[Don Benham]

I'm trying to make my own company logo. What program(s) would anybody suggest if they've made their own?

Bonus points if it actually places creativity into my head.

Thanks
Don

 

[Nathan]

Would you consider paying someone for a good logo? I think its well worth it...

 

[Brian]

I agree with Nathan. Pay someone to design your logo. You get what you pay for-- try to do it cheap and that's what you get.

As contractors we often lament when customers want to cut corners or do something inexpensively. We should take that to heart when we need something done. If we need advertising or something else done, hire a pro. It's what we tell our customers, and we should practice what we preach.

Brian Phillips

 

[Teetorbilt]

My wife has been in this business for over 20 yrs.
She has to meet with people to gauge their personalities and their business, she will also draw up a few preliminary sketches to determine the direction in which you want to go. Expect 1 - 1 1/2 hrs. She then comes home and will work up to a day refining and creating a few others as ideas hit. On the next appointment you will have a choice of 6-10 rough logos that you fine tune together. At the final meeting you are presented with 3 'slicks', the one that you choose will be your logo.
She charges by the complexity and number of customer changes which can be many and go on for months. An agreeable small business can get out for a few hundred bucks.
Trivia; Nike paid the equivelent of $35.00 for the 'swoosh'. I'll bet the guy charged more for his next job!

 

[Don Benham]

As contractors we often lament when customers want to cut corners or do something inexpensively. We should take that to heart when we need something done. Brian Phillips

Good point. Thanks for the advice everyone.

Don

 

[ABA Const]

depends on how good you are with a computer if you are not aware of the graphics program to use i would suggest you hire someone you can get a pretty decent logo for 50-100 bucks. but if you do want to make one i suggest paint shop pro or photoshop, the corel draw suites and a few others.

 

[Grumpy]

ABA having the tolls and having the actual artistic talent to make the logo are two different things.

 

[Guest]

Design your own?

Hi there - i've recently setup an IT consultancy and decided to design a logo.
I ended up using Xara, an arts package which you can download from xara.com for 15 days free trial. Its a great & easy to use piece of software, even for me and i'm sh*te at art
It also lets you save the logo as different types of files - i saved it as a .tif file which i emailed to a printer to make business cards with and even as a shockwave file which i used on my webpage (www.cybix.co.uk)
Hope that helps!
Dan

 

[jrr]

CorelDraw would probably the popular choice, but I agree with the previous poster, Xara X is probably the best package around for this kind of application.

 

[Agnessa]

Make a wise investment buy Design It Yourself: Logos,Letterheads,and Business Cards: The Non-Designer's Step-by-Step Guide by Chuck Green. Not only you will learn what software to use, but also there will be tons of talented samples you can use and change. I still use template from the book (just tweaked a little) and get compliments all the time. Even if you end up paying for the designs this book will be a good help in understanding how it should look like.
Logo is a something I would recommend to pay for. Not only new logo “fashion” is very simple and schematic but also you want to look unique. You can go to Elance.com and get a quote or few; there are also logo templates online, but nothing unique.