If you are a small business owner or freelancer of some sort, you've had that old refrain go through your head.  When you're just starting a business all you do is see money pour out and then trickle back in—if it trickles at all.  We learn to become frugal and weigh every penny before we spend it. 

Finding out that a business logo design will knock you back a hundred pounds or more can send the old heart racing.  And when they tell you that unless you spend another pound that logo package is limited, well, that's enough to send most people on a budget to their paint program to try and create a free logo design of their own. 

The effort that goes into a simple design oftentimes goes unappreciated.  We don't quite understand why they're charging for something that we believe probably only took a few minutes on the old Mac. 

I had a friend who worked at the papers tell me once that everyone with a laptop thinks she's a writer. 

Don’t be fooled that the girl who thought because she had paper, a scanner, and a design software package she was a graphics designer. 

 As I was creating my logo I was really only creating a logo.  That sounds redundant but it's not really. 

Your logo is one of the major components that go into establishing a brand. 

Not to dive deep into this well, but simply put a brand is an organisation, company, its service or product with an identity shaped entirely by consumer perception. 

Apple computer has a brand very different from Dell.  When you see someone with a Mac your perception of him or her is different than someone typing the exact same story or email on a dell. 

This is because the Apple brand has been sufficiently blazoned  to the audience.  When creating their brand, Jobs was smart enough to take an iconic image of the apple and utilise it for their brand. Apples convey many emotional feelings and imagery that go beyond computer products: taste, smell, sensuality, and knowledge.  Therefore when creating that logo they were able to impart an emotional reaction in everyone who saw it, thus contributing to the brand. 

Your logo is your first impression with the customer; it is a key component in establishing your brand.  What are you telling someone about your business with that bit of rubbish you just created on your bootleg Photoshop? 

 My first attempt at creating a logo was all over the place, but I was proud at the time because I hadn't spent three hundred quid. 

 Then I took it to the local print shop who explained to me in no uncertain terms what the word “scalable” meant and I began to see why the lad in the Boden jumper charged so much. 

Your brand has to be able to achieve the same look and feel, large or small.  It has to be visible and to “pop” regardless of the size.  It has to work in both black and white and colour.  It has to stick in the head long past someone having seen it. 

 Consider the Nike logo.  Looks simple enough.  Looks like you might have been able to have a go and create it, but it probably took a design team a week to come up with that simple brand. 

A logo with lots of pretty lettering and incorporating brilliant colours just won't do.

My suggestion is to throw out your understated budget this once and accept that the logo you choose now is just as important, if not more than the location you choose for your shop or even the name of your business because it will be the one thing a customer remembers aside from the product itself.

If you need a graphic designer in Rochdale have a look at the best in town at www.thebestof.co.uk/rochdale