Let’s not beat around the bush: my design services are not cheap. I wouldn’t call them “expensive”, but for the majority of people who might benefit from them, they’re currently out of reach. I don’t have a problem with that, as there are different designers that offer logos at different price points, so hopefully everyone can find one that’s ideal for them.

But there’s a huge gap between people who read my articles and enjoy my free resources, and the few people who can actually invest in my services. To help bridge this gap, I wrote the book The Human Centered Brand which teaches small business owners how to create their own authentic brand. It provides some background on design elements and how to approach logo design, but it won’t teach you how to be great at logo design just by reading the book.

When I talk about this to other entrepreneurs, inevitably someone suggests that I create a class teaching business owners how to design their own logos. I shrug the idea away saying I have other plans, so the idea is laid to rest.

But there’s another, even more important reason why you won’t see me doing any logo design classes aimed at non-designers:

I can’t teach non-designers how to create good logos.

The emphasis is on good.

I can show you around all the tools in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. I can tell you where to find fonts. I can tell you how to pick a color palette. In fact, I teach people how to find the perfect font and color palette for your brand in the seventh chapter of my book The Human Centered Brand.

But that’s nowhere nearly enough for a person to create a logo that is any good.

And let me tell you, I’ve tried…

On top of being a full-time freelance designer, I spent a couple of years teaching graphic design classes. I’ve taught 8 generations of students their first steps in design theory, the Adobe software, and tried my best to impart on them a bit of that sense of aesthetics that is really difficult to explain to a novice. I’ve critiqued numerous student assignments, and formed a list of 11 most common beginner design mistakes I see people do.

In the design class I taught, students first need to go through a 9-hour design theory class (which is way too short in my opinion), combined with additional recommended reading. This is followed by a 30-hour Adobe Illustrator course, which covers the most useful functionality of the program for design work. After that, we teach a 6-hour class focused on logo design, along with examples, case studies and practical exercises—some in copying the examples, and some in creating new designs.

After all this preparation, students are finally given their first independent assignment: design a logo based on the provided brief. (This is all done in the classroom, so they can ask for assistance or guidance at any moment.)

You’d think that after they’ve been through all that, and with the ability to ask for my help, they’ll come up with pretty good logos?

I’m afraid that’s not really how it goes. What I’ve noticed is that the students who had a certain amount of design experience prior to the course, come up with much better designs than those who have little or no experience. I’m not talking just about how creative the logos are, but whether their production quality is at the level required for professional use.

The quality of logo designs the students create doesn’t depend on their age, or their drawing skills, or how good they are with Adobe Illustrator. The quality of their logo designs depends on how well they’ve internalized the design principles and honed their sense of design aesthetics through practice.

And that’s why logo design is very difficult to teach. You can provide people with all the tools and information, but what really counts is how many months or years they spend creating design concepts.

Logo design is one of the most responsible design professions

All design professions are equally valuable and needed in the world—this is not meant to devalue other designers. The difference between logo design and many other types of design is:

You have one chance to get it right.

Of course, there is the option of rebranding. Some corporations do it every 5 to 10 years, so it’s not literally the one chance. But because each logo change brings on website changes and re-designing and printing of all marketing materials, the total cost of rebranding can get very expensive—and you have to do it all at once, otherwise you’ll have a patchwork brand that does more harm than good.

Compare this with website design, where you get to make incremental improvements over time, either based on user testing or A/B testing, or just observing your statistics. In fact, I make slight tweaks on my website almost every week, and you probably never noticed.

Even print design is subject to change. If you’re not happy with your brochures, you can just re-design them when you use up your current batch. If this quarter’s ad campaign doesn’t work very well, you can create new ads and new messaging for the next quarter. With regular publications, each issue is a chance to start anew.

Not so with logos. Once you publish a logo somewhere, you’re wedded to it until you decide to scrap it and create a new one. If you have multiple versions of your logo floating around, it leads to brand dilution.

Can you imagine in your mind’s eye (without looking up their website) what the current PayPal logo looks like? If you’re having any difficulty doing that, it’s not your fault. There are at least 3 different versions of their logo floating around the Internet at the moment of writing this article:

Hint: the very right one is the newest one.

Let’s not even get into that Twitter bird. 5 years after introducing the new, more elegant design, many websites and icon sets still feature the old, chubby, cartoonish bird silhouette.

Old (left) versus new Twitter icon (right)

How many times has the Twitter web and app interface changed since the launch of that new icon? More times than we can count.

Every logo change is risky

Sometimes, your customers raise a fuss because they’ve grown attached to your logo. Sometimes, people don’t recognize your product in the stores anymore.

Every rebranding effort requires careful consideration of pros and cons that the new identity will bring. Because of this, it’s a better investment of your time and money to get it right the first time.

Logo design requires proficiency in the visual language

In my post Is your logo sending the right message? I explain that visual language is a skill that many people benefit from, but few understand its rules.

If you want to be a logo designer, you need to be intimately familiar with:

• What kind of message a certain form of letters communicates.
• What connotations might certain colors evoke in different cultures.
• How to choose the ideal level of detail and simplicity in a symbol so that it’s unambiguous and unique, yet easy to reproduce.
• How placement of elements affects the meaning of the whole.

This is not trivial. I’m still learning and perfecting my skills, and will continue to do so until the end of my career.

Teaching others gives me an opportunity to organize and clarify insights that are based on my own real-world design experience, as opposed to just repeating information from books. Looking back, I know what was most helpful to me when learning design, and what skills are an absolute requirement for a great logo designer.

What would the perfect logo design class look like?

If I were to take an absolute beginner through a class that will give them the skills needed to create logo designs for businesses, organizations, products, or music bands, this is what I would include:

1. Graphic design principles
2. Typography
3. Color theory
4. A primer on aesthetics in design
5. Pictorial communication and symbolism
6. Vector drawing (Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape)
7. The design process
8. Practical assignments with individual mentoring

The minimum duration I’d anticipate for this class is 3 months, but it could be an ongoing 6 month program with even more emphasis on critique and mentoring. Given the amount of instruction and personal attention, plus the value the students would get out of it, the minimum class cost would be $1.000, but probably closer to $2.000.

For a budding designer that wants to make money doing logo design for clients, that’s a very smart investment that they can make back with a few design jobs.

For a business owner that needs a logo for their company, that’s not a good time investment. You’d need to wait for 3 months before you can even think about designing your company logo, and all the while you’d be busy with classes and homework, which would take time away from working on your business.

That’s why I believe that for business owners who don’t want to do design for a living, paying someone else to do it is a better investment. You’ll get a way better result than you could do on your own, and you’ll be free to spend your time on things that only you can do.

“But there are short classes teaching logo design?”

Yes, there are many classes that teach logo design, much in the same way it’s taught at the school where I used to teach, but even shorter. Most don’t offer feedback or direct contact with the instructor.

I’ve already told you what those classes are like: experienced designers can expect to grow their skills as they specialize in a new field, and newbies will need to put in a lot of personal practice time if they want to see results. If a class does not include personalized feedback and mentoring, in my opinion it’s not much better than a book. (Which isn’t to say they aren’t useful—I’ve learned a lot from books.)

I don’t want to promise business owners something that I cannot realistically offer them. Sorry, you can’t become a logo designer in a few weeks.

“But maybe you can teach me just enough so I can do my own logo? It can be really simple!”

When you’re as committed and as passionate about your work as I am to mine, you don’t want people to be satisfied with the crumbs, when you have a big tasty (gluten-free, vegan, paleo, etc.) cake in store.

My desire is to educate people to recognize and value good design, not to enable them in creating mediocre design.

I want to see less of mediocre work in the world, not more. Teaching people how to do the most basic logos that “will do for now” doesn’t hold any spark of inspiration for me, so I don’t want to do it. While I’m sure a class like that would sell, that would feel out of integrity with my core values.

Being a good teacher is about recognizing what your students are ready for.

The vast majority of business owners (even those with an art background) are not ready to become great logo designers. But they are perfectly equipped to start thinking strategically and emotionally about their brand, and do the necessary foundational work to create a brand that lasts. That is what my book is all about.

As for designers, I’ll do my best to make my knowledge accessible to them in a way that also works for me.

Each person is unique, and teaching a group class is always a challenge, because people come from all walks of life, with different levels of experience. On the other hand, 1-on-1 tutoring is prohibitively expensive for most people.

Is there a compromise? In October 2018 I taught a workshop called “Logo Design Crash Course” for the first time to a group of designers and marketers who had prior experience creating digital graphics for the web. I only allowed applications from people with knowledge of design theory and a minimum of experience. (Students were welcome.)

Can this workshop turn a non-designer into a logo designer? Hell no. This workshop is meant to help experienced designers to expand into a new field, or to upgrade their logo design skills.

The first workshop was a success and people were really satisfied with it. Check out my Speaking page to read some of the reviews I’ve received. I’d love to repeat it again sometime, so if you know a conference or a school that would pay me to teach it, let me know ;)

Apart from this workshop, I won’t be teaching people how to design logos any time soon.

I am more than happy to teach brand strategy, so check out my new book:

Create a resonant, remarkable & sustainable brand

My book The Human Centered Brand teaches you how to create a magnetic brand in a way that’s natural for you, and easy to implement.

In the book, I lay out my best advice for creating a lasting and memorable brand and provide clear steps you can take to make progress immediately. It’s written specifically for service based businesses and creatives who want to grow authentic relationships with their clients and their audience. Find out more about the book.

Enter your contact details in the form below this post to receive the free chapter and additinal book bonuses! If branding has been on your to-do list, this is the perfect resource to get started.

More content like this:

How do I know what I’m buying? – Logo design & spec work

Design contests suck. Don’t do them.

Some blog articles contain affiliate links to products on Amazon. I’ll get paid a few cents if you buy something using my link, and there’s no extra charge to you.

4 responses to “Why I don’t teach business owners how to design their own logos”

1. Another great article. I think with logos, people assume because it ‘looks’ simple, that it IS simple – and there is a huge foundation to design that most people either just don’t have, or just don’t know how long it takes to get one.

   Reply

2. Thank you, Laura!
   Yes, you’re absolutely right.
   While overcomplicating things is often the sign of a novice designer (I keep having to tell my students to dial it down a bit), pulling off something simple is a bigger challenge than people realize.

   Reply

3. Thank for for an excellent post that is an education in itself. There is so much more to good design than meets the eye, and I can really appreciate how much goes into a good logo. You are so right about the importance of investing in something that is going to have a long life.
   I love seeing the Paypal and Twitter examples and seeing what a difference a small tweak can make.

   Reply

4. Thank you, Juliet!
   I’m happy to hear you agree, and that you appreciate the visual examples :)

   Reply