THE VALUE OF LOGO DESIGN CONTESTS Is “more for less” a valid approach to logo design? Logo design contest and crowdsourcing sites market themselves as a superior alternative to working with a freelance designer or design firm, mostly due to the raw number of concepts contest holders will receive. Do they have a point? Is a ‘more for less’ mentality an effective way to get a logo designed? Gotta admit, when you read ’300 submissions’ to this or that logo design contest, it represents a pretty hefty number. For a client it seems like great value – a couple of hundred submissions for a couple of hundred bucks. Choice, choice, choice. Upon closer inspection, the benefits aren’t nearly as clear cut. The numbers advertised (ie: 99designs is named after the number of designs, on average, that are submitted to their contests. Crowdspring claims 110+ concepts) are a hodge-podge of design, of various levels of usability (or salvageability if you will) that we’ll break down using our handy-dandy pyramid infographic on the next page. Granted, the chart is completely unscientific and arbitrary, but does represent some casual observations we’ve made over the years.
Unusable concepts. To be charitable, and at the risk of being called a snooty designer, the vast majority of logo concepts submitted to design contest sites are crap. This shouldn’t come as a surprise – most design contest sites have absolutely no vetting process and advertise membership to their sites in the same way as those ‘Make Money Online’ spam e-mails we get every couple of hours. As in “design for our clients and make money online”. While crowdsourcing sites claim anyone can design, that’s simply not true. There’s also some technical know-how that’s necessary to pull off a successful logo design and most people in this category simply don’t have it. When the only requirement to ‘have a go’ at a logo contest is an e-mail account, you can rest assured that the majority of people signing up have no idea what they’re doing. It is the nature of the internet. It is the nature of people.
Sub-par concepts. Having said that, there’s lots of people with working knowledge of Illustrator and.or Photoshop who also pitch their wares into contests. The
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