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Designing websites is time-consuming and sometimes expensive. If you’ve contracted with a client to build their website a certain way, you might need to buy multiple licenses for scripts, software, and stock photos.
You may have also agreed to design your client’s logo with the intention of using a free logo maker. By using a free logo maker, you can charge your client full price for a logo instead of outsourcing the task to a graphic designer. Although this sounds like a good idea, there are several reasons to avoid using free logo makers.
Everyone loves aesthetically pleasing logos, but that’s not a logo’s main function. When used correctly, logos communicate conscious and subconscious messages to consumers. A professional graphic designer can create a logo that conveys the right message to any given market through colors, shapes, and imagery.
Professional designers go through a process to design perfect logos that begins with understanding brand identity. For example, designers frequently brainstorm with their clients to come up with a list of values and messages that are important to convey.
The sweet spot for creating a logo is right in the middle between aesthetically pleasing and purposeful. If you’re not experienced with conveying marketing messages through imagery, refer your client to a professional graphic designer to give your client the best results possible.
If you’ve ever used a free logo maker, you know how it works. You type in a few keywords and you’re given a bunch of simple graphic images related to your keywords. For example, if you’re designing a logo for a sports team and you type in “baseball” and “jersey,” you’ll get images of:
Just because those images are related to your search doesn’t mean they’re appropriate for your logo. It’s extremely easy to find the best-looking image from your search results, add your text, and call it a day. However, if that image doesn’t convey the right message, it’s not the right image.
Free logo makers are full of abstract designs. There’s nothing wrong with using abstract imagery, but only if that imagery conveys the right message.
Sometimes abstract imagery is distracting and confusing, like the London Olympics logo from 2012, as seen in this list of bad logos.
Your client might not want an abstract image in their logo. Clients don’t usually know what’s best for their logos, and if you can’t explain why you chose an abstract image beyond the aesthetics, your client won’t be happy.
Just like clients don’t know what makes a good website design, they don’t know what makes a good logo, either. Clients are notorious for wanting web elements that distract users or take away from the site’s ability to convert.
The same is true for logos. Clients want imagery they perceive as amazing, whether or not it gets results. If you’re not a professional graphic designer, you’ll do your clients a disservice by designing their logos.
Logo design requires understanding marketing through the lens of concepts like color psychology. To design a good logo, you need to understand color psychology and have the skills to select the right hues.
If you’re just taking orders from your client to design a logo with a certain image in a specific color accompanied by their specified text, you’re not really designing their logo. You’re translating their ideas into a graphic image.
Typography is perhaps the most important aspect of any logo, especially text-only logos. If you don’t get the typography right, your intended message will fall flat.
Unfortunately, free logo makers don’t offer much control over typography beyond size and font face.
Simplicity makes the best logo. If you look at logos from the world’s top 10 brands, you’ll find extreme simplicity. Most logos use either imagery or text, while only a few combine an image with text. Anytime letters/words are combined with imagery, it’s simple, like an outline or a basic shape.
Free logo makers encourage you to use imagery that may seem simple, but compared to the world’s top-performing brands, that imagery is actually quite complex.
Free logo makers aren’t useless. However, their best use is for generating inspiration rather than creating a final logo for your clients.
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