How we designed our logo for $30 | Hacker News Reader

How we designed our logo for $30

kevinohashi.com

27 pointsohashi69 comments

Senior designer here...

There is an old adage among designers, which couldn't be more appropriate for this post: "work for free or charge full price; never work for cheap."

Same goes for clients. Get it free or pay full price. Everything else is a rip-off for someone. Or everyone.

As a "we-can-barely-afford-to-keep-the-lights-on" start-up, a logo is the least of your worries. For the sake of avoiding any more "design is only worth $30" posts, follow these steps to create the Minimum Viable Product version of your brand:

1) Pick a font that is easy to read, but has a bit of character — just a bit! Type your company's name in it. That's your logo. Facebook's logo, for example, is a font called Klavika, slightly modified. www.myfonts.com is a good start.

2) Pick any color you like.

3) Pick a second version of that color (lighter, darker, richer, paler, whatever).

4) Use #2 for everything that is important.

5) Use #3 when you need to add some definition to your look & feel.

6) Get back to work. Come back when you can afford to do this properly.

I like your 6 steps...As an experienced designer, would it not take you less time to get that done than most other people? Would it then not be worth your while to charge for say 2 hours of your time to provide , say 2 revisions to anyone who pays for your "hungry startup" package?

This is good advice for unsticking, but remember even the folks we consider great artists today often worked for 'cheap' when they were starting out. There is nothing compelling someone to participate on Fiverr, and there is nothing compelling someone from using their services and then not using the logos. Sometimes design challenged people (like me) like to have some ideas tossed at them so that I can begin to understand what I do and don't think would be useful in a logo.

As a designer, this makes me cringe so hard I'm worried a blood vessel might burst. $5 is not, I repeat, is not "hiring a designer". I'm glad that you found a solution that was satisfactory, but seeing people continuously take this route (on both sides of the equation) is well... I'm not quite sure how to describe it at the moment.

> Logos are a trap. Let me explain that statement: they are a place many startups get stuck. A logo is what identifies you. It's the symbol that takes up space in a customer's mind when they think about your company. There is no symbol that is more connected to your company than a logo. This traps entrepreneurs because it drives many of us to want the perfect logo.

If I hadn't just started eating (and replacing my chopsticks– the tip of one succumbed to the aforementioned cringe) I would love to go more in depth with this statement, so I hope another reader will tune in and maybe have something to say (whether they agree or not).

Edit: also, I didn't mean any funny business about breaking my お箸– it actually happened. Since you're ohashi... and... oh, well.

As a fellow designer, I always cringe at stuff like this too. What if I hired a programmer for $5 to write a few web services that could scale to infinity? Luckily, I've taken the time and still take the time to improve on both of these qualities in my own professional development. Quality matters, and I'm trying to provide that across all creative outlets I partake in.

The logo IS important, very important, but it's just part of a web of important shit your business has to do. Having a great logo with a terrible or unready product means it's going to be even harder to acquire new people if they already recognize you by your "symbol" as not executing, or almost there, or the idea's good, etc.

> What if I hired a programmer for $5 to write a few web services that could scale to infinity?

No developer will work for $5 in the first place, whereas there are plenty of designers who will work for $5 on logo design.

For small Saas businesses, logo may not be as important as how designers see them to be. Why is it hard for designers to accept that there are plurality of opinions on the value of design?

No, but there are plenty of developers willing to build applications and then sell them for a dollar on the app store (or free even.)

Not even comparable.

Whether or not "design" is important to the business is irrelevant. What we're talking about it the designer's time. If a company who didn't really need an app for their business, but just wanted one for good measure, and hired an app developer, do you think $5 is fair payment? Can't developers accept that there are a plurality of opinions on the value of apps?

Well, how much did the last phone app you bought cost?

> Why is it hard for designers to accept that there are plurality of opinions on the value of design?

Really? As if that doesn't apply to literally every other profession? I certainly don't mean to say that the logo is the end-all solution to a user's experience– that's ridiculous. People can pay $1000, $10k, $100k even and still end up with shitty branding but the point isn't that quality necessarily scales to how much you pay. It's the fact that on the other side is a person providing a dedicated and unique service who is effectively being bet against (1/6) for less than minimum wage.

And unfortunately, yes there are developers who will work for practically nothing. Unsurprisingly, they are quite underrepresented in places like this and on virtually every other plane because the work they can do for that sort of money is just like 99.999% of $5 logos– total garbage. And what kind of a living do you make when all you can make is garbage?

That's a very western centric view of the world. Let's say it takes 2 hours of work to create those logos (look at my results, I think it's not an unreasonable estimate). $2.50/hr is a lot of money in some countries.

Every single one of them got paid too, it wasn't even spec work. They did work, they got paid.

Two hours looks about right for an average. While it's great that everyone gets paid (heh, wouldn't it be nice if that could scale to say... architectural comps or ad pitches), saying that $2.50 is a lot in some countries is just a bogus argument. So what if it is a lot of money to some people? Did you specifically seek out designers in developing countries? With graphics software, broadband, and 2 hours of free time to do little design jobs? That part seems sort of silly since the point of your post is that it cost virtually nothing to you.

Now, I wasn't being sarcastic when I said that I'm glad you've satisfactorily solved your problem. Further, I'm glad that everyone you contacted got paid. But that doesn't address the problems which I see, which are that 1) it wasn't a very business or worker friendly (yes, in my opinion) move and 2) I think you could've done better.

I looked for designers willing to take $5 in exchange for logo design. These were people willingly and publicly advertising their service. I didn't pay attention to region at all. I looked at the portfolios and if they weren't horrible, I hired them. Just because it costs nothing to me should have no bearing on this discussion. Do you get upset at Bill Gates for paying retail for his coffee at starbucks?

business/worker friendly: I think it's hard to judge. I had an outsourcing company in Indonesia once. The salaries there, if they could get constant work for $2.50/hour they would have better off than what we were paying.

done better: probably. I invested $30. I hope there are better options. How much money and time they would/will cost is a different matter though.

I actually had a free one designed by a really talented guy here on HN, but it was for a different brand name that we didn't end up being able to use. (If you're curious: http://kevinohashi.com/sites/default/files/mention.png)

Not really sure what you are ranting about. The website itself exists to provide services for $5. Surely these designers are able to place what they think is a fair value on the use of their time and resources. Why do you think its a bad thing to take advantage of that? FWIW I also hire programmers for less than $10 an hour and I get stellar work from them. Price is a signal, but there isn't always a direct correlation between price and quality (or effectiveness) . To leave you with an anecdote, I have between $5 and $1000 for App icons (iphone), my best selling app is the one with the $5 icon and no custom UI elements.

My reaction was surprise (at jsnk's comparison), not intended to be a rant. But I'll explain further: I completely understand why this site and many others like it exist. They have a purpose, which is to provide a quick and painless service at practically no cost. I don't think that the service itself is necessarily bad. Rather, I think the way it's used is wrong. You don't use them to 'hire a designer' (or a dozen). You use them to get a couple people with either too much time, too much software, too little skill, or too little opportunity to show something off in hopes of getting a few dollars. In this case, there is a startup which needs a brand so that they can forget about it as they build their business. My feeling is that regardless of the cost, there is a better approach to getting this sort of work done especially if you claim to value this step of the process. I understand the desire to cut costs, and I am perfectly aware that quality doesn't scale with cost. On top of that, I've done my share of cheap-ass logos to pay for a little gas. But this is hacker news, I think it's worth putting in this perspective. In the most basic sense, I see it as a simple professional courtesy to pay a proper wage, even when you're getting closer to squashing costs and risk.

No one that works on a logo for $5 is a designer, they're someone that is trying to make a quick few bucks off of preset shapes and OS-shipped typefaces.

> No developer will work for $5 in the first place

www.elance.com , www.odesk.com

Go for hit. eLance, ODesk, Freelancer, the list goes on and on.

I want to read your story of how you hired a programmer for $5 and got something done. I will even try it myself if I see a way for me to use the same strategy. You would be saving me a huge amount of money.

Everything matters. Saying logos matter is matters is somewhat meaningless. The question is how much do they matter? How much do they matter at one specific moment in time? How much time can you afford to spend on the logo problem at a moment in time?

I shared this story because I suspect there are a lot of people who would be willing to spend $30 to try getting a cheap logo for their startup/side project/whatever.

I really don't think you should feel threatened by it if you're able to communicate what value you're adding to a company by applying your unique design skills.

When your industry experiences an explosion of second-rate product at third-world wages is that a threat?

Not necessarily the end of your business/career if you can market your value-add but a threat none the less.

You just nailed what I tried writing in two paragraphs in two sentences.

As a developer, I think it's already happened as some degree. Do I feel threatened? Not in the slightest. Plenty of people hire developers on eLance et al at low rates. I've seen no impact on myself or my developer friends. Stand up at a tech meetup and say you're a developer looking for a job and see what happens.

As an entrepreneur? I see a wave of arbitrage opportunities.

Meh, I was making the point to try and raise concern for the other side of the perceived "coin" of product creation, as it applies to software. I would never hire a programmer for $5 - I program everything myself, just like I design everything. It's fun and I'm actually committed to excellence in both domains of my product.

No offense, but the logos you received aren't that great, and definitely on par with what I'd expect for paying $50 or less. All I'm saying is, that in your post you talk about how it is the one symbol that defines your brand, and I feel like the quality of logos people get on sites like that end up looking like Acme Corp. It's all plug and play with no feeling, or emotional investment into the product. Of course, some are good, but the logos need a kernel of an idea. Notice how pretty much everybody put the wifi signal. Of course they did, that's the first thing I would think of too - but good design goes further than that. It truly takes some deep thinking.

Actually my name literally translate to 'Big Bridge' O - hashi :)

If you're a talented guy, I am sure finding work isn't a problem. I honestly don't believe what I did is really competing with very talented designers. This is a very cheap way to get a logo and move on to other things. Early on, I definitely value getting something done and moving on versus getting something perfect and spending too much time on it. No reason you can't go back later and improve it.

Aha well now don't worry, I wasn't going to be confusing with any Kevin Chopsticks ;) I actually mistyped 大橋 to but edited it a split second later– I'm terrible at tabbing through on the mac, iPhone 10-key is much quicker for me...

> they are a place many startups get stuck.

Yeah sure, this is true. Anyone remember the dotcom swoosh era (http://lekowicz.com/library/logohell/logohell.html )?

Startups also get stuck on UI (custom, bootstrap, jquery-ui, yui), backend (node,ruby,java,groovy,php) and database (mysql,postgresql,redis,mongo).

For most businesses the logo is just something that shows up in the top left corner of the website, it really doesn't matter all that much as long as it is clean. I bet if you took this logo (http://kevinohashi.com/sites/default/files/Review%20Signal.p...) and had it up on your site without mentioning you paid $30 nobody would have noticed/cared.

What you have is just a cheap logo. And that's OK. Like a cheap car or a cheap UI it serves a purpose. Just like if you built a web application using out-of-the-box bootstrap the majority of end users will not even notice.

That doesn't mean logos should only cost $30, or that for the $30 you spent that you have a great logo. Then again, maybe you don't need a great logo. A great logo should be instantly recognizable and fit with the message that is your company. http://speckyboy.com/2011/06/15/30-of-the-most-iconic-logos-...

You put that a lot more eloquently than I did.

yep, they might have been better off with a 0$ logo if they had basic inkscape skills (since they already knew what kind of message they were trying to get across). on top of that I believe they didn't even choose the best one.

I agree with your message, but I'd argue that the logos in that Speckyboy link aren't necessarily good design. They just have the marketing budgets behind them to become ingrained in your brain.

> nobody would have noticed/cared.

Exactly.

It's OK. Not the end of the world to have a bad logo. It can evolve. There are plenty of examples of this evolution from bad to memorable. When your resources are thin, put them where they matter. But, put two equitable products up against one another and it will matter.

Yuck, that is clearly a $30 logo. You got what you paid for. I find it hard to think that you're going to be happy with it in the long run.

Here's the approach that I took. As a startup, you don't have a huge budget or a lot of time. Design firms cost more than freelance people, so you probably want a freelancer.

I hired a freelance graphic designer (It was Ty Wilkins if you're curious, www.tywilkins.com). You should have a budget of $750-2000 or so. Fundamentally, you're hiring their time, so the less you pay, the less time they can put into it. I tried hard to give him efficient feedback, and we came to a final logo fairly quickly. I probably spend three phone calls with him, and some time reviewing his ideas. It was a good process, maybe a week in elapsed time, and a got a great outcome (see www.predictobot.com).

Where do you find a freelance logo designer? I found Ty by looking on dribbble.com (note that has 3 b's in it). That's a designer hangout where they post recent work. Find a few you like, check out their websites, and then email one. See if they're available in the short term, and are interested in jobs with your budget.

If you have no budget, then I agree with JoelMarsh's comment. Set your name in a nice font, pick a color, and you're done.

I see a lot of comments about cheap logos.

Serious Question: how do you define/identify a cheap logo? I mean look at logos of most popular brands like Google, Facebook, Ebay, BBC, Microsoft, Paypal, Yahoo etc they are all extremely simply, just fonts with colors on them, nothing that could be called creative. Maybe even a non-designer could replicate them in five minutes. However despite all the simplicity, these logos are still stuck in our mind and do represent their respective products. So it really worth spending $$$$ on logos while starting up?

Quite easily; you look at them. If there were a way to programmatically define a good logo, there wouldn't be so many bad logos. I don't mean for this to sound facile, but it is like looking at art, or writing: it is very difficult to create a meaningful definition of what good is, but it is often very easy to classify things as bad and not-bad (if not good and not-good).

It probably isn't worth spending $$$$ on logos. But you should care about design as an extension of caring about UX. If your design taste is sufficient that you can produce a simple, acceptable logo - great! If it isn't, it is possibly a warning sign that you need to involve someone who does have that design taste - and not just on your logo.

To head it off at the pass - yes, some start-ups have succeeded with weak design (although far fewer than you think - simple is not necessarily weak), but start-ups have succeeded under all sorts of circumstances. It doesn't invalidate the principle that a good user experience is very valuable to any product.

It's not about money. Big budget logos can suck too.

Often simplicity is the beauty of it. For example, simple code that works effortlessly isn't necessarily creative but it could be and when it works, it's beautiful. Because it's simple should it be cheap? Expensive? I don't think there's a correlation there.

Beauty can be the intricacy of simplicity.

You should have the designer rotate the signal pictogram slightly clockwise. Here' an example: http://i50.tinypic.com/2mfgody.png

Thanks for the idea!

$5 for a logo design, wow.

I'm sure if there was a post saying "how I built an iphone app and backend rest API for $100" we'd all be screaming.

It's interesting that more of these crowdsourcing / task based websites are appearing with very low prices. How long before we see contract writing for $50 and medical diagnosis for $100?

It will be interesting to see what will happen as professional skills are driven down to commodity level.

Companies will continue to separate themselves from the chaff based on price alone. Price defines what you're worth to the recipient and much more. It also often dictates quality & what you see here is representative of that.

Could you get a great $5 logo? Certainly. Nike did alright with their $35 one (ignoring inflation & stock later granted to the designer).

Don't forget that Nike's original logo was accepted due to time constraints. The swoosh was combined with an incredibly badly aligned logotype that was altered later before finally arriving at "swoosh only." http://www.logoblog.org/nike_logo.php

Nike has since paid huge amounts of cash to refine and iterate their logo.

But it didn't stop them or kill their brand. No reason you can't launch with a $30 logo and iterate later if/when the need arises.

Just wanted to say that $100 gets you pretty high-end medical diagnosis here in Russia. Unlike in US, doctors and lawers are not highly-paid professionals in here (unlike, say, IT guys).

And the results are priceless^. Branding is sometimes worth the extra few dollars. :)

^: Or should have been given the lack of quality.

Nice idea. I never thought of using fiverr for this.

Previously I have gone the 99designs route and been less than thrilled with the end result vs the money put in. I'm going to give this a try next time I need a logo.

I think the equalizer-like option that wasn't chosen had the best concept. Problem is, it would actually require more refining that anyone should/would be willing to do for $30.

Also, the mixing of fonts / styles on the actual ReviewSignal site is pretty nasty and the chosen logo feels quite out of place.

This possibly goes to a show a real designer is actually worth something.

This is not a logo. Ok, maybe in today's world of photoshop=designer, but typing the company name, setting it in two opposed weights, two complementary colors and adding a bit of cliche clip art over (of course) the 'i' ...does not make a logo that is worthy of praise.

Does it look terrible to most people? Probably not. Does it look good to anyone? Probably not. Memorable? Probably not. If this were my logo, would I be bragging about what a great logo I have and for $30? Probably not.

Obviously there's a market for both approaches. Designers say they cringe at this type of work, and I do, but we've done it to ourselves by lowering the bar without anyone sticking up for the standards.

And you want to talk about a trade war? Another topic for another time.

Sure it is a bit of an overpayment for a cheap logo. Like any bad logo though, it just sits there and waits for refinement. With all of the "X Corp got their now-famous logo" comments, what isn't mentioned is the way the logos evolve over time. The original Nike logo would be a complete embarrassment for a high-value sporting goods brand today: http://www.logoblog.org/nike_logo.php

Guess how much it's cost Nike to hire designers and agencies to refine that logo over the years? Not to mention the various forks for separate marketing projects.

When you pay a designer a lot of money up front for a logo design, you are hopefully paying for a highly-refined solution set to a problem or group of problems. Nike did this as they moved forward from their original logo. They are paying for the "hin" concept (Japanese for refinement). Product designers understand this better than any other group--you have to continuously refine as you go forward, or somebody else will eat your lunch.

Someone who knows their design principles instinctively should be able to take a bad logo and detect the sound principles behind it, filter out the other noise (non-essentials to the problem at hand) and propose appropriate changes.

As the author of the post says over and over, he is paying for something that serves a purpose. He is paying for something that he doesn't know how to create, or even use properly (see website alignment issues). So this situation isn't some grand thumbs-down at the design industry. It's just a set of circumstances that taxes one's thought process a bit too much and usually results in (hopefully temporary) sloppy work.

No offence intended, but I just sicked up a little in my mouth

That's fine. I didn't like a lot of the results, but I am quite happy with the one we chose. For $30, it was a really low risk experiment to begin with.

It may cost you more in the long run if you update/replace the logo you got for only $30 now. The branding and visual elements for your site and company should work with your logo; so whatever branding assets you have (site, business cards, stationary, ads) will all have to be updated if you change the logo later. I would not consider this to be a low risk experiment.

abeh, You discount the value of time. If the startup fails anyways, it's a moot point. If it's successful, I will be able to afford it. I'd rather need to pay more money later for a startup that is doing well than spend a lot of money now on a speculative return later.

Sounds logical. If it fails, hopefully the reason for failure is not the logo, or an accumulation of things done quickly and cheaply.

Here is a nice list of famous logos and their costs : http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-and-how-much...

interestingly twitter's first bird logo costed only $15.

You realize the high costs on the list aren't really for the logo. They're for the whole rebranding exercise. For Accenture, that includes advertising to introduce the new name and logo. For BP that includes new signs at thousands of gas stations, repainted trucks, and advertising, etc.

Well it definitely looks like a $30 logo...

I see a lot of people here saying an early stage startup doesn't need good design. That's funny because I heard the exact opposite advice from Tom Preston-Werner of Github at YCombinator Startup School last weekend. With so many startups competing nowadays, success usually comes down to who executes the idea the best, and a huge part of that is design and user experience. An amateur logo is just going to make you look like an amateur company to users.

I say this as a programmer: skimping on design is just as likely to cost you users as skimping on engineering. There's a reason why top designers are becoming just as sought after as top programmers in the startup world.

You might be right in general that logo matter very little to a number of startups and they shouldn't spend a lot of money on a logo before they're successful. However, your startup is one that need to appear trustworthy to a consumer and appearance / design actually matters a lot. When I look at your logo, I don't feel reassured that your web hosting reviews will be professional / trustworthy. Other niches need not worry as much about the trustworthiness of their product but you would have more success with a stronger logo design.

Do you think your opinion is biased based on reading this article first?

You should spend another $30 and replace the Drupal favicon on your site.

LOL, it looks like a $30 logo.

That is really all startups need.

Startups will either have a product that is so awesome that they get popular on their own merit and can fix the logo later (Facebook), Or their technology is desired by someone else and they get bought up by someone who doesn't care about the logo cause it'll just go away (Many startups), Or they'll be a semi-successful company that fades into the obscurity of the semi-successful startup army in which case a solid but not stand-out logo is just fine.

Revisions = 1

Good to hear you're realistic here.

I always feel bad after hearing about people asking a designer from elance for 50 revisions to make it just right.

It's generally their terms, but it's $5. It's crazy to expect the world for that price.

It's surprising how many times I've seen tech companies use an 'i' with a signal symbol at its top.

Proof that you get what you pay for.

...and this thread will never be much more than butt hurt designers.

Happens every time someone suggests that perhaps monstrous 'identity' projects aren't a good value to a lot of businesses.

It seems like it must have been flagged into oblivion because it dropped like 60 spots. I suspect you may be right.

Funny how this story is a great ad for the site.. with topics on hn and reddit growing

And it shows...

My thoughts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31g0YE61PLQ

Please don't post that kind of comment here. It's against local custom.

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