There is a real market in Nairobi for a 2,000-shilling logo and a real market for a 200,000-shilling one, and both are honest prices for different things. The confusion comes from calling them the same word.
What you are actually buying at each price
The very cheap end
Someone opens a template library, changes the text to your company name, changes the colour, and sends you a PNG. Twenty minutes of work, priced accordingly.
This is not a scam and it is not always wrong. If you need something on a receipt book by Friday and the business may not exist in a year, it is the correct purchase. What you should know is what you do not get: no alternative version for a dark background, no file that scales without going fuzzy, nobody has checked whether three other companies in your sector are using the same template, and you almost certainly do not own it.
The middle
A designer actually draws something for you. You get a few routes, you pick one, it gets refined. Files in the formats a printer will ask for.
This is where most small businesses should be, and it is where our Identity Essentials tier sits at $290, 1 – 2 weeks. A young company that needs to look credible, fast.
The top
Now you are not buying a logo. You are buying a system: the mark plus every variant, a type scale, a colour palette specified for screen and for print, rules for how it is used, and documentation so that the next person who touches it does not undo the work.
Ours is $790 for 3 – 4 weeks. A rebrand that has to hold up across print, screen and packaging.
The three questions that actually set the price
Not "how good is the designer". These.
- How many places does it have to work? A mark that lives on a website and a business card is a smaller job than one that also lives on a shopfront, a vehicle wrap, an embroidered shirt and six product labels. Embroidery in particular kills detailed logos — thread cannot render a hairline.
- How many people have to agree? Two founders who trust each other is a fast project. Five stakeholders with opinions is a slow one, and slow costs more.
- Do you have a brand, or just a name? If you know who you are for and what you stand against, we design. If you do not, that has to be worked out first, and that is real hours.
What to check before you pay anyone
Cheap or expensive, ask these four. The answers cost nothing and they are where the disasters hide.
- Do I own it outright? Get it in writing. A surprising number of cheap logos are licensed, not sold.
- Can I have the vector files? AI, EPS, SVG — something that scales. A JPEG is not a logo, it is a picture of one.
- Does it work in one colour? Your logo will eventually be stamped, embroidered, faxed or printed on a delivery note. If it only works in full colour with a gradient, it will fail.
- Has anyone checked it is not already taken? At minimum a search of the Kenyan business register and a reverse image search.
The expensive mistake is not paying too much for a logo. It is paying twice — once for the cheap one, and again eighteen months later when you have outgrown it and have to reprint everything.
When cheap is genuinely right
If you are testing an idea, if the name might change, if you have no customers yet — buy the cheap one and spend nothing more. Come back when the business has proved it is going to exist. We would rather do the Full Identity System for you in two years than the Identity Essentials badly today.