[rrhyne]

Designing the symbol an application will be known by for thousands of users is NOT a walk in the park.

In programming there is an intended result, and for all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter how you get there. It's a 1 or 0 proposition.

Design on the other hand is full of subjective opinions from the client and even the designer that get in the way of defining what the intended result is. Worse, the only way to get close to that definition is to explore lots of different designs.

The process may look something like this:

1. client wants logo, gives the idea of spaceship 2. designer sketches 3 spaceships 3. client says he wanted the shuttle discovery 4. designer sketches up the space shuttle discovery 5. client says he wanted the moon in the background 6. designer adds the moon to the background 7. client signs off on sketch 8. designer renders sketch 9. client says saturn would be much better than the moon 10. designer changes moon to saturn 11. client says he thought space shouldn't be blue-black, it should be black. 12. designer makes space black 13. client says they've rethought the whole concept and need a daisy instead of the space shuttle.

And that would be an easy client. If you start before step one, and the client says "I'll know it when I see it." you can go ahead and double or tripple your workload.

[richcollins]

Or you can charge 100k for a logo with no options for the client:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb8idEf-Iak#t=3m10s

[rrhyne]

Right, but there was only one Paul Rand. :D