5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t DIY Your Logo

We totally get why it’s tempting to design your own logo. It’s fun! You know your brand best and you want to execute your vision. So it makes sense you want to do the logo yourself, right?

Wrong.

Here are the top 5 reasons you shouldn’t DIY your logo. We’re pretty confident after reading this you’ll be quitting out of Canva or Fiverr or (God forbid) MS Paint in no time.

1. The Sheer Importance of a Logo

Do you fully understand what a logo needs to do? Just how important it is for your brand? This little symbol needs to:

• Communicate your offering
• Do so in a memorable and appealing way
• Represent your values
• Stand out in the market
• Be better than your competitors
• Make an incredible first impression

Just thinking about how important your logo is for your business makes it easy to see why it’s something worth investing time, money and effort into getting right.

Now that we agree on the importance of a logo, let’s talk about why it should be left to the professionals.

2. Consistency

Your brand mark or logo needs to look the same no matter where it lives. Think of how many places your logo might appear. Websites, business cards, email signatures, in black and white, next to other logos or even on a billboard!

It’s critical that your logo looks on-brand no matter where it’s placed. That means it needs to be high quality and follow a set of brand guidelines (rules) so that when it exists in different formats or next to other logos, it maintains consistency. Because consistency breeds trust.

3. Professionalism

Consumers may not always know why something looks wrong, but they sure will notice when it doesn’t look right.

Your consumers, partners or anyone who you engage for services expects a level of professionalism from your business. If they find out that you did the logo yourself, they’ll most likely think you’re a basement operation or that you choose to cut corners.

This isn’t rocket science — paying a professional for their service means the end result will be more professional. You don’t want Fast Taco to become Fart Taco.

4. The Design Details

A logo is not a simple thing to create. The design involves combining your message and personality with colour theory, typography expertise, knowledge of the market trends and years of experience.

Think of the Apple logo. You might look at it and think it was easy to make because it’s simple. But there’s a lot of thought behind it, including implementing the golden ratio to ensure it’s pleasing to the eye.

Or take colour theory for example. The meaning behind certain colours affects how consumers view your brand. Not to mention making sure that your primary and secondary colours will work together. The colours you choose is not something you can just eyeball and fluke getting right. There’s logic and know-how behind what makes colours work.

5. You’re Too Involved

As a business owner, you’re too involved in your brand to be the one creating the logo.

It makes sense that you’d be emotionally invested in how your brand is perceived. You should be! But it can mean you have tunnel vision when it comes to finding a solution. Or you end up basing decisions off emotion and not by what will work best.

This is when you need someone who has an outside perspective to know what’s right for your brand.

Think of how you get a mechanic to look at your car and an accountant to do your taxes. Why? Because they’re better at it, they have more experience and your time is better spent being put towards what you’re already good at — running your business.

Still need a logo but now you’re sure not to do it yourself? Chat to us about how our designers can create a logo you’ll love.