Inspite of there being many articles and videos spreading awareness regarding this issue, the problem still exists. Many clients and beginner designers find it very difficult to understand the concept of pricing in logo design, I too had a lot of trouble with it initially but like every complex problem you have to break it down to simple bits and then solve them.
Understanding this concept is essential for both the designer and the client, infact it is the ethical duty of the designer to make her or his client aware of it as a representative of the industry, so I am doing my part here being a designer.
The client has to understand the fact that the designer has perfected her or his skills through hard work, heavy investments and many a times a rebellion against the conventional surroundings.
The designer has to have an honest awareness about her or his own skillset and quality of work before determining the pricing.
To make it look less intuitional, following are some factors which contribute to the pricing system.
1. Skill of the designer.
Like other professions the quality of work and experience in the field determine much of the range in price.
A designer who undercharges might not be able to execute the design process perfectly even if he or she has good design skills, especially in providing a full proof logo which doesn't looks generic.
While an experienced designer knows how exactly to follow the standards of the industry, for example presenting the final files in appropriate formats, making the logo usable in every media desired by the client, checking for unintended plagiarism before finalizing the logo, making it dispute proof and so on. So if you settle with low price logos, made mostly by undercharging designers it is very likely that you might have to change your logo in near future costing you heavy cash on rebranding which you can avoid by hiring a proper designer from the beginning who can design a logo with a long life.
2. Usage of the logo.
Same designer may charge different prices for different clients for a variety of reasons, like the associated cause and extent of usages. For example for a giant corporation the logo has to be used in much more places than small scale businesses and sometimes the designers charge less from charitable trusts or NGOs because of their cause which too is subjective to the designer because every case is unique after a point.
3. The deadline.
Ofcourse if the client wants a logo urgently the price will go higher.
More efforts in less time means the designer is giving you extra priority, time and working on boost mode, (some even skip their meals you might never know).
4. Miscellaneous stuff.
Like for example in certain cases buying fonts, stock images or similar stuff, that's all on the clients part to pay for.
Also the number of revisions also affect the cost, because a designer cannot make infinite logos for you if you keep rejecting.
In the end a true designer ensures that your logo is unique, memorable, usable, aesthetically appropriate in structure, and an original work. We as designers expect from the clients to understand the efforts which we put in to deliver the standard results, which from a no-brainer's point of view may appear abstract but they are very real and take energy, time and hard earned skills to create.