How much should a logo cost a trade business?

Search it and you'll get every answer from five dollars to fifty thousand, and all of them are true for someone. For a shop with two trucks in Sarpy County the useful range is narrower, and the price matters less than two other things: whether the logo works in one color, and whether you get the files.

1. 01

   $5 to $50

   A marketplace listing or an AI generator. You get a PNG, often built around a stock icon that other businesses are also using, and no vector master. It looks fine on a phone and falls apart on a truck door, where the edges go soft and the sign shop asks for a file you don't have.

2. 02

   $250 to $1,000

   A designer who does this for a living, working from your trade and your truck. You get a vector master, a one-color version, and rules for using it. This is where most trade businesses belong. On this site it's Spark at $150, and a refresh of a mark you already have is $75.

3. 03

   $3,000 and up

   An identity project: research, several directions, a full system for a company with staff, a fleet and print runs. Worth it at that scale. Not a fit for a one-truck shop yet, and paying for it early doesn't make the shop bigger.

A trade logo lives on a truck door, an embroidered shirt, a yard sign, and a stamp on an invoice. Every one of those is cheaper and cleaner in a single color. Vinyl lettering is cut from one sheet. Embroidery charges by thread color. A rubber stamp has one. If the logo only works as a gradient with a glow behind it, you'll pay more everywhere it goes and it will look worse in every one of those places. Ask for the one-color version first and the color version second; a designer who starts the other way round is designing for a screen.

• SVG or AI: the vector master, which scales to a billboard without going soft
• PDF: what a sign shop or an embroiderer asks for
• PNG with a transparent background, for the website and social
• A one-color version in black and one in white
• The color codes and the font names, written down on one page

If a designer won't hand over the vector file, you don't own your logo; you're renting a picture of it, and the next sign shop will charge you to redraw it. On this site every logo package includes the files, and you own them outright. The price sheet says so on every rung.

• Six directions when one good one was the job
• Revisions with no limit and no brief, so nobody knows when it's done
• A logo designed for a screen, then redrawn for the truck at extra cost
• Buying the logo, the sign, the site and the listing from four people who never talk to each other

The last one is the expensive one. A logo that arrives as a JPEG, a website built by someone who never saw the truck, and a Google listing with a different phone number: three bills, three looks, and a customer who can't tell it's the same business.

A photo of the truck, the name exactly as it's registered, your trade, the towns you work, and two logos you like from any industry. That's enough of a brief. You don't need a mood board, and you don't need to know what you want it to look like; you need to know what it has to do, and the answer is usually "read from across a parking lot and cost nothing extra to print".

• Read from across a parking lot, on a moving truck
• Work at one inch on a business card and at four feet on a door
• Hold together as one shape, so a customer recognizes it before reading it
• Keep the name legible; the mark is a bonus, the name is the business
• Survive being photographed on a phone and posted in a group
• Print in one color without losing anything

Use one typeface for the name, and make it heavy enough to cut in vinyl at door size without the thin strokes falling off. Skip the script font unless the trade is a bakery; a plumber's name in cursive reads as a plumber who doesn't answer the phone. Check the name at small sizes with the letters spaced a touch wider than feels right on screen, because vinyl and embroidery close the gaps. If you already have a typeface you like on the truck, keep it; consistency beats taste.

If customers already know the mark, keep it and fix what's wrong with it: the outline that fills in at small sizes, the four colors that should be one, the font that looks like a clip-art wrench. A clean-up keeps the recognition and drops the printing problems. A rebuild is for a mark that was never drawn properly in the first place.

SPARK IS $150 ON THE SHEET. A LOGO REFRESH IS $75. YOU OWN THE FILES EITHER WAY.