Straight answers on design
Graphic design guides for small businesses, from real projects
Plain advice on branding, logo design, print and packaging: what it costs, what you actually need and what makes the difference. Written by a County Durham graphic designer working with small businesses across Newcastle, Durham and the North East.
What branding actually costs a small business
What branding actually costs a small business
Real prices for UK small business branding: £100 to £250 for a logo or flyer, £250 to £500 a month for ongoing support, and what moves the number.
Most design studios won't tell you. You fill in a form, wait three days, get a call, and only then find out whether you were ever in the right ballpark. It wastes your time and mine.
So here are real numbers.
The short answer
A single piece of design done properly, whether that's a logo, a set of business cards or a flyer, runs £100 to £250 in my studio. Ongoing monthly design support is £250 to £500 a month. A full brand identity built from scratch is quoted per project, because no two are the same size.
That's the honest range for a solo designer in the North East. A London agency will quote four or five figures for the same brief, and a marketplace site will offer you £30. Both those numbers are real, and both come with consequences.
Why anyone quotes a range at all
Because "a logo" describes two completely different jobs.
One version is a single mark, delivered as a file, for a business that needs something to put on an invoice. That's a few hours' work and it sits at the bottom of the range.
The other is a mark that has to work as a 20mm sticker, embroidered on a jacket, three feet tall on the side of a van, and as a 32-pixel favicon, and still be recognisable in every one of them. That needs testing at each size, usually a simplified variant or two, and a document explaining which version goes where. Same word, four times the work.
When I quote, I'm working out which of those you actually need. Then you get one fixed figure in writing, and it doesn't move unless the job does.
What actually moves the number
How many places it has to live. A logo for a website is straightforward. A logo that also has to survive vinyl cutting, embroidery and a supermarket shelf takes longer, because each of those breaks different things.
Whether you need the rules written down. Brand guidelines, the document covering colour codes, type, spacing and what not to do, are what stop a brand drifting once other people start using it. If it's only ever you touching the files, you may not need them. The moment a printer, a sign writer and a social media freelancer are all working from the same logo, you do.
How much is already decided. If you arrive knowing your name, your audience and roughly the feel you want, we start at concepts. If those are still open, there's thinking to do first, and that's real work.
Print management. Getting artwork press-ready and dealing with the printer is a job in itself. I can hand you the files or handle it. The second costs more and usually saves you money on the print bill, because artwork rejected at the printer is expensive.
What you should get for your money, at any price
The working files, not just a JPEG. Vector artwork scales to any size without going fuzzy. A JPEG doesn't. If a designer won't hand over vectors, you don't really own your logo.
Full usage rights, in writing. Once the project's paid for, the artwork should be yours to use anywhere, forever.
A fixed quote before work starts. Hourly billing on creative work means the meter runs while someone changes their mind.
A named number of revision rounds. "Unlimited revisions" sounds generous and usually means the price already assumes you'll need them.
Where cheap goes wrong
The £30 logo isn't a scam. You get a logo. What you often don't get is a logo that works. The three problems I see most often, all from businesses who come to me to fix them:
It's not actually original. Stock marks get resold. Discovering a competitor two counties over has your logo is not a good day.
It only exists as a PNG. Your sign writer needs vector artwork. Your embroiderer needs vector artwork. You'll pay someone to redraw it, which costs more than doing it once.
It was designed on a screen for a screen. Fine detail and thin lines vanish at sticker size and turn to mush in embroidery. When I designed the mark for a caravan storage business on the Costa Brava, the test that mattered wasn't how it looked on a monitor. It was whether it still read as a round sticker on a windscreen.
What I'd actually suggest
If you're just starting and money's tight, buy less rather than buying cheap. A properly made logo plus business cards, done once, beats a full identity done badly. You can add to it.
If you're already trading and your design is slowing you down, if you're waiting on someone every time you need a social post, then monthly support is usually better value than a stack of one-off jobs.
And if you're not sure which, say so. That's what the first conversation is for, and I'll tell you honestly when the answer is "less than you were expecting."
Based in County Durham, working with businesses across Newcastle, Durham, Sunderland, Gateshead and the wider North East. Prices are on the pricing page, and every job is quoted in writing before anything starts. Tell me what you're building.