners on this important piece.

A Real-World Example

One of our clients worked closely with us, recently, on their content while they were shopping around for a new logo. They reached out to designers through Fiverr and were overwhelmed with generic "designs" from freelancers all around the world. In the end, they had to filter through literally hundred of similar designs, none of which had any depth beyond Googling the company's keywords and pulling a thoughtless "idea" from an Images Search.

On our end, we were stuck. Without a logo, without colors, we had no idea what the brand would look like. If we don't know what the brand looks like, we can't build the message or the site, let along anything else around their brand. Until the logo got resolved, all we could do was work on copy, then wait.

Ultimately, the client did settle on a logo but for the amount of work they had to put in themselves, they might as well have designed it themselves and asked someone to clean up the work. In the end, it took around three weeks of back and forth across multiple vendors (and timezones) to get their logo. The design they settled on also ended up costing them more than the $5 advertised because they needed multiple variations.

Now, not every new company should go out and spend $100k on a new logo, but turning to Fiverr is also a mistake. There are middle-ground options that exist

Bootstrap Your Logo

We did some research and ended up working with a Toronto company (logojoy.com) that offers a DIY creation tool. For the same price as what our client spent, they could have created their logo, exactly as they want to see it, and had it ready within a few minutes. This might not be the logo they continue to use in six months when they start investing more money into their marketing, but it's a quick way to get started instead of delaying the launch of your entire company for nearly a month.

LogoJoy also offers a premium option so that you can ask one of their in-house designers to implement customizations for your specific brand. For us, as a design and marketing company, having professionally created vector files makes our lives a lot easier. With professional files, we can create everything from online marketing materials to large print banners.

What we also liked about LogoJoy is that, while our clients were using a DIY tool, the results didn't look like they came from a DIY tool. LogoJoy's platform offers just the right amount of control that the logos they produce are professional, both in terms of looks and in terms of file format

Conclusion

In the end, the takeaway should be this: your logo is important and you need it before most everything else. Don't waste time, don't overspend, if you're just getting started, focus your energies on other, equally important aspects of getting your branding together. Tools like LogoJoy exist to solve exactly these problems. In a year's time when you have paying clients, you can always revisit your logo and your brand.

Work efficiently, but don't try and cut corners.