Branding engagements are priced by scope, not by the logo. What varies is how much research, strategy and stakeholder work sits in front of the design, and how many applications sit behind it. Understanding what you are actually paying for is the only way to judge whether an agency, a freelancer or a generated identity is the right call.
Branding work is usually sold in one of three shapes:
- A logo only. A mark and a small set of files. The cheapest option, and the one that most often needs redoing, because nothing defines how the mark is used.
- An identity system. The logo plus arrangements, palette, typography, usage rules and a guidelines document. This is what most businesses actually need.
- A full branding engagement. Research, positioning, naming, messaging and voice, then the identity, then applications. Priced for the thinking as much as the artwork.
Costs rise steeply across those three because the labour is not drawing. It is discovery sessions, competitor and audience research, multiple explored directions, presentations and revision rounds with several stakeholders. Ask any quote which of the three you are buying before comparing it to another, because a logo-only quote and an identity-system quote are not the same purchase and should never be judged on price alone.
What are you actually paying an agency for?
Very little of an identity fee is the final artwork. The bulk is the work around it: understanding the market, deciding what the brand should stand for, exploring directions that get rejected, and defending the chosen one to a room of people with opinions.
That process has real value, and it is worth being clear about what it gives you that a generated identity does not.
| What an agency gives you | Available from a generated identity? |
|---|---|
| Positioning and strategy: what the brand should mean and to whom | No. This is thinking about your market, and it is yours to do. |
| Naming, and the research behind it | No. |
| Category and competitor research | No. |
| A person who pushes back on a bad decision | No. This is genuinely valuable and cannot be generated. |
| Stakeholder facilitation and presentation | No. |
| The identity system: arrangements, palette, type, rules | Yes. |
| The production files: formats, favicons, social sizes, tokens | Yes, and faster. |
When an agency is the right choice
When the brand is the business. If you are raising money on the strength of a category position, entering a crowded market where differentiation is the whole strategy, or need a name as well as a mark, pay for the thinking. A generated logo cannot tell you what your company should stand for, and no tool will argue with a founder who is about to make an expensive mistake.
When it is not
When you already know what you stand for and need it made real. Plenty of businesses have clear positioning and simply need a competent identity and the files to deploy it: a validated product needing a look, a service business that has outgrown a stopgap logo, a project that must ship this month.
In that case the strategy work you would be buying is work you have already done. What is left is production, and production is what tools are good at. Logofai starts at $9.99 per month for 150 credits, with 15 free credits to try, which makes it a different order of decision from an engagement you have to budget for.
If the thinking is done, make it real
An identity system and the production files, generated from one sentence.
Start free with 15 creditsA reasonable middle path
Many businesses do both, in sequence. Use a generated identity to launch and learn, then commission proper brand work once you know what the business actually is and can brief it properly. A rebrand informed by two years of trading is a better rebrand than a positioning exercise run before you had customers.
This is one piece of a complete hand-off. For the full list of what you should receive, see what a brand identity hand-off actually includes.
