As a former visual/graphic designer, now a stay-at-home father, I have to chime in on this. I've done branding and identity work for some very large companies (e.g. The Coca-Cola Company) so I can tell you that the logo is a very important part of any business strategy.<p>First, I'm surprised how little respect design gets in the tech industry and from programmers. Good design can sell a poor product or inform consumers about a superior product. It can drastically reduce support costs (UI design) or encourage consumers to pay a little more for a product (i.e. The Apple "Tax"). Design is important to the overall success of most business ventures and should be budgeted for and planned for accordingly.<p>These logo (I'll be nice here) marketplaces are better than design-it-yourself or no design at all in most cases. But you get what you pay for. Many of the designs will come from students that have little to no experience and an incomplete grasp of the principles of design. Most of the rest will come from international locales far away with different cultural identities and little understanding of yours. After all, a logo is not just something attractive, it communicates a message visually.<p>What you will get in abundance is poorly thought-out concepts, logos stolen or similar to others and rushed work with a total disregard to overall quality. Does your logo need to be legible from far away or at small sizes? They probably didn't account for that. Some of these logos will land you in court (trademark/copyright violations) and I guarantee the guy that "designed" it for you on these website will disappear.<p>Bottom line: These logos are great for a placeholder until you can afford a designer, until your product grows or launches or for presentations to investors, etc.
A tip to anyone who hasn't treaded these waters before:<p>Do not, under any circumstances, bring up 99 designs when speaking with a professional designer.<p>I warned you! But seriously, most entries for logo contests on 99 designs were already templates. If you look through a contest you'll see tons of leaves, swooshes, stylized people, etc... This just drives the cost down in most cases (the average contest is at least $99).
Have a design company but no good at designing? <a href="http://99designs.com/logo-design/store/search?q=design" rel="nofollow">http://99designs.com/logo-design/store/search?q=design</a> has design company logos for you :-)
I'm curious to see what the HN community thinks of this. I've used 99designs in the past with moderate success, and this looks like a natural next step for their logo market. For a while, the participating designers have submitted the same logo, modified for a company, for any contest where it would fit. This marketplace appears to be aimed at ending that silly charade.<p>Would you consider buying a logo here? I can see using it to get a quick-and-dirty logo for an early stage project, but I didn't see many I'd be excited to build a major brand on.
I have used 99designs for something else than a logo, and so far it i has been a good success for me.<p>You are going to get some good submissions, mediocre ones, and some crappy ones.<p>Be willing to pay a more than a $200 - $300, and you will get good submissions.<p>If you are a big corp, and have a huge brand to work on, you might not want to use them.
If you just want to get something really decent looking out of the door, then they are really good choice.<p>Once your site/company/whatever, starts making millions, you can spend the money on high end designs.<p>At the end of the day you get what you pay for. Put your logo for $500, and it is guaranteed you will get a lot of good submissions (and a river of bad ones).<p>I honestly think this is much better than just working with a individual designer. The main reason is that you might get submissions that are really creative and you would have never thought of.<p>Again, if you pay pay $300 - $500 and you will get better results.
Let me get this straight, I pay them $300 for the exclusive license for pre-made logo.<p>Considering I can contract out multiple iterations of a bespoke, cross-media, hand-dithered (e.g. newsprint, 4-color, b&w, web, etc.) logo for $1-$2k from full-service design/marketing firms HOW is this a competitive solution?<p>What project or firm who even tangentially cares about their brand identity would go down this path? Logos typically last the lifetime of the brand (years) and those sunk costs can be easily justified by that lengthy amortization.<p>Honestly, this seems like a service without a market; at least in the United States.
This is <i>fantastic</i>. Most businesses --- the overwhelming majority of them, in fact --- need a distinct and competant bespoke logo, but absolutely don't need a custom couture treatment.<p>I'm betting that had this been available a year ago, one of these would be Patrick McKenzie's logo.<p>The only concern I have with 99designs is the policing. I'd like to know more about what they're doing to make sure the work up there is original --- a friend had a bad experience with this issue. If they can put a lid on that, I think this offering solves a huge problem.
also worth checking out is <a href="http://logoworks.com/" rel="nofollow">http://logoworks.com/</a> . They're more expensive (logo packages start at $300) but still cheap. They did my logo for <a href="http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com</a> . I think Guy Kawasaki also has used and recommended them.
I used to tell myself that creativity would be the last thing that technology would be able to replace. As someone who designs for a living that was somehow comforting.<p>I realize now how wrong I was.<p>It's not that technology will ultimately be able to replace creativity it's that it will commoditize some parts of it such as logo's, websites layouts etc.<p>Making a logo is not design it's illustration. You don't solve problems with logos you create a style.<p>Templates and logo's go hand in hand with the types of companies that needs them.<p>If your company can really be made with logos and templates then good for you.<p>I am happy there are companies out there such as 99designs, they make something that should be simple cheap.<p>But it's not design, it's not problem solving. The day that computers will be able to do that then we are all out of jobs anyway.
<a href="http://99designs.com/logo-design/store/1152" rel="nofollow">http://99designs.com/logo-design/store/1152</a><p>This is the Windows logo rotated 1/4 counter clockwise and skewed slightly...Hopefully they have some sort of way of reporting/dealing with issues like this (aka image stolen from somewhere else)
I've hated their core business model in the past. For it to work someone had to be exploited.<p>I think it is a pyramid scheme when someone has to complete a professional task for the slight chance of non noteworthy payment as a norm. It isn't sustainable.<p>That being said, this is a much better step. I see it being much more sustainable to everyone involved (and far less exploitative) for non custom logos being sold at a flat rate.
<i>I don't want to spam here, so if you think it is I'll remove the link,</i> but I have a post[1] that seems to fit the arguments discussed here (especially those of tptacek, patio11, and lotides). This is what I call branding. Basically:<p><i>In summary the logo creation didn't require a lot of time, I didn't even tried different proposals (no need to do so). It just come naturally. It was modeled together with the culture and the product itself (research, prototypes, mockups, etc). It was a (design) product of a visual evolution (more on this later).</i><p>[1] I wrote it this evenening (CET), it's related to this topic but not a response, <a href="http://www.pmura.com/blog/2010/03/kuse-vision-logo" rel="nofollow">http://www.pmura.com/blog/2010/03/kuse-vision-logo</a>
I have a love/hate thing with these companies - 99designs is not the only one out there.<p>In favour of them:<p>* they offer affordable logos<p>* you know exactly what you're getting for a fixed price<p>On the flipside, there is plenty wrong with these logos:<p>* Me too: if the logo's any good, there's a good chance someone else will buy it too. It would be like turning up to a party, and finding that you've got the same dress on (... a nightmare situation for some!)<p>* They look like $99 logos, or any other logo churned out by these companies<p>* It devalues the work of designers - a good designer understands what your company is about, and produces a fitting logo for you.<p>I'm sure there are many other fors/againsts than these, and it would be interesting to hear what others think of these services.
There are ways within 99designs to filter the initial mass down to better quality competitors and to stop wasting other designers time, e.g. by eliminating bad designs early. Either way, its not good for a $40/hour designer to be competing against a guy that might only need to win 1 project a month to pay the bills.
James Goldsmith was right back in 1994- look at social indices, not economic! Dude saw the future.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI</a>
Since there's probably a lot of ticked off designers in this thread...<p>I could use some designer help with an open source project I'm working on. <a href="http://grokphoto.org" rel="nofollow">http://grokphoto.org</a><p>And for the record, no, I never have and never will use one of these logo crowdsourcing shops. Great design is far too important imo.
How about a two-tier system where 99 bucks gets you a version with your wording, while $999 (or whatever) gets you a version of the logo with the wording <i>and gets it removed from the site</i>. Or is that already how it works and I skimmed too lightly?
99$ and 24 hours reminds me of Wokhei.com --> <a href="http://www.wokhei.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wokhei.com/</a> - with the difference that those are not templates
99 bucks to get your company name and a piece of clip-art? I think people who go for this just don't deserve any better.<p>One should probably just automate this. Pay $20 to istockphoto for a piece of vector art and put the company name beside it. That's an easy made $79. So if easterbunny inc. needs logo, just license <a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-11054108-rabbit.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-11054108-rabbi...</a> and you're done. The quality would be comparable to those logo templates.<p>Many people obviously have started to believe that a logo is a bit of illustration plus your name.