A jewellery shop in Varanasi paid ₹3,000 for a logo. They got one JPEG file, 800 pixels wide, on a white square.

It looked fine in the WhatsApp message. Then the signboard painter asked for a vector file, and there wasn’t one. The shop’s own printer could not use it for a visiting card without the white box showing. On the dark section of their website it sat in a pale rectangle like a sticker.

They paid again, to a different designer, to redraw their own logo from a picture of it.

Nothing about that is unusual. The design was not the problem. The brief was.

What you should receive

A logo is not an image. It is a small set of files, each for a different job. If you get one file, you have bought one situation.

A vector file — usually .svg, .ai or .eps. This is the logo drawn as instructions rather than pixels, so it can be scaled to a visiting card or a hoarding without going soft. This is the file signboard painters, printers and packaging suppliers ask for, and it is the one most often missing.

A version with a transparent background. So it can sit on your own colour rather than in a white box.

A light version and a dark version. Your logo has to work on a white flyer and on a dark website header. One file rarely does both, and the version that gets forced is the one that looks wrong.

A single-colour version. For a rubber stamp, an embroidered shirt pocket, a fax header, a newspaper advert. Anywhere colour is not available or not affordable.

A small-size version, simplified. What works at hoarding scale often turns to mush as a favicon or a WhatsApp profile picture. Frequently this is just your initials or the mark without the words.

Written down: the exact colours and the fonts. Colour codes, not “the blue”. Font names, not “something modern”. Without this every future advert drifts a little, and after two years nothing quite matches.

If a quote does not list these, ask. The answer tells you whether you are buying a logo or a picture of one.

How to tell whether the design is any good

You are not a designer, and you do not need to be. Four checks will catch most problems.

Look at it small. Shrink it to the size of a phone contact photo. Can you still tell what it is? Most over-detailed logos fail here, and this is the size customers see most often.

Look at it in grey. Convert it to black and white. A design that only works in its colours is fragile — and it will meet black and white sooner than you think.

Say what it is for. If you cannot explain in one sentence why this mark suits your business rather than any other, neither can your customer. “It looks premium” is not an answer.

Check it does not look like the shop next door. Search your own category locally. If three competitors have a similar mark, you have bought invisibility at full price.

What you are not checking is whether you personally like it. Your taste is not the customer’s, and a logo you love that nobody remembers has failed at the only job it had.

Consistency is worth more than cleverness

Here is the uncomfortable part: a plain logo used consistently beats a brilliant one used carelessly, every time.

Recognition is repetition. A customer needs to see the same mark, the same two colours and the same lettering several times before your name attaches to anything. If your signboard, your delivery bags, your Instagram posts and your website each use a slightly different version, you are starting that process again on every surface — and paying for the privilege.

This is the actual reason to insist on written-down colours and fonts. It is not designer fussiness. It is what allows the fifth person who touches your brand to produce something that matches the first. We have written about how that gets organised in our guide to brand consistency, and you can check whether your chosen colours are readable with our free contrast checker before they go anywhere near a signboard.

What it costs, honestly

A competent logo with the full set of files starts around ₹4,999 with us, and a complete identity — logo, colour system, fonts, and the rules written down — around ₹9,999. Our full prices are published.

Cheaper exists. At ₹500 you are usually buying a template with your name typed into it, which is the invisibility problem above, arriving pre-installed. That is a real option if the alternative is nothing, but be clear about what it is.

Expensive also exists, and above a certain point you are paying for research and strategy that a local shop with one location genuinely may not need. There is no shame in buying the smaller thing done properly.

One last thing, and it is the one people regret

Get in writing that the artwork is yours, including the source files.

Some designers hand over exports and keep the working file, which means every future change has to come back through them. That is a perfectly legal arrangement and a bad one for you. It is also invisible until the day you want to print something new and discover you cannot.

We put it in the quote: the artwork, the source files and the fonts you have licensed are yours. If you would like a straight answer about what your business actually needs before you commission anything, tell us what you do or email hello@solvey.in. One business day, no obligation.