More thoughts on freebie logos

By
Angie Herrera

Last week I [posted a link] to a rant by [James](http://thegraphicmac.com/users/james) over at [The Graphic Mac](http://thegraphicmac.com/rant-logo-instant-free-web-20-logos). And perhaps not surprisingly, I agree with his rant on all points. But there was one thing that stood out to me that I felt needed some further discussing since it may something business owners don't think about. Toward the end of his article, James writes: > ...you don't have exclusive rights to the logo. Anyone in the world can download the Photoshop or EPS files provided on the site, customize the name and use the logo as they see fit. Not only that, but the logos I downloaded were all screen-resolution, suitable for Web use only. There are a couple of points here that could easily be overlooked. ### Resolution and file formats The first point can be extracted from this sentence: > ...the logos I downloaded were all screen-resolution, suitable for Web use only. Of the logos I downloaded for this article, this was partially true. For those instances, the second you try to put one of those logos on a piece of printed material it's going to look like utter shit. (Excuse my French.) Worse, most of the ones I downloaded included only a Photoshop file. File formats are not created equal. While some logo designers will create logos in Photoshop, 99.9% of the time logos are designed in vector format so that scalability isn't an issue later on. Just ask any [respected](http://www.davidairey.com/) [logo designer](http://www.jfisherlogomotives.com/). A good logo designer will provide multiple formats (usually for printing and web). Most of the logos came in RGB only. Sorry, but this is not good practice and proves, in my opinion, that the people that created these logos have a long way to go before they can be called "designers". To make matters worse, on some of these logos the "designers" didn't convert the fonts to outlines. This means that, in Photoshop at least, you have to guess what font they used. In a few cases, the font was included. I didn't take the time to search for the fonts that were included, but unless it was a free font, the designer has very likely violated the font's licensing. Fonts that are paid for from legit foundries cannot be redistributed, plain and simple. ### Exclusive rights When you hire a logo designer, you will (at least you *should*) get 100% full copyrights to the logo. Not just that, you get ***exclusive*** rights. I'm not a lawyer but I've been in this industry long enough, read about copyrights enough, and consulted with our own attorney, to know what that means. Exclusive rights means that you, the purchaser of the work, are the only one in the world with rights to use it. I, as the designer / creator, cannot under any circumstances try and sell that same logo to another client. Apart from that being unethical, it's the law. But with a site such as Logo Instant or other similar sites (even ones where you pay bargain-basement prices for logos), it's **very unlikely** that you're getting exclusive rights. Instead, someone else can grab that same logo artwork file and use it for their business, blog, whatever. Exclusive rights *alone* is enough reason to pay more than a few hundred bucks for a logo. Don't agree? Fine. But don't whine when you see the same logo on a competitor's signage or business card. (The fact that Logo Instant features a "most downloaded" page ought to raise some red flags.) ### What it says about you If you've started your business because you offer something different – even if it's a small something – than others in your industry, going the cheap route with your branding makes you look, well, cheap. It's a lot like the cliche of the used car salesman. Would you buy from a company that looked cheap? Neither will your target audience. (And by "you" I mean you if you've downloaded and used - or plan on using - one of these logos for your business.)