How To Design a $1M Logo

0:00how is it possible that some designers are charging five dollars for a logo While others can charge a 1.5 million dollar today I want to share the incredible story of Paula share and how she designed the famous million dollar logo for City in just 30 seconds and I'm gonna share everything that goes into actually designing million dollar logo and let me tell you it is not about using the latest feature of Adobe Illustrator in 1998 two huge companies cities and travelers insurance merge into a huge Financial Corporation valued at over 70 billion dollars the new company hired pentagram which is one of the best design agencies in the world to

0:39Rebrand the new company which is called Citigroup for a company like this who has so much value into how the public sees them a huge project like this is worth a lot and the whole branding project was valued at 10 million dollars out of it 1.5 million dollars where it's just for the logo design itself now you would expect that a huge and complex project like this would take months of hard work strategy session brainstorming coming up with a lot of options but the reality was Paula share was able to solve this problem in about 30 seconds the story is that Paula which is one of

1:17pentagram's managing partner was sitting in the kickoff meeting with the clients and while they were explaining about the project she basically took a napkin and sketched out a logo and told them here it is here's your logo you chose to keep the name City and so let's write City and if we want to maintain something from The Travelers Insurance Company which had an umbrella in it let's put the umbrella on top of the city and and that's it here's your logo in just 30 seconds but how is this really possible how can Paula just sketch out the first idea that comes to her mind and get this

1:51approved while all of us mere mortal designers we have to come up with a lot of different options for our clients they we have to get the feedback we have to convince them that this is actually good for them and not to mention we're not even being paid one percent of what she is getting paid how is this even possible well there's actually a story that helps to explain that there's a story that Picasso used to sit in the street and then you know offered somebody to pay her portrait so he kind of sketched it out in like two seconds and then offered the portraits to her

2:24and said that would be a thousand dollars and the woman said how how why are you charging a thousand dollars for it it took you basically 30 seconds to do that and he said yes that is correct however I've practiced my whole life to be able to do this sketch for you in 30 seconds and the same is actually true for Paula share and her logo design skills Paula share has been working as a designer for decades at this point and she has built an enormous experience in branding designing some of America's most iconic Brands she knows exactly what is required to create an amazing logo she knows that the logo

3:00needs to be appropriate she knows about the balance in the logo she knows that it needs to work in a single Corner that he needs to work in small scale all of the different properties of good logos a lot of them which we cover here on the channel they come to her immediately within like second nature she doesn't have to work for hours and and brainstorm million ideas it just naturally comes to her because she is a practicing professional and has practiced her whole life to be able to come up with the right solution immediately but the truth is that designing a solid logo that looks good

3:35that has all the appropriates that we talked about that's not really the hard thing and Paula share said it herself she said there are a lot of capable designers who are able to design pretty good logos but that's not really the problem and that's not why you're getting the big bucks for Designing logo they're really difficult and challenging thing for a designer is to go into a conference room where you have a lot of different people with a lot of different opinions and getting all of them to agree that we are going to use this logo and that this solution is right for them even though they have a lot of different

4:11opinions everybody wants to you know share what they like or don't like the ability to get all of the clients to agree to go with a certain direction that is the difficult skill and that is actually the secret why some designers are able to charge a million dollar for a logo While others are only charging five dollars the way to become a high value designer is to perfect your technical design skill but also hone your client management and soft skill that will enable you to manage the project and get your clients to buy into your design decisions now I personally have seemed to maxed out a charging ten

4:50thousand dollar for a logo you know the top bar to what designers actually can charge for their work is way way higher than where I personally am to me that's inspiring and it tells me that there's a lot of room for growth if you want to learn more about logo design and branding make sure you check this video and I'll see you on the next one