Generally speaking, I’ve been non-plussed about logo design templates. You know the deal – download a pre-fab icon or logo (usually from a web site that features all their design offerings with a generic ‘company name here‘ font work up) slap on your company name and you’re all set.
It could be argued, however, that this kind of – making bunny-ear quotes here – “design”, is doing a great disservice to clients, designers and perhaps even the industry in general. Run a Google Search for ‘logo design templates’ and the first two pages, some 20 top results, many feature the same template logos. The very same logos! How can that be? It would appear logo template sites are purchasing their logo ‘library’ from some central source and making them available on ‘cookie’ cutter web sites. Or the sites found all belong to the same people. Either way, it seems a little disingenuous to feature somebody else’s templates or ‘disguise’ Bob’s Logo Service as Not Bob’s Logo Design Service in order to capture clients looking for a new logo. It is, alas, just one of the troubles with logo templates.
I look at this as logo spam – both in marketing of the web sites, and the services themselves. The theory is, create enough logo design ‘templates’ and somebody, somewhere will purchase one for their use. Put these templates on enough web sites and hopefully someone will find it. The idea that you can pay $12, $19, hell, even $50 for a logo is laughable. Effective logo design requires a skilled designer, with experience in many skill sets who can create timeless design – a logo is supposed to last the life of a company – with an eye for reproduction, application and demographics.
Logo design requires a great deal of interaction between the client and designer, an understanding of the company, the target market, and the limitations of planned and future applications. That certainly isn’t present in a library of $20 logo design templates. How much effort, how much research, how much pre-development, and how much effort is a designer going to put into a twenty-dollar art project. I’ll tell you. None. Nada Why would they? Effective logo design takes time. Twenty bucks doesn’t buy an awful lot of time. Simple equation actually. Successful companies pay tens of thousands of dollars in R & D (Research & Development) for their logo.
Rather than packaging our discarded designs as ‘logo templates’ and offering them for sale – you can download these images from our Morgue Files as free logos. While there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with using a design that has already been created in your logo (as long as the ‘fit’ is there), the idea that others are using the same design defeats the purpose of developing a unique identity.
There are reasons for this. I challenge anyone to show me a successful company that purchased a shake-and-bake logo from a logo spam site. Purchasing a pre-designed logo illustrates that a client doesn’t understand the value of image, cohesive branding, and it’s likely their business model is similarly flawed. And here’s the dirty little secret. These sites know that the majority of their clients will go out of business farily shortly (if they manage to get off the launch pad at all). Selling a slap-and-tickle logo template to some one who may not be around next month means that their ‘multiple user’ business model works. For them. And if you do use one of these logos, it’s almost in your best interests that you don’t become successful. If your company grows a substantial bank balance, it’s pretty safe to say that the legal beagles will come a-sniffing at one time or another. Why? It’s highly likely that someone in the chain of ownership will claim that you’re using a logo that you have no rights to.
With any of these template sites, there are ownership, copyright and trademark issues that are insurmountable. Simply put – who owns these logos? Who was the original designer? Some student cranking out themed psuedo-logos at $5 a pop? Rejects from some a design-forum logo design contest for another client? And did they properly transfer ownership to the template library owner? And does the site (Bob’s Template Logos or Not Bob’s Template Logos) have the rights to transfer ownership? If you read up on copyright law, you’ll find that just because you buy a design, it doesn’t necessary follow that the ownership becomes yours. It also true that anyone gains certain ownership rights through usage. So usage and rights becomes foggy. And foggy always equates into hassles.
These sites sell the same logo to anyone with a credit card. Sometimes a logo is purchased several times over. What if there’s more than one company using this logo as their corporate identity? Perhaps another decides to lay claim to the copyright due to perceived usage rights accrued. That equals a legal quagmire. An expensive legal quagmire. What if you wanted to trademark one of these logos? Well, you can’t. So, you’re going to buy a logo, pay thousands, or tens of thousands in reproducing your $20 logo, only to find out, maybe years later, that somebody else has laid claim to it. What can you do for recourse? Go back to the web site you purchased it from (money back guarantee of $20)? Considering the real costs involved, a $20 refund is a pittance, though easy enough to achieve. Or perhaps it’s not. If the web site is still online, good luck on finding out who’s behind it.
If you take a close look at these web sites, you’ll be hard pressed to find their contact information – other than a form and invariably a PayPal link. There’s a reason they wish to remain anonymous. So that you can’t find out who, or where, they are. You’re buying your new company logo from someone you don’t know, whose ownership rights on the logo itself may be tenuous. And they’re going to sell the logo you’ve purchased, to somebody else. Warning light there. They may not even have the right to transfer ownership to anyone, let alone one company after another. Of course, their claims may say otherwise – though I take guarantees from anonymous web sites with a rather large grain of salt. When our studio transfers a logo to clients we first lay claim to the design – warranting that we designed the logo as an original work of art – and are subsequently transferring all those ownership rights to the client. Very cut and dry. We own the logo and now you own it. If we were ever to represent a work that isn’t ours, or something to which we don’t have suitable rights, we’re liable and would be out of business in a heartbeat. And we’re fairly easy to find – we’re been around since 1996, a legally incorporated company and all our contact info is readily available. As a click-and-mortar company – as opposed to a web ‘site’ – in-house designers create all our logos. Their work is contractually the property of The Logo Factory® Inc. and thus, we can legally transfer these rights to our clients.
Despite these legalities, we’ve still found examples of our work in these template libraries and I can assure you – we do not give permission to use any of our work in this manner. While our trademark lawyers usually take care of these fairly quickly, the purchaser of any of these logos would also be legally exposed. Simply put, they’re using a logo that they don’t have the rights to use. And as we all know, ignorance is never the best defense.
From a design perspective, the logos featured are crap. Many aren’t even logos but a bunch of scribbles and swooshes thrown together in shapes that may, or may not, resemble an icon. Then we slap the phrase ‘Company Name’ and ‘Tag Line Here’ in some non-descript font and we’re all set. As stated earlier, the theory is quite simple. It’s also been used with monkeys and Shakespeare. By displaying enough scribbles and swooshes, to enough sets of eyes, hopefully one of these pieces of crap will mean something to somebody. And hopefully, that somebody is willing to plunk down $12, $20 or $50 via their PayPal account. To believe that these logo spam sites respect their clientele is laughable. It’s a numbers game – and each site visitor is simply a mark.
Logo design templates also make a rather onerous assumption – that the company name (and the font used) – is some sort of afterthought that can be slapped on any logo. As a designer this notion horrifies me. The company name, and the font used, is an integral part of any logo design. The visual text solution for ABC Car Repair is not the same for Bob Johnston and Sons Car Repair. Nor should it be. These template logos use off-the-shelf fonts, in their native form, so that any company name can simply be typed in (as fast as humanly possible), rather than integrated as a vital part of the design. You can also forget about kerning, sizing, etc.
The same can be said of logo contest sites. When some people ask “are design contests really that bad” I have to answer “yes, they are”. For numerous reasons. We’ve seen our work being passed off as contest entries – in one case a logo created by our studio was selected as a finalist until someone else pointed out that the design was a registered trademark, owned by one of our clients. In an effort to save a few bucks (ironically – on one of the most important decisions a serious business can make) business owners are making light of a business decision that has enormous gravity.
On the other hand, if you’re paying twenty bucks for a logo, you are getting exactly what you’re paying for. Which is pretty well nothing. So, while I rail against logo-spam sites on an academic level, on a practical level I can’t imagine it’s hurt serious designers in any major way (other than having to explain the issue over and over). A business owner who thinks spending $20 on a pre-fab logo is an intelligent investment is not the kind of clients we’re after. Our clients generally understand – or come to understand through our web site – that their logo and resultant branding is a mission-critical decision and should not be based on price alone. A logo value vs. cost sliding scale. Not ridiculous speed of delivery. As the logo-template sites try to outdo each other in low-ball pricing, not once have I seen one of these sites illustrate anything but stupidly low pricing. Quality. Nah. Originality. Hardly. Consulting and or direction by seasoned industry veterans? Not a chance. Technical assistance and after-market help? Nope – just wham-bam thank you-ma’am design.
Not the stuff of successful logo legends.
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Thanks for a great read. I’m going to use this when clients come to me and start talking about using a template, or even clip art for their identity – and I must admit there have been a few.
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