Sample Logo Designs

How much should I charge for this graphic design job?

There is a lot here to consider.
First, and most basic, are your hours. You say you spent a lot of time, but you really need to quantify that as a starting point. From there you need to determine an hourly rate, and multiply one by the other, and that’s what you should charge.
Then, take a big dose of reality, and you’ll find out that most people won’t pay that much, and you begin to talk your self into a number that won’t cause your client to laugh in your face.

While technically you “own” the copyrights for the work you do, the best basic agreements are that the rights of use are granted to your client upon payment of your invoice. That technicality is, in the worst case, your leverage against not being paid.

Let’s just be clear, suing a client is a bad idea, but if you get screwed out of your fee you can force the (no ex) client to pay your or destroy everything that uses your artwork. Mostly this is about keeping the appearance of leverage. Make the stipulation on your invoice that you reserve all copyrights, and grant unlimited use upon payment.

The only restriction I tend to make for start-ups, particularly when I take a smaller fee, is that they can’t re-sell the logo. Meaning, they can’t directly profit from your work. If they were to be bought by a big company, and that company retains the logo, you should get some compensation. This is such a long shot, you might as well forget it…

Provide your client with the logo in a bunch of usable formats and sizes:
VECTOR artwork (Illustrator EPS) in CMYK full color, grayscale and absolute black and white — size won’t matter since this is vector art, but if your logo is intricate you should come up with a simplified version for small applications. (Just as an example, notice how the AT&T logo has more lines when used large and fewer lines when it’s really small)
JPG and GIF files, maybe PNG — these should be in RGB color and black and white and do small, medium and large sizes. Your client will use these for e-mail, Office documents and stuff like that.

I tend to put the EPS files in a folder called “Print Logos” and the pixel based logos in a folder “Web Logos”

If you’re designing a letterhead, usually business cards and envelopes are part of that job. It’s typically considered one project. If you’re nice you’ll throw in a mailing label and a fax or memo form (I know, but people still use faxes in some places)

You should be all set at that point.

Sample Logos by Filcolors