Just received this notice via e-mail. “Now available – logo design software. Only $30.00″. Sounds tres cool. But I have what could be called logo design software – it’s known as Adobe Illustrator. Cost me over $500. So what’s the difference? The advertised version of logo design software is not actually ‘design’ anything. At best it can be called clip-art composition software (and that’s stretching it). The premise is that you can pull a few (badly) pre-designed ‘template logos‘ together and add some text and ‘voila’ – a logo. Ahm. Not quite. Firstly, the templates cannot be protected by copyright, or even more importantly, trademark. Because hundreds of people are using the very same templates, your client can forget about unique. And they can also say hello to reproduction hell – most of these templates are in bitmap format so they require four color reproduction, cannot be resized for larger applications and are impractical for most applications other than the web. This software is also advertised as “no design skill needed”. Shouldn’t come as a surprise – there’s very little design taking place. In fact, ALL of these DIY logo design ’solutions’ – including the web based Flash ones – are nothing more than template logos with pretty packaging. And using a template is NOT the way any professional should want to brand his/her company.
Alas, it seems that despite these wonderful attempts at skinning the proverbial cat in unique ways, there’s only one way to create a logo design that is worthy of representing a great new venture. That’s working with a seasoned professional who has a client’s best interests in mind, as well as a pride in his/her craft. Sure, they may not promise unlimited logo revisions, a free coffee mug (it’s been done) or other three ring circus sales pitches. They will, however, produce a solid, technically sound and unique logo that your client can proudly use as their corporate identity. And isn’t THAT what it’s all about?
Now, where’s my free T-shirt?
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