4 ms·

As a graphic designer this site makes me want to cry. Logo design is not free and designers doing mock-ups for free is foolish.

by Artalva 15y ago

mark_up 15y ago
Design costs as much as the designer is willing to design for. Whatever it is you charge for a doing mock-ups, there are people who think you are foolish to charge so little. The no-spec movement works great at the local level, but in a global market, it just isn't relevant.
mrgoldenbrown 15y ago
Designers doing mockups for free is probably a symptom of more designers looking for work than there are clients willing to pay designers. Why aren't people willing to pay? Is there a glut of people offering high quality services for cheap, or is it that clients can't see the value in the higher priced designers? What would be great would be a chart (backed by solid data of course) showing the ROI on an expensive logo vs cheap logo vs 99designs logo vs the logo made by a founder's teenage neighbor who just discovered photoshop and comic sans. With that kind of data it would be much easier to convince people that 99designs is a good or bad idea.
morrow 15y ago
What would you think of this idea: offer 2 tiers of competition: Tier 1 for Junior designers - design the full logo for competition, winner gets full payment. Ideal for building a portfolio of logo designing capabilities, gaining exposure. Tier 2 for Established Designers - after earning a certain amount of reputation or karma points (based on voting records), they can compete in a higher-level contest with fewer entries, but each legitimate entry gets a percentage of the final payout. Competition is split into 3 stages, rough-sketch, concept, and final version. Each stage, the top N logos are picked, and those top N earn a % cut of the total project fee. (It could be that N is based on how many logos the customer wants to see developed, maybe they could pick from 5,10,15,20 etc. and pay accordingly). The basic idea is a compromise somewhere between every designer putting the full amount of design work on a project which could net you zero income just for the chance at doing it, and just picking a designer based on reputation and going with whatever they come up with. This system would let the designers who value their time to explore an idea if they like, and earn money progressively with how much time they put in, and how closely their idea matches the customer's needs. In this system, nobody would spend days perfecting / crafting a design just to wind up earning nothing, and nobody would rush through a design job just so that if they didn't win they wouldn't have invested too much time.

As a graphic designer this site makes me want to cry. Logo design is not free and designers doing mock-ups for free is foolish.

by Artalva 15y ago

As a graphic designer this site makes me want to cry. Logo design is not free and designers doing mock-ups for free is foolish.

mark_up 15y ago

Design costs as much as the designer is willing to design for. Whatever it is you charge for a doing mock-ups, there are people who think you are foolish to charge so little. The no-spec movement works great at the local level, but in a global market, it just isn't relevant.

mrgoldenbrown 15y ago

Designers doing mockups for free is probably a symptom of more designers looking for work than there are clients willing to pay designers. Why aren't people willing to pay? Is there a glut of people offering high quality services for cheap, or is it that clients can't see the value in the higher priced designers? What would be great would be a chart (backed by solid data of course) showing the ROI on an expensive logo vs cheap logo vs 99designs logo vs the logo made by a founder's teenage neighbor who just discovered photoshop and comic sans. With that kind of data it would be much easier to convince people that 99designs is a good or bad idea.

morrow 15y ago

What would you think of this idea: offer 2 tiers of competition: Tier 1 for Junior designers - design the full logo for competition, winner gets full payment. Ideal for building a portfolio of logo designing capabilities, gaining exposure. Tier 2 for Established Designers - after earning a certain amount of reputation or karma points (based on voting records), they can compete in a higher-level contest with fewer entries, but each legitimate entry gets a percentage of the final payout. Competition is split into 3 stages, rough-sketch, concept, and final version. Each stage, the top N logos are picked, and those top N earn a % cut of the total project fee. (It could be that N is based on how many logos the customer wants to see developed, maybe they could pick from 5,10,15,20 etc. and pay accordingly). The basic idea is a compromise somewhere between every designer putting the full amount of design work on a project which could net you zero income just for the chance at doing it, and just picking a designer based on reputation and going with whatever they come up with. This system would let the designers who value their time to explore an idea if they like, and earn money progressively with how much time they put in, and how closely their idea matches the customer's needs. In this system, nobody would spend days perfecting / crafting a design just to wind up earning nothing, and nobody would rush through a design job just so that if they didn't win they wouldn't have invested too much time.