What Is Your Logo Design Worth?

As a follow up to last week’s post on what a logo should cost…

So if you hire a designer and pay $2000 for a logo, your logo design is worth $2000, right?

And if you create a logo for less than $50, you logo is worth less than $50.

Before you answer that, consider this:

In 1971, Nike founder Phil Knight paid designer Carolyn Davidson just $35 for the swoosh logo. Adjusted for inflation, that’s still just $206 today. But the company is worth almost $66 billion and the brand alone is valued at more the $24 billion.

Is Nike’s logo worth just $206?

On the other hand…

Cellular phone customers from the early 2000s might remember Cingular and their friendly orange “jack” logo. Cingular reportedly spent more than $4 billion to make their brand one of the most liked in the world, and in the process, attracted the largest customer base in the cell phone market. (Not all of that money was spent on the logo, but the logo development certainly cost hundred of thousands of dollars.) Then, after just six years, the company merged with AT&T and announced that they would abandon the Cingular name and logo. Today, even many former customers wouldn’t recognize the logo.

Is Cingular’s logo worth millions of dollars today?

The Nike logo is valuable because millions of customers like the brand and look for it whenever they need a pair of shoes or athletic gear. The money spent to create the actual logo design has almost nothing to do with its true value.

This takes time, effort, and yes, a bit of money.

The Cingular logo design is just about worthless because the company hasn’t used it in almost eight years. No one sees it and it no longer represents anything of value.

The lack of investment of time, effort, and money has left “jack” without value.

The same is true for your logo. Its value isn’t determined by what you pay for it (you can get a perfectly serviceable logo for $49). Rather the value is determined by what you do with it.

As your brand and logo come to represent that positive interactions that customers have with your company, it’s value will grow. A great product matched with great customer experiences over time will add tremendous value to your logo—no matter how much or how little you paid to have it designed.