At Hot Pyjama Productions, we get a lot of people come to us with a logo that they’ve already had created elsewhere at a low-cost price. The logos tend to be made by friends of theirs that know a bit about graphic design (you know, the sort that make their own Christmas Cards each year) (Ed: Yeah I do that).

The logos often look fairly generic. Yeah ok, they suit a purpose but there’s nothing particularly unique about them. But, the reason these people then come to Hot PJ is: the client has had to use their logo for the first time for an actual business use – e.g. they’re getting a sign made and need to supply their logo file to the signwriter or they’re getting some business cards printed and need to supply their logo – and they hit a problem.

The supplier asks for a high quality print PDF file, or an .ai file, or a vector file, and the client is stumped. All they have is a low-res .jpg image suitable for displaying on a website.

Logo not by Hot PJ

They go back to the creator and that person’s either busy with someone else and will get onto it next month for a further cost, not contactable any more, not interested or its out of their capabilities.

What we would then do is use the low-res logo as a reference point and create a whole range of files as part of a Hot PJ logo suite. This comes with all the file formats that a printer/signwriter/publication would ever ask you for, as well as a guide to what each file type actually means.

Logo by Hot PJ

Those files then belong to the client. At no point will the client ever hear “Actually we own the rights to that logo so we’ll have it back now thanks”.

So yes, sometimes there are much cheaper logo creators out there. But no, you’re not likely to get something you can actually use for anything other than putting on a website.

Posted on October 1st, 2009 by Mark Lincoln
Filed under: Marketing