Logo vs brand identity: what you are paying for

A logo is one mark: a symbol, your name set in a particular way, or both. A brand identity is the system around it: the logo in several layouts and colour versions, a palette, typefaces, an imagery style, often a tone of voice, and written rules that let other people use them correctly. Paying more for an identity buys more deliverables and fewer open decisions. Either way, you should come away with editable files and a written transfer of the rights.

Every figure below links to the source we checked in October 2026. The sections on ownership and trade marks are general information, not legal advice.

The difference between a logo, a brand identity and a brand#

A logo is the mark itself: what goes on your sign, website header, invoices and profile pictures.

A brand identity is the set of visual and verbal decisions that make everything you publish look and sound like one business: the logo plus colour, type, imagery, graphic elements, the way you write, and a guide to combining them.

A brand is what people think and say about you, built by your product, prices and service. An identity helps people recognise you; it cannot make up for a poor experience. Our branding guides cover the identity layer in more depth.

In a 2024 study in the Journal of Brand Management, researchers removed the brand names from 44 assets of the 12 biggest UK car brands by market share and showed them to 206 people in the UK who owned a car or planned to buy one within two years. Ten of the 12 logos passed the study's threshold for being linked mainly to one brand; one of the 32 fonts, colours and slogans did. The authors conclude that those other assets need strong creative work and consistent use before people tie them to a brand, and consistent use is what an identity's rules are for. It is one study, in one industry, with a small sample recruited through the lead researcher's contacts.

What each job should hand over#

Use this table to check any quote you receive:

Our logo design service covers the deliverables in the logo job column, and its middle tier adds a palette and a usage guide. Brand identity design covers those in the identity column, and full branding solutions add print collateral, packaging and tone of voice.

Where your logo has to work#

Small squares and circles#

In India most web browsing happens on phones. In 2025, 77.9% of web page views in India came from mobile devices, and mobile's share was between about 70% and 78% in every full year from 2019 to 2025. For January to September 2026, StatCounter puts it lower, at 68.4%.

On a phone your logo appears small, and each platform sets its own size:

Every size there is a square, and Facebook crops yours to a circle. Shrink a wide logo to 98 pixels across and the letters become too small to read. You need a compact version too, such as an icon or monogram. Google asks for a stable favicon URL and says recrawling can take from several days to several weeks. Settle the icon before your site launches. Our technical SEO checklist covers favicons and logo markup; for the listing itself, see our Google Business Profile guide.

White backgrounds and one colour#

Google asks that the logo it shows in results look right on a purely white background, and warns that a mostly white or grey logo may not. If your logo is white and normally sits on a coloured background, you need a version that works on white.

Stamps, embroidery and one-colour print need a single-colour version, and photos and dark packaging need a reversed one.

Files that scale#

Ask for vector files (SVG, EPS or PDF) as well as PNG. Mozilla's web documentation notes that SVG images can be rendered at any size without loss of quality, which is what a signboard printer needs. Transparent PNGs cover uploads (Facebook suggests PNG for profile pictures with a logo or text). Keep the editable source files too.

What a brand identity adds#

An identity settles the choices a logo leaves open, such as text colours, fonts and imagery, and writes them down.

Colours that work as text#

Under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2), text that is part of a logo or brand name has no contrast requirement, but ordinary text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, or 3:1 when large (18 point, or 14 point bold). A pale brand yellow can work in the logo and fail as a heading on white. An identity palette should name the colour pairs that pass. Our guide to writing a brand style guide covers contrast in detail.

Fonts you are allowed to use#

Fonts under the SIL Open Font License can be used in any kind of design work, logos included, with no extra permission, and the artwork's copyright stays with its maker, not the font's author. Most fonts in the Google Fonts collection use that licence. For a paid font, ask which licence covers it, whether it extends to your website, print and any app, and whose name it is in.

Rules other people can follow#

The rest of an identity serves whoever makes things in your name later, such as a printer or a new hire. Photo direction, patterns and templates give them a start, and the guidelines answer questions like how much space to leave around the logo. New material made to those rules is ordinary graphic design work, and quicker to brief.

Logo only or full identity: how to decide#

This is our rule of thumb, not data. A logo with its variations is usually enough when:

• one person makes everything you publish
• you sell in one or two places, such as a marketplace and WhatsApp
• your name, offer or audience may still change this year

Plan a full identity when:

• two or more people or suppliers make material in your name
• you are about to print packaging, signs or uniforms, or build a website
• you are rebranding and old material must be replaced at the same time
• you plan to register the mark and sell next to competitors in shops or marketplaces

A middle path (a logo with a palette, typefaces and a one-page usage guide) suits a business that has settled its name but produces little material yet.

We give no price ranges, because we have found no public survey of logo or branding prices in India that states its method. Compare quotes against the table instead: one quote for "a logo" may include the square icon, one-colour versions, source files and a written assignment, and another may not.

Who owns a logo after you pay a designer?#

Under India's Copyright Act, 1957, a drawing such as a logo is an artistic work (section 2(c)), and the designer, as its author, is the first owner of the copyright (section 17). If your own employee designs the logo as part of their job, you own it as the employer unless you agreed otherwise. A freelancer's logo belongs to the freelancer, and an agency designer's logo to the agency.

Paying does not change this by itself. The Act's rule for commissioned work (section 17(b)) covers photographs, paintings, drawn portraits, engravings and films, not drawings in general. The safe reading is that a logo becomes yours only through a written assignment.

What the assignment should say#

Under section 19, an assignment is valid only in writing, signed by the designer or the agency, and must identify the work and state the rights, duration, territory and payment. With no period stated it is deemed to last five years, and with no territory stated it covers India only. Ask for wording that:

• names the final logo, with a sheet showing every version attached
• assigns all rights in it for the full term of copyright
• covers the world, or at least every country you sell in
• says the assignment does not lapse if you leave some of the rights unused for a year (section 19(4) otherwise treats it as lapsed for those rights)
• states the fee and is signed by the designer or for the agency

Have a lawyer read it, especially before you file a trade mark.

Templates, stock graphics and AI#

Some logos cannot be fully yours. Canva's help centre says its logo templates can be used by anyone. That makes your rights in a logo built from one non-exclusive, and you cannot register it as a trade mark. Canva rules out its stock graphics for the same reason: "Elements in a logo need to be exclusive to you."

As for AI, the US Copyright Office concluded in January 2025 that, with today's tools, prompts alone do not give a user enough control to be the author of the output, and that purely AI-generated material is not protected by copyright. That is the Office's reading of US law. India's Act names "the person who causes the work to be created" as the author of a computer-generated work (section 2(d)(vi)); how that applies to an AI logo is a question for a lawyer. Whatever the source, ask your designer to confirm in writing whether any template, stock or AI material is in the final logo.

How to register your logo as a trademark in India#

Copyright protects the logo as a drawing. A trade mark registration under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, gives you the exclusive right to use the mark for the goods or services it covers, and to seek relief for infringement (section 28). Without one, you cannot sue for infringement of the trade mark (section 27); you can still bring an action for passing off, and rely on the copyright in the artwork if you own it.

IP India lists device marks (logos, symbols and stylised text) as one type you can register, alongside word marks, and you can apply before you start using a mark.

Classes and fees#

Marks are registered by class, and the Nice Classification has 34 classes of goods and 11 of services. A café that sells its own packaged coffee, for example, would look at Class 43 (food and drink services) and Class 30 (coffee and tea).

Filing online costs ₹4,500 per class for an individual, a recognised startup or a small enterprise, as the Trade Marks Rules define them, and ₹9,000 for everyone else (₹5,000 and ₹10,000 on paper). The fee is per class and per mark: your name as a word mark and your logo as a device mark are two fees. A registration is dated from the day you applied (section 23), which is a reason to file as soon as the logo is final. It lasts ten years (section 25) and renews for ₹9,000 per class online.

IP India's annual report for 2024-25 shows applications rising from 4,31,213 in 2020-21 to 5,52,190 in 2024-25: up 28% in four years and 16% in the last year. The Registry registered 3,82,834 marks in 2024-25, and its register held 34,55,496 on 31 March 2025. About one in five applications that reached an outcome that year ended without registration (88,885 were refused, abandoned or withdrawn), and 82,915 notices of opposition were filed.

Closer to us, the same report shows the Kolkata office receiving 37,513 applications in 2024-25, and applicants based in West Bengal filing 19,383.

Some classes are much busier than others: in 2024-25, Class 5 (pharmaceutical and health products) drew 82,469 applications, almost 15% of the total.

Each of these classes drew more than 20,000 applications that year. In a class that busy, a clash with an existing mark is more likely.

Search before you approve the final artwork#

IP India runs a public trade mark search, which needs a one-time password sent to your email or phone. It also lists the Vienna Code Classification, the international classification of the figurative elements of marks (the pictures in a logo). In IP India's application workflow, device marks get Vienna codes when they are filed.

Two grounds for refusal matter at the design stage. Under section 9 of the Act, unless use has already made it distinctive, a mark cannot be registered if it has no distinctive character or is made only of words or signs that describe the goods or services, such as their kind, quality or origin. Avoid a purely descriptive name, however good the logo. IP India also lists marks identical or deceptively similar to registered marks among those that cannot be registered.

After examination, and your reply to any objection, an accepted mark is published, and anyone may oppose it within three months (section 21), extendable by one month. If no one does, or the opposition fails, it is registered.

Questions to ask before you pay anyone#

1. Which logo layouts, colour versions and file formats will we receive, including editable source files?
2. How many concepts and revision rounds are included, and what does an extra round cost?
3. Will you sign an assignment of all rights in the final logo, for the full term, worldwide?
4. Which fonts are used, under which licence, and in whose name?
5. Does any part come from a template, a stock library or an AI tool?
6. Who checks the trade marks register before the design is final?
7. Will you show the work in your portfolio, and can we say no?
8. What are the timeline and payment schedule, and when are the final files released?
9. What support do we get after handover, and for how long?

Where to start#

1. List every place your name and logo appear now or will within two years: sign, packaging, website, social profiles, Google Business Profile, uniforms, vehicles.
2. Search the trade marks register for your name and for similar logos in your classes.
3. Choose a logo with variations, the middle path or a full identity, using the checklist above.
4. Collect what you already have: old logo files, colour codes, fonts and photos you like.
5. Send that list and your brief to the designers you are considering, with the questions above.

If a website is on the list, our guide to planning a business website covers what to settle before anyone builds it. To get our quote as well, send us your list and brief; we will follow up with a call and a fixed written quote.