Branding, branding, branding…it’s all around us these days. Branding is certainly an important concept to understand as a horse business owner - it embodies your essence and conveys to your audience the feeling of what your business is about. Your logo is the visual representation of your brand, and must convey the feeling of your brand.
In a perfect world, you hire a graphic designer as you’re in the start-up stage of your business. You work together to develop your logo based on your vision and mission, and from your first days you have a logo to use with all your marketing materials and initiatives. Yup, in a perfect world that’s how it goes.
More often than not, businesses are started without a logo and on a shoe string budget. As much as you might want a logo, it slips down the list of priorities. There are a variety of ways you can get a logo on a shoe string budget.
1) Send out an email to your list of contacts looking for someone that does graphic design. Many people in the horse industry do more than one job to earn a living, and some do graphic design. You can then ask the graphic designers that you learn about to provide you with samples and pricing for a logo. This gives you a few proposals to compare.
2) Local colleges that offer graphic design courses often require students to work on projects. Contact them to see how you might become a student project. The logos that the students develop are usually done for no charge. If you don’t like what they come up with you are under no obligation to use it and have not spent money on it. If you do like it, you might ask the instructor if you can make a small donation, perhaps to a graphic design club at the school. You can also offer to provide a recommendation for the student which can come in handy as they look for work in the graphic design world.
3) There are some interesting options available online too. Check out www.99desgins.com. This is a crowd sourcing design service. That means that you choose how many designs you want to see based on pricing, and that many designers will submit one. You choose which one you want.
No matter which method you choose, when you have a logo design you’re interested in; show it to a few people that are your clients, colleagues, and friends. Ask them what they think. Ask them what their first impression is when they see the logo. Ask them if your logo will be easy for someone to recall and bring to mind. Ask them if the logo is “you.” You’ll be able to make changes based on their feedback so that your logo will speak to your audience and reflect you and your horse business.
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