Cheap !== value

Each morning I drive down a certain piece of road. Over the winter the constant freeze / thaw has created pot holes which, in some cases, are very deep.

The local council have tried their best to patch this up each time they hollow out during the winter months and I kept on thinking that this continuous patch-up process, although may be cheap and quick at the time of doing it, it gets very costly in the long run because it’s just a temporary fix.

This week they have had road works set up in the area and I thought to myself, “Great, they are finally doing this properly so that it will last long-term.” but alas they have just patched it up, again.

Ok Steve get to the point, what has this got to do with design? Businesses, in their continuous efforts to save money and cut costs, hire cheap ‘quick fix’ agencies or studios to design a quick logo for them, something that will just ‘do for now’. This is the same as the council temporarily patching up the road surface, these cheap logos nearly always need to be reconsidered a few months down the line when it’s realised that they no longer suit the purpose or that they don’t work on a certain media type. This constant re-design / re-branding process costs even more money than hiring a professional designer to do it properly in the first place. The same goes for print and website design, hire on cheap and the consequences will come back and bite you in a few months when you realise that to be cheap, you have to cut valuable corners.

I run my own business and I know what it’s like in this current climate to have to cut costs, it’s very important. But cutting costs doesn’t always mean buying in cheap, you should always be aiming for best value for money. That’s nearly always different from the cheapest.