Become a Professional Logo Designer

How did I go from $25 logos up to $2500+ for each and every logo design. If you find yourself struggling to increase the prices of your designs. And that doesn’t just apply to logo designs, I’m talking about your designs in general. Then you’re going to want to watch today’s post because I’m going to impart on some skills, some knowledge, and some tips. How you can raise up the bar on your pricing on your graphic designs.

So I think I started freelancing back in about 2009. I started on a platform that many of you probably know and that is People Per Hour. If you look at some of my older designs you can see that they were not that great.

Let’s be honest. But I managed to secure semi-regular clients on people per hour way back in 2009. But of course, most people couldn’t make a living from selling a logo for $25. Especially if you take around seven days to finish a project like I did back then.

So how do we go about raising that bar and increasing the value of our time and our graphic designs. Well as you can see I have elevated myself up to higher levels of pricing and also skill set standards. The recent revamp of my portfolio website does show how five come since 2009.

I find myself turning down clients quite often because I simply don’t have the time to work on their projects. And that’s the first point that I want to tell you guys TIME. You’re not going to be able to raise up your level of skill and also your pricing overnight. It’s going to happen it’s a gradual process. That you need to be aware of and it’s something that happens step by step.

A good example here is that. Nobody picks up a guitar for the first time and instantly can you know do the best solo ever or be Kurt Cobain from nirvana. It just doesn’t work like that. There is that saying that it takes 10,000 hours of work on one specific subject or topic to completely master it. And even though 10,000 is just a ballpark number. I do agree with the logic that you need to spend a lot of time on one specific thing before you become any good at it.

Of course, if you’re not good at something and you cannot prove that you’re good at something. People are not going to want to pay big money on you and your time for your designs.

So that’s the first thing you need to understand that it’s a process and a step-by-step method. Where you’re going to be improving little by little over a long period of time. And if you take into consideration the tips that I’m going to show you coming up now you really will be able to achieve higher levels of skill and then higher levels of income in return.

So if I tell you guys the most important or one of the most important parts of increasing your value to clients. Is the ‘m’ word. What do you think that ‘m’ word is? Its hugely important to business in general. But especially you guys as the logo or graphic designers.

That ‘m’ word is marketing. Let’s say you’re an upcoming musician and you’ve just created or made your first song. Now if you try and sell that song by yourself, the means that you have at your disposal. You’re probably not going to get too many sales and that’s probably because of the absence of marketing.

It doesn’t matter how good or original that song is. If there’s an absence of marketing it’s not going to get that many sales. That’s because marketing allows more eyes or more people to view or become aware of something. That’s why musicians work with labels or agents. Because those people have their contacts and also the resources to market things.

So as a logo or graphic designer you’re going to want to market yourself. And get as many people to view your work as possible. It doesn’t matter if you have awesome logo designs or amazing skills if people aren’t finding your work. Then you’re not going to guarantee sales. That’s why freelance websites or platforms are so helpful. Because they already have the marketing down to they already have many people or many potential clients on their platform.

So they do the marketing for you, if that makes sense. But of course, freelance platforms can be saturated and they take huge fees in return. So you’re going to want to market yourself on social media and also your own portfolio website.

One of the biggest reasons why my logo design career took off. There are actually quite a few but one of them is YouTube. YouTube for me has been a marketing tool because when my videos rack up millions millions of views there might be some people watching those videos who want a logo design.

So they’re actually directed to my portfolio website from YouTube. Then they get in touch with me if they want to inquire about a project. This is one version of marketing. But you really need to consider how to market yourself as a graphic or logo designer.

I’m not going to go into huge detail about that today, because it will take a long time and it probably needs the same separate post.

So the next TIP is to look at your own work. But also to look at other people’s work so if you can identify successful designers. That already exists out there who are already making really cool really neat and professional logos. Then you can kind of deconstruct or reverse engineer their logo designs. Someone who’s going to find it hard to elevate their designs is going to look a professional work. They’re going to feel hurt, they’re going to have a bad taste in their mouth, and just ignore it that’s not the right way to go about things.

Because let’s face it most of us at the beginning or at the very beginning are not professionals and our skills are pretty lousy. So you want to look up to the people who are doing really good things. Admire their work and think about why does it work how is successful. Then in doing so you can go back to your own designs look at them critically objectively. Think where you can improve because like I said at the start of the post.

If your graphic designs are not or your logo designs are not that good they’re not going to draw in a whole lot of money. So what I would do is I would take your best, also your worst logo designs. Then make some notes about them write down aspects of why your logo works in some situations and how you do things in a good way. Then write down some notes on where it went wrong, where the logo design failed and how you can improve on that. If you do this once a month. For example, you are really going to have a good idea of where you’re going wrong in your logo design process.

That brings me on to the next point in today’s post.

I was guilty of this for the longest time and it really did hinder my growth as a graphic designer. I was somebody who got a brief from the client and I instantly just jumped into adobe illustrator and just started designing just like that. Sure you can come up with some decent designs every once in a while doing that. But it’s not sustainable and it’s not a surefire way to become a better designer. As soon as I started to consider the graphic design process in my logo workflow. Things started to really improve in my design skills and the final outcome for the client.

The logo design process exists for a reason. There are reasons why many professional and high-end logo designs. Because it is agencies consider it to be very useful. Yes, you’re going to take more time designing. Yes at the beginning it’s going to feel unnatural and uncomfortable to do it or maybe even pointless.

But once you start taking the process seriously, you start taking your design seriously. You start pulling up more ideas more concepts and your level of work is going to be raised up. Once that level of work raises up your prices can come up too.

That’s pretty much how I went from 25 per logo up to 2500+. You can narrow it down to persistence the understanding that it takes time. It is a journey of marketing being critical of your work. Looking at other work out there that’s already really really good and then also of course the design process.