By Bianca Frank, Creative Director · Bianca Frank Design, Anchorage
Originally published August 2021. Fully rewritten and updated October 2026.
A business logo costs anywhere from $5 to $50,000, which is why the question is so hard to search. The $5 version is a stock mark with your name typed under it. The $50,000 version is a national agency and a year of meetings. Neither is what an Alaska small business is actually shopping for.
So here are our real numbers, what each one buys, and the five situations where a cheap logo quietly costs you more than the professional one would have.
In short:
- At Bianca Frank Design a professional logo is $750 (logo only) or $1,500 (logo plus brand development). Those are the actual prices.
- Every package, at either price, includes a primary mark, a secondary mark, an icon, every file format for print and digital in color and black and white, and a style guide with fonts and colors.
- The $1,500 package adds a written brand strategy guide, more concepts to choose from, and two finished pieces of collateral.
- Cheap logos fail in predictable places: the browser tab, the font nobody can find, the newspaper that needs a high-res file, the trade show banner, and the day you discover another company has the same mark.
- Pick the logo-only package if your name and positioning are settled; pick brand development if you’re launching or repositioning.
Our two logo packages, and exactly what’s in them
We publish these because the first question on every call is price, and because the useful comparison between designers isn’t the number, it’s what arrives in the folder.
| Logo Only | Logo + Brand Development | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $750 | $1,500 |
| Initial concepts | 3 | 5 |
| Revisions | Unlimited until completion | Unlimited until completion |
| Primary logo mark, all formats, color and black & white | Yes | Yes |
| Secondary mark | Yes | Yes |
| Icon graphic | Yes | Yes |
| Logo style guide (fonts, colors) | Yes | Yes |
| Written brand strategy guide | — | Yes |
| Collateral pieces (business card, social graphics, etc.) | — | 2 included |
The brand strategy guide in the second package is a real document, not a one-page PDF with swatches. It covers brand strategy, the rationale behind the identity, a logo index, a file-format guide, logo specifications, the color palette, type hierarchy, brand taglines and how the brand shows up digitally. It’s the thing your next designer, printer or web developer reads so the brand stays consistent after we’re done.
Both start with a branding intake form. It takes you twenty minutes and it’s where the good concepts come from; a designer who skips it is guessing.
What every professional logo must come with, whatever you pay
This is the checklist to hold any designer to, at any price. If a quote doesn’t include all of these, it isn’t a logo; it’s a picture of one.
-
- A primary mark in vector format (AI, EPS, SVG, PDF). Vector files scale from a favicon to a billboard with no loss. A JPEG or PNG alone is a dead end.
- Versions for every background: full color, one color, black, white (reversed). Your logo will end up on a dark truck, a light invoice and a photo, and each needs its own version.
- A secondary mark and an icon. The full logo won’t fit on a hard hat, a social avatar or a browser tab. A real system plans for that.
- The exact colors, as hex codes for screens and CMYK or Pantone for print, written down.
- The fonts, named, with where to get them. Not “something close.”
- A style guide that puts all of the above on a page or two so anyone can apply it correctly.
- Price tells you what you’re getting; these seven tests tell you whether it’s any good.
When we built the identity for Stalk Steakhouse in Eagle River, the deliverable was that whole system: primary, secondary and icon marks, custom typography and a full color code set, designed to hold up across signage, menus, merchandise, cards and the website. A restaurant logo lives on a dozen surfaces in a dozen sizes before opening day. One file wouldn’t have survived the first week.
The five places a cheap logo falls apart
These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re the calls we get from owners who bought the $50 logo two years ago.
1. The browser tab. The favicon is the tiny mark next to your site’s name in a tab or a bookmark. A logo that’s mostly words shrinks to an unreadable smudge there. A budget designer won’t give you a dedicated icon; a professional system includes one.
2. The font nobody can find. Cheap logo tools use their own typefaces or obscure variations. When you go to make a flyer or set up your website, nothing in Word, Canva or your theme matches, and every piece you produce drifts a little further from the logo. You’ll never get it to look right.
3. The newspaper. The Anchorage Daily News, a trade magazine or a chamber newsletter wants to feature you and asks for a high-resolution logo. You have a 400-pixel PNG. They run it blurry, or they don’t run it, or they run the competitor with the clean file.
4. The trade show. The organizer needs your logo for a ten-foot banner. Your JPEG, blown up, is a mess of jagged edges. Now you’re paying a designer to recreate the logo under deadline, then paying the printer twice.
5. The day you see your logo on someone else’s van. Designers charging a few dollars a logo produce dozens a day; recycled shapes are the business model. If another company had it first, you’re rebranding everything you’ve printed and, in the worst case, answering a trademark letter. The cheap logo was the most expensive thing you bought that year.
What actually drives the price of a logo
Two things, mostly. Time spent understanding the business before anything is drawn: the intake, the conversation, the competitive look, the strategy. That’s the difference between a mark that means something and one that’s decorative. And the completeness of the system: how many variants, formats and supporting documents arrive, and whether someone thought about the browser tab and the banner before you needed them.
For Health Centered Dentistry, the work was a rebrand: a modern mark, a vibrant palette and cohesive visual elements carried into patient-facing materials like the presentation folder new patients receive. The logo was the smallest part of what changed. The value was in everything the logo now had to coordinate with.
What doesn’t drive the price up, at least with us: the number of revisions. Both packages are unlimited until you’re done, because a logo you settle for is one we’ll both regret.
Which package should you choose?
Logo Only ($750) if your business name is settled, you know who you serve and how you want to sound, and you need a professional mark and the files to use it correctly. Typical: an established trade or practice replacing a dated or amateur logo without changing anything else about the business.
Logo + Brand Development ($1,500) if you’re launching, renaming, repositioning or expanding into a new market, or if nobody has ever written down what the brand stands for. The strategy guide is what keeps the next five years of materials consistent, and the two collateral pieces mean you launch with something in hand.
If you’re between the two, start with the intake form. Your answers usually make the choice obvious, and we’ll tell you if the smaller package is enough.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a small business pay for a logo? For a professional mark with a complete file set and style guide, expect $500 to $2,500 from an independent designer or small studio. Ours are $750 and $1,500. Under about $300 you’re almost always getting a template or a single raster file with no system behind it.
What files should I receive with a logo? Vector files (AI, EPS, SVG, PDF) plus PNG and JPEG exports, in full color, one color, black and white; a secondary mark and an icon; and a style guide listing fonts and exact color codes.
How long does logo design take? Typically about six weeks from the intake form to final files, depending on how quickly you give feedback on concepts. Brand development runs longer because the strategy guide comes first.
Can I just buy the logo now and the rest later? Yes. Start with Logo Only; if you later need the strategy guide and collateral, we build on the mark you already have rather than starting over.
Do I own the logo? Yes. On final payment the logo and all its files are yours outright, and we supply them in every format you’ll need so you’re never dependent on us to use it.
Start with the intake form
If you’d like a logo that still works in five years, the first step takes twenty minutes: fill out our branding intake form and we’ll come back with a recommendation on which package fits and why. Request the intake form or read more about our logo design and brand strategy work.
Bianca Frank is the founder and Creative Director of Bianca Frank Design, an Anchorage agency that has designed brands and websites for Alaska businesses since 2007. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design and leads a small in-house team covering branding, web design, SEO and content strategy, with recent work for clients including Nalaquq LLC, the Native Village of Barrow, Solstice Psychiatry and Alaska Geographic. BFD was named one of Anchorage’s best web designers by Three Best Rated (2025) and received UpCity’s Local Excellence and Best of Alaska awards (2022, 2023).
