Don't designers usually show about 10 different rough logos to start out with? That way they and the clients can go through them, talk about what they like and don't like about each one, and go from there? I think if I were a designer and I spent half my morning working on just one, good logo, and have the customer reject it outright, I'd be a little miffed.
It doesn't really matter. A lot of clients have no respect for artists and expect you to pull the awful design in their head out through telepathy and magically make it not awful. The best is when you have to tell someone their idea is impossible or wildly impractical. That always goes well with this type of person
shudders Yeah, I had some ideas for a logo (I came up with my wife's last logo, and it's dope, and I'm still proud of it, and we had a talented designer clean it up and make it doper). Both of our designers disregarded it entirely. One came up with nothing as good, the other blew it out of the water within an hour. It would truly be an unpleasant slog (for everyone) if I were unwilling to let go of my ideas and surrender to the professionals.
This is our second designer. Our first designer was given one or two ideas we'd come up with, used none of them, and gave us two hundred alternates, all in pencil on paper. We narrowed the field to ten, then she gave us four more. None of them were good. Then we finally ended up with something "not terrible" and asked her to invoice us for work done. She invoiced us for more than her initial estimate for an entire branding project. Our second designer gave us one logo. And it was awesome. A few days later she gave us like four others, none of which were as awesome as her initial logo. Our logo ended up being a refinement of her first initial, monolithic sketch.