It can be super tempting to get the cheapest design you can get for a logo, especially since designers charge what seems to be a lot, especially for small start-ups. However, we can promise you that getting a stock logo design will always come back to bite you. While there is definitely a place for stock logo design, and stock photos in general, it isn’t in the representation of your professional business. Leave stock design to lemonade stands.
Why Can’t I Use a Stock Logo Design to Start With?
This is, of course, an excellent question. They were designed by someone, after all, and you’ll probably not immediately overlap with the other businesses that used the same logo, right?
Well.
Maybe.
You don’t really know who is going to use that logo and for what. Unfortunately, sometimes your business will overlap with another business that is not as honest or as ethical as yours.
Let’s say you decide you’re going to open a local sushi joint and you decide to use this logo from a standard stock site:
Pretty cute, right? You can build a brand around this little guy!
What if someone else decides to start a business down the street that sells chopsticks?
What if someone decides to start selling shirts with this fish on it?
What if a new fish store decides he’s adorable, but they develop a bad reputation for soaking everything in lemon before they sell it?
Since you used a stock image, you can’t control what else this fish is used for. You don’t know what else people are going to use a stock logo design for and if it ruins or tarnishes your reputation at all, there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it.
If you owned this fish and had paid for it through proper means, then you can trademark it, and become the sole owner of your design.
You can use a design for inspiration and get something that is exactly what you want instead of mostly okay. If we go back to our the stock logo design, our fish friend, maybe you suddenly decide that you don’t like that his fins are yellow. You have no idea what a vector is, even, or how to fix that. So…what do you do? You either tolerate it, or you ask a designer for help anyway. If you’re already asking a designer, you might as well get something you really like, and something that you can protect if someone tries to steal it.
And finally, there are completely affordable logo, website, and business services available. Even if you don’t like our small team of awesome, there are still a lot of really quality designers and design teams out there that are going to be fantastic choices and that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Sure, you will need to pay your designers fairly, but you expect the same treatment for clients of your company, right?
The benefits to staying away from stock logos far outweigh the cash you’ll have to spend, and you’ll be happier for it in a decade when that investment is what made your business boom.
