How to Check a Design Studio Is Real Before You Pay

Paying a stranger on the internet to make the thing your entire business will be identified by is a genuinely uncomfortable transaction. The work is subjective, the money leaves before the result arrives, and almost every studio's website says the same six adjectives.

There are ways to check. None of them involve trusting a testimonial. Here are the six that actually separate a working studio from someone reselling a template, in the order they are worth doing — with our own numbers shown where the check applies to us, so you can see what a real answer looks like rather than what a good one sounds like.

1. Count the portfolio, then look at what is missing

Anyone can show ten logos. The question is what surrounds them. A studio that only ever produces logos is either very new or is buying them in, because clients who commission a logo almost always come back for the things that use it — guidelines, packaging, social templates, an animated version.

So count the categories, not the pieces. Our own work page carries 47 logo projects, 7 logotype boards, 11 full brand guideline documents and 6 social kits. The guideline documents are the tell: they run from 7 to 40 pages, and nobody produces a 40-page standards document as a portfolio prop. It takes weeks and it only exists because a client paid for it.

If a portfolio is all logos and no systems, ask what happened after each project. The answer is usually that there was no after.

2. Read the review distribution, not the average

An average rating is close to meaningless on its own. 4.9 can describe a studio with 2,000 consistent projects or one with 12 reviews from friends. What matters is the shape of the distribution and how many reviews sit underneath it.

Ours breaks down as 2,486 five-star, 103 four-star, 10 three-star, 1 two-star and 4 one-star, totalling 2,604 and averaging 4.9. We have written separately about what the non-five-star reviews say, because that is the more useful half.

Two things to look for in anyone's distribution. First, whether the bad reviews exist at all — a perfect record across hundreds of projects is not evidence of quality, it is evidence of filtering. Second, whether the ratio holds over time. A studio that was excellent two years ago and is coasting now shows it in the recent reviews long before it shows anywhere else.

3. Ask who owns the result, and get the answer in writing

This is the check almost nobody does, and it is the one that costs the most when it goes wrong. In the UK, the US, Canada and Australia alike, commissioning a logo and paying for it does not automatically make you the copyright owner. Copyright in a commissioned work generally starts with the person who made it and moves to you only when it is assigned in writing.

Ask a prospective studio: "Do I receive a signed assignment of copyright, and is it included at every price tier?" The answer tells you two things. Whether they know their own legal position, and whether they treat ownership as a feature to be sold back to you.

We issue one on every project including the cheapest, which we go into at length in who actually owns your logo. It is not an upsell and it is not conditional. If a studio charges extra for the right to own what you commissioned, that is a pricing model built on the assumption you will not ask.

4. Time the first reply

Reply time is the single most predictive signal available before you pay, and it is free to measure. Send a real question — not "are you available", something specific about your project — and see how long the answer takes and whether it engages with what you asked.

Our average across 2,604 projects is about an hour, and first drafts land in 24 to 36 hours. Those are operational commitments rather than marketing, which is exactly why they are worth checking against a studio's actual behaviour rather than its homepage. We have written about why this correlates so strongly with how the rest of the project goes.

5. Look for the work you would not put in a portfolio

Every studio shows its best three projects. The more informative question is whether it shows the unglamorous ones — the interior spreads of a guidelines document, the one-colour version, the favicon at 16 pixels, the version that has to survive being embroidered.

Those are the artefacts that prove a mark was actually built rather than merely rendered. A logo that only exists as a hero image on a dark gradient has not been tested. When you review a portfolio, look specifically for a mark shown small, in one colour, and reversed. If none of the three appears anywhere, the work has not left the mockup stage.

6. Establish who you are actually talking to

A studio should be a nameable entity. Not necessarily a large one — plenty of excellent work comes from two people — but there should be a person whose name is attached to the outcome. Ours is Zubair Khan, and the studio has traded since September 2024.

The check here is simple: can you find the same identity in more than one place, and does it say the same thing? A studio that exists only as an anonymous profile on one platform has no reputation that survives that platform changing its mind.

What none of this tells you

These six checks establish that a studio is real, competent and safe to pay. They do not tell you whether it is right for your project, and it is worth being honest that no checklist can.

A studio that is excellent at restrained, typographic work may be the wrong choice for a brand that needs to be loud. The way to find out is to send a real brief and read what comes back before any money moves — not the price, the questions. A studio that asks nothing before quoting is telling you it has already decided what to make.