Innie Vs. Outie – Navel Gazing In-House and Outsourcing in the New Marketplace

OK, you are a young upstart company, looking to give yourself a logo. Say your company name is Frankenscents, because you sell refined scented oils and your name is Frank. You decide that while your myopic secretary may have some great ideas about how your logo should look you don't think her proposals, all including crude drawing of her 2nd favorite cat in varying compromising positions, are the proper representation of your company's core principles.

It appears that you will be in the market for a logo design company. There are lots of them on the internet and they all seem to be offering a similar product, so you decide to base your decision on price. For what you are paying you get 6 concepts and 6 revisions. That sounds alright. And the price is certainly right.

Your logo design professionals promise you the moon. Unfortunately, what you get ends up more like a cardboard cutout, and you don't like it. If you don't start to like it within the 6 revisions granted you're going to be stuck with it because there are no refunds with this contract.

The secret as to why a lot of logo design companies can offer such a low price on the product and services is because they are outsourcing their labor. Essentially the company that you hired does no actual design in-house, they are merely middlemen between your company and cheap labor.

For something as important and all encompassing as a logo, you would really want a company to devote all their resources to the creation of such. Not to say that the outsourced product that is being created is inferior. I'm sure there's lots of hard working, talented individuals capable of creating logos for your company. However, if an advertising agency bases their core philosophies on profit, it gives a slash and burn aspect of profiteering to the whole affair. You have a business that offers quantity over quality.

A logo design company with their designers in house would take the time to research your company and judge the competition, helping your logo to be not only a representation of your company but a shining exemplar of what your company could be. It could be like buying those jeans that you one day intend to fit into.

As is often the case if life, if it appears too good to be true it often is.