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Office: 205 Durham Street (top floor)
Christchurch CBD 8011
PO Box 3871, Christchurch, NZ

Enquiries: 0800 30 8996
(03) 964 5305 - Reception
info@activatedesign.co.nz

Web Support:
(03) 961 1106 - Support
support@activehost.co.nz

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Activate Design Limited
Jon Tarr; our logo designer
Types of Logos

Frequently Asked Questions

What is your pricing based on?

There are x3 main factors which determine our pricing. Time: The amount of time we spend on the job and this is something that we estimate based on what the logo project requirements are. Experience: We’ve designed hundreds of logos for all types of businesses over the past 20 years. We’ve learned valuable things along the way, sharpened our skills and have a proven portfolio of successful brands. Most people agree this is worth something. Market Value: We are a professional agency and have been around a long time. We are stable and proven. Many other agencies at our level charge a lot more than we do, we consider ourselves very reasonably priced for what we produce. 

Do I get multiple logo designs to choose from?

Of course, we can design multiple logos for you if you'd like to pay for multiple logos. But over our time in the design industry we’ve found that providing lots of ‘logo options’ isn’t actually beneficial to our customers. 

We have designed successful brands for hundreds of companies across many industries over the past 20 years and part of the design cost is for our experience and guidance. Therefore we feel it is a a disservice to our customers to provide lots of options and hope that our client chooses the best one.

We only want you to have the best logo. 

When working to a fixed price, obviously there is a certain limit to how long we can spend on a job. Should this amount of time be split in order to present various options - it actually means that LESS time is spent on each design. We would rather put 100% of our effort into thinking, planning, communicating and creating only THE BEST concept to present to you. 

Our portfolio of work and our experience in the industry, we hope, ensures you can trust that we will do a great job and what we present to you will be something we can both stand behind and believe will be successful.

A good analogy would be choosing a restaurant; the chef is not likely to create several different meals and let you taste them all first before choosing and only paying for one of them. 

What if I do not like the design?

This is unlikely but we understand your concern. We hope that by looking through our portfolio, seeing the work we have done and talking to our logo designer  - that you feel confident that we are the right team for you. We’ve designed a lot of great logos for many award winning businesses, so our experience, we hope, will alleviate any fears you might have. We don’t just throw together a logo. We put in a lot of thought and effort and each aspect is carefully considered.

Remember: we will only show you a brand if we love it ourselves.

Sometimes the most successful logos we have designed are not what the customer initially thought they wanted. At times it can take a bit of courage to entrust in our experience to know what is going to work best in the market. After all, that is what you are paying us for. But for peace of mind we offer a design guarantee.

Our design guarantee: In the unlikely event you are truely not happy with the logo we have created - we will design you another logo for free, no extra cost! 

Will I own the copyright to the logo design?

Yes, once the logo has been paid in full you will have IP ownership over the final logo design. We will provide you with a signed Copyright Transfer document for your records.

What about trademarks?

We don't use generic online logo templates like most cheaper companies do. We custom draw our own designs and lettering in order to stay on a unique path during the creation process.  Therefore to the best of our knowledge, the final deliverables will not infringe upon the IP rights of any third party. However, we do not conduct any type of IP clearance search, conducting a copyright, trademark, patent or design patent clearance search via a legal IP firm. 

Furthermore, we do not provide trademarks as that is something a lawyer must organize for you if required. You need to visit an IP Lawyer to talk about protecting your logo with a trademark if you wish to do so. The cost varies significantly depending on how many categories and in how many countries you wish to apply for. Another option is to do it online through trademarksonline.nz

Good Logos

Good Logos

A goog logo should be simple.

The first critical aspect of a quality logo is that it is simple. Look at all the globally successful brands and they are remarkable simple; Apple, Nike, Adidas, Twitter. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose by complicating a logo design.

A good logo should be unique.

Lack of originality affects a brand in every way. The main purpose of a logo is to identify your company. If the logo can be confused with another business, or remind you of another business, or blend in with your competition - then it is not doing a good job.

When taking part in a logo design project for the first time - the inexperience can cause uncertainty. A common mistake is to look at your competitors logos and think that you should have 'something like them.' But this really defeats the purpose of having a unique, own-able brand for your company that sets you apart in your market. 

A good logo should be memorable.

A good logo should be recongizable as yours. When someone sees your logo for a second time they should know that they have seen your business before. A very common mistake is to see a logo you like and think ‘I want my logo to look like that.’ If it looks like another company brand then it is not memorable and it is not original.

A good logo should be balanced.

Good logos have good balance. Say you have a design which has long wispy lines floating out to the left - and you want the logo left-aligned at the top of a page. It's not going to look left aligned, as it only aligns to the left most element. Or perhaps the logo was to be centred on a wine bottle, if you take the logo and centre align it.. the bulk of the logo is going to sit to the right and look unbalanced. Good logos should either be able to sit balanced as they are - or be versatile in that they have variances to suit different arrangements.  

A good logo should be versatile.

A good logo should work in a variety of situations it may find itself. Black and white, on-screen, printed one colour, embroided, sign-written, on a pen etc. A common mistake is to make a logo to suit a single purpose (like a website) only to find that it does not work for something you had not originally considered (like printing).

A good logo should be appropriate.

A good logo should be appropriate for it's audience and convert itself accordingly. For example; a fun, playful, bright, wobbly typeface would be appropriate for a kindergarten or toy store - but not for a health clinic or an accountant. However, a logo doesn't need to be an image of what the company does. Restaurant logos don't need to show food, the Nike logo isn't a shoe, the Apple logo doesn't have a computer etc. The logo just needs to convey the essence of the company and it is the association with a product, service, business or corporation that provides the meaning. To do this, a good logo needs to be appropriate to it's requirement and usage.  

The Golden Ratio