Considering a premade logo is a checkpoint many new business owners pass through. We understand the appeal. Premade logo generators are fast, cheap, and easy. However, with over 30 years of combined marketing experience, we’re here to tell you that a premade logo isn’t good enough for your business.
Premade Logos Are Impersonal
Logo generators often only go off of your business name. They don’t have any understanding of your niche, your actual business, your price point, or your vibe. It can be problematic if your name doesn’t explicitly list your industry in it. For instance, companies like TJ Maxx, Target, or many salon or tech store names have no connotation as to what they do. We have a coffee and yoga space in town named Bristlecone. We have a salon named Siren. Ideally logos for those spaces would, yes, include a bristlecone as well as a siren. However, you also want them to incorporate a cup of coffee or yogi or a pair of shears, respectively.
The only way to do that in these premade logos is to type your name in as “Bristlecone Coffee and Yoga” or possibly “Siren Beauty Salon” – but now that’s also going to be the name on your logo, even though it’s not the actual name of your business. Yikes.
A logo generator will come up with tens of thousands of concepts to choose from. It’s an unexpected downside to these types of sites. Most of these proofs will be unrelated and unusable for your business. Their policy is quantity over quality. There may, just by sheer statistics, be a strong concept in there, but it could also be on page 120. Who is scrolling that far?! Talk about information overload and instant overwhelm.
The Personalization of Working with A Designer
Working with a designer means you can rely on someone’s actual, human brain to use their creativity to combine concepts into a cohesive image. Maybe their idea is to turn a siren’s tail into a pair of shears, using the scales to direct the eye. Chances are, a computer generated logo will lack that nuance.
Plus, your consultation with a designer will discuss other aspects of your business. What is your price point and ideal client? How can we adjust the elements of your design to speak to that demographic? And there’s the added benefit of making changes. If there’s even just 1 element of a premade logo that you don’t love, you’re stuck with it. Working with a designer means you can get a logo you’re wild about thanks to your involvement in the proofing process.
Design and Marketing Experience
At Polarity Design Team, our designers have worked in almost every facet of the print and design industry throughout our collective careers. We’ll ensure that your design doesn’t have too many colors, difficult drop shadows, super thin lines, or impossible gradients. These things make it hard to actually use your logo. They can affect embroidery, screen printing, its translation onto signage, and how readable it is from a distance.
They’ll also ensure you have your files in the correct format so you can send it off to any printer and know it’s a usable file. We often get commissioned to try to convert a PNG (.png, a photo file) logo into a format that is usable by other printers. When you hire a legitimate designer, you won’t have to worry about those inconveniences.
Logo Variations
Most branding packages also come with logo variations that a premade logo generator simply can’t offer. There will be your main logo, often showing an icon and your business name. There will be an icon logo, perfect for branding small pieces of literature and using on social media. And oftentimes a longer, narrower logo that works well as a header on a website or a brochure.
When you use a logo generator, you get one, usually square, logo that will not translate to a website, brochures, or signage, and will not fit in the circles and squares social media is built around.
The Premade Logo Bottomline
A premade logo is simply not good enough for a company who is serious about their success and trustworthy branding. The draw to an inexpensive (or even free) and low-hassle design is understandable; however, the cons far outweigh the pros when it’s broken down. Let us know if you’re ready for your customized logo experience.
