6 ms·

How to Save $5000 on Your Logo

26 points by cjwestbrook 18y ago

Entrepreneur, author, and musician Jim Leff argues that creative types aren't always that creative and that it's better to come up with a rough idea and have them tweak it than to go to them with a blank slate.

cjwestbrook 18y ago
I'm not sure whether or not I agree with this, but it's thought provoking. Interested in what others think.
mcav 18y ago
If the logo pictured therein represents the mockup he gave to the designer, I hope he'd be prepared to have it entirely modified or discarded. The logo is busy, repetitive, and difficult to digest. Designers, musicians, and others make a living at their craft because they're good at what they do (ideally). Logo designers have spent hours learning what's good and what isn't. I wouldn't want someone who has a "compositional idea" to come up to me (as a piano player myself) and ask me to morph their idea into a masterpiece unless they fully understood that I might change their idea entirely, or that their idea might not even be feasible. Same goes for startups -- you can't present an idea to a few developers and expect them to roar back with a great startup. It takes persistence, experience, and inspiration to create something good. But inspiration itself comes from having experience at a craft. Not all inspiration is created equal.
- cjwestbrook 18y ago
  Let me argue the other side for the sake of discussion. Designers, musicians, etc. make their living because they're good at what they do, but what is it that they do? Designers are good at playing with visuals, writers are good at playing with words, musicians are good at setting harmony to a melody. Sometimes, those people are good at creating something from nothing, but it's a different animal. Having worked as a writer, I liked starting from scratch, but I also appreciated when the CEO had a clear vision and story of what his company was about that I could run with. Many great works of music are derivative of a theme from another composer. Jim's point seems to be that giving them something to react to and work with is a huge shortcut with little or no loss.
  - mcav 18y ago
    Sure, something's better than nothing. That's what brainstorming is all about -- creating ideas without having any expectation that any particular idea will succeed. Starting with something might spur an idea forward, or it might not. An initial idea's good; multiple ideas are better. As long as the person understands that collaborating with an expert will necessitate change, perhaps back-and-forth consultation, etc., until a good, agreeable conclusion is reached.
- lucumo 18y ago
  > If the logo pictured therein represents the mockup he gave to the designer, I hope he'd be prepared to have it entirely modified or discarded. The logo is busy, repetitive, and difficult to digest. He adresses the quality of the current logo in a comment, in reply to an anonymous commenter who said something along the same lines (but much more rudely). "Nope, wasn't "implying" that! In fact, a careful read would have indicated the Chowhound logo was NOT created according to this advice. It was, in fact, done by a pro with vast experience, "condensation" or not. "You clearly have no idea what a graphic designer does" Well, hmm. Actually, you, like many (though by no means all) graphic designers, have no idea what a graphic designer ought to do. I'll explain: The function of graphics for commercial use is not to impress graphics people. Its purpose is to set a tone and demarcate a brand for a given market. Chowhound reached nearly a million people and became a nationally-known brand with a marketing budget of exactly zero. A great many people grew emotionally attached to the brand as soon as they came through our door, and identified with it quite strongly. All along, graphics pros such as yourself denigrated our design (totally their right, of course!). But I'd say the design was awesome....not to impress the likes of you, but to accomplish our goal: to attract and engage a vast number of eaters of a certain stripe. THAT'S what a (good) graphic designer does. A bad designer designs to please other designers."
Gibbon 18y ago
As a designer, there's nothing I hate more than clients who come to me with preconceived notions of what they want or need, nevermind actual sketches of their "vision". It often leaves little opportunity to improve on the idea, or a hell of a lot of nudging to get them to accept something better. My last logo job had about a hundred sketches, further refined to a dozen candidates, from which I presented the top three. The idea that an artist/designer/musician can't be called upon to think up fresh ideas is laughable. Any truly competent creative can pump out ideas a fast as they can draw/write/play.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- Zev 18y ago
  Unfortunately, for every competent artist/designer/musician out there, there's at least one (and most likely more) hack that can't cut it and isn't competent at their job. And for someone who's job doesn't deal with what is more traditionally thought of as needing creativity, it can be hard to distinguish the competent people who are good at their job from the hacks who imitate.
  - Gibbon 18y ago
    You find competent designers the same way you find competent electricians, surgeons or programmers. Ask around, get recommendations, look at their portfolios and talk to them about their methods and processes.
    - Zev 18y ago
      True, but: If you don't know what to look for, what good does talking looking at prior work or talking shop with them do? For all you know, they're completely making everything up as you go along in the conversation. Getting recommendations from people is the best thing to do, but people are much more likely to need a dentist or an electrician then a writer or musician for something. So solid recommendations may be slightly harder to get.
  - 18y ago
ja27 18y ago
I've seen people get great-looking logo designs for $300 using http://99designs.com http://99designs.com I'm sure it pisses off $5000/logo designers as much as iStockphoto pisses off people that used to make a good living from stock photography, but welcome to the 21st century.
- Gibbon 18y ago
  Spec work sites like 99designs are ripe with stolen illustrations from stock sites. Should you ever get caught with a logo using stolen works, you're setting yourself up for some really hefty fees regardless of where you obtained the work. This isn't conjecture, it's happened before: http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/anti-spec-work-parable/ http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/anti-spec-...
  - ericwaller 18y ago
    Is this really an issue with spec work? What recourse do you have if a non-spec designer uses stolen illustrations in your logo?
  - jcl 18y ago
    That's a great article. (The word is "rife", btw.) As the article hints, it's a problem of economics. With spec work, the artist only gets paid on a few works out of many. To make many works and still earn a living wage, the artist must make each work with a fraction of the resources usually allocated to a professional work -- which on average can't compete with stolen works produced with more resources. If spec work paid more, real artists might be able to compete -- but the only reason people want spec work is because it is cheaper... in the short term at least.
- cwilson 18y ago
  I could care less about the 5k logo designers, but spec work is horrible and if you use sites like 99designs you are getting exactly what you pay for. No GOOD designer is going to spend hours tweaking a logo to your liking when he's competing with 100's of other designers and no guarantee he's going to win, ESPECIALLY for $300. Try convincing a developer to do anything remotely close to this and you'll be laughed at as well.
cwilson 18y ago
Any designer worth his salt is going to spend some time going through a discovery process with you. This is where he or she would find out exactly what you are thinking and then translate that to good design. You may think this ugly ass dog looks good, but I can promise pretty much no one else does, so you're doing your brand and yourself an injustice to pretend you're the expert, when you're obviously not. I am constantly baffled by designers and developers not understanding or appreciating each others craft.
moe 18y ago
Interesting how he accompanies his text with one of the worst logos I have seen in a while.
- slig 18y ago
  I did't catch that up too, but after he says: "Nope, wasn't "implying" that! In fact, a careful read would have indicated the Chowhound logo was NOT created according to this advice. It was, in fact, done by a pro with vast experience, "condensation" or not."
- paulgb 18y ago
  Keep in mind that it was probably chowhound.com's logo in the late 90s. I agree that it looks ugly now, but in the late 90s it wouldn't have been too out of place.
- coglethorpe 18y ago
  The post reminds me of this comic: http://highered.prblogs.org/files/2007/07/dilbert-graphic-design.jpg http://highered.prblogs.org/files/2007/07/dilbert-graphic-de...
- jhickner 18y ago
  His logo example uses bad typography, questionable color choices, and is too busy. But it also fails one of the most basic, objective tests of logo-ness, which is: Can it be scaled down easily? It can't. There are too many fine details. This is an incredibly common rookie mistake. If you're having a logo done, just think to yourself: would this logo work as well on the spine of a CD cover as it would on a billboard? Someday you will need to print your logo somewhere small. Apple logo, Nike swoosh, facebook's "f", twitter's "t", etc. - Recognizeable at any size. Also ask, would this logo work just as well in 2-color? Because you'll be printing it that way all the time, on invoices, etc.
mattmaroon 18y ago
Just go to logoworks, plunk down $400, get a pretty decent one, call it a day.
mahmud 18y ago
Get a good designer and trust his/her intuition. A client of mine once paid for a logo and 10 days later got two squiggly lines back. How underwhelming! We kept it and sent for the letterheads and other office supplies to be printed. When they came, the thing looked JUST right on paper. Nice, crisp and to the point (we didn't know the logo went into a certain area on paper, it wasn't centered like in our printout.) One logo might look OK on a printout, but imagine being in an office where nearly everything has that logo? The two Squiggly lines had space around them and stood out. Anything meatier and we would have gone nuts. Looked gorgeous on their custom lamps too; they had reading lamps made of a murky glass bowl, except the logo area was see through. The whole thing just looked pro.
marthacom 18y ago
Wow Jim, harsh for you. I've almost always have had great experience with designers as long as the "front load" is good --what you want in concept/brand. I wouldn't presume, though I have other skills, do to what they do.

26 points by cjwestbrook 18y ago

cjwestbrook 18y ago

I'm not sure whether or not I agree with this, but it's thought provoking. Interested in what others think.

mcav 18y ago

If the logo pictured therein represents the mockup he gave to the designer, I hope he'd be prepared to have it entirely modified or discarded. The logo is busy, repetitive, and difficult to digest. Designers, musicians, and others make a living at their craft because they're good at what they do (ideally). Logo designers have spent hours learning what's good and what isn't. I wouldn't want someone who has a "compositional idea" to come up to me (as a piano player myself) and ask me to morph their idea into a masterpiece unless they fully understood that I might change their idea entirely, or that their idea might not even be feasible. Same goes for startups -- you can't present an idea to a few developers and expect them to roar back with a great startup. It takes persistence, experience, and inspiration to create something good. But inspiration itself comes from having experience at a craft. Not all inspiration is created equal.

cjwestbrook 18y ago
Let me argue the other side for the sake of discussion. Designers, musicians, etc. make their living because they're good at what they do, but what is it that they do? Designers are good at playing with visuals, writers are good at playing with words, musicians are good at setting harmony to a melody. Sometimes, those people are good at creating something from nothing, but it's a different animal. Having worked as a writer, I liked starting from scratch, but I also appreciated when the CEO had a clear vision and story of what his company was about that I could run with. Many great works of music are derivative of a theme from another composer. Jim's point seems to be that giving them something to react to and work with is a huge shortcut with little or no loss.
- mcav 18y ago
  Sure, something's better than nothing. That's what brainstorming is all about -- creating ideas without having any expectation that any particular idea will succeed. Starting with something might spur an idea forward, or it might not. An initial idea's good; multiple ideas are better. As long as the person understands that collaborating with an expert will necessitate change, perhaps back-and-forth consultation, etc., until a good, agreeable conclusion is reached.
lucumo 18y ago
> If the logo pictured therein represents the mockup he gave to the designer, I hope he'd be prepared to have it entirely modified or discarded. The logo is busy, repetitive, and difficult to digest. He adresses the quality of the current logo in a comment, in reply to an anonymous commenter who said something along the same lines (but much more rudely). "Nope, wasn't "implying" that! In fact, a careful read would have indicated the Chowhound logo was NOT created according to this advice. It was, in fact, done by a pro with vast experience, "condensation" or not. "You clearly have no idea what a graphic designer does" Well, hmm. Actually, you, like many (though by no means all) graphic designers, have no idea what a graphic designer ought to do. I'll explain: The function of graphics for commercial use is not to impress graphics people. Its purpose is to set a tone and demarcate a brand for a given market. Chowhound reached nearly a million people and became a nationally-known brand with a marketing budget of exactly zero. A great many people grew emotionally attached to the brand as soon as they came through our door, and identified with it quite strongly. All along, graphics pros such as yourself denigrated our design (totally their right, of course!). But I'd say the design was awesome....not to impress the likes of you, but to accomplish our goal: to attract and engage a vast number of eaters of a certain stripe. THAT'S what a (good) graphic designer does. A bad designer designs to please other designers."

Gibbon 18y ago

As a designer, there's nothing I hate more than clients who come to me with preconceived notions of what they want or need, nevermind actual sketches of their "vision". It often leaves little opportunity to improve on the idea, or a hell of a lot of nudging to get them to accept something better. My last logo job had about a hundred sketches, further refined to a dozen candidates, from which I presented the top three. The idea that an artist/designer/musician can't be called upon to think up fresh ideas is laughable. Any truly competent creative can pump out ideas a fast as they can draw/write/play.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
Zev 18y ago
Unfortunately, for every competent artist/designer/musician out there, there's at least one (and most likely more) hack that can't cut it and isn't competent at their job. And for someone who's job doesn't deal with what is more traditionally thought of as needing creativity, it can be hard to distinguish the competent people who are good at their job from the hacks who imitate.
- Gibbon 18y ago
  You find competent designers the same way you find competent electricians, surgeons or programmers. Ask around, get recommendations, look at their portfolios and talk to them about their methods and processes.
  - Zev 18y ago
    True, but: If you don't know what to look for, what good does talking looking at prior work or talking shop with them do? For all you know, they're completely making everything up as you go along in the conversation. Getting recommendations from people is the best thing to do, but people are much more likely to need a dentist or an electrician then a writer or musician for something. So solid recommendations may be slightly harder to get.
- 18y ago

ja27 18y ago

I've seen people get great-looking logo designs for $300 using http://99designs.com http://99designs.com I'm sure it pisses off $5000/logo designers as much as iStockphoto pisses off people that used to make a good living from stock photography, but welcome to the 21st century.

Gibbon 18y ago
Spec work sites like 99designs are ripe with stolen illustrations from stock sites. Should you ever get caught with a logo using stolen works, you're setting yourself up for some really hefty fees regardless of where you obtained the work. This isn't conjecture, it's happened before: http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/anti-spec-work-parable/ http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/anti-spec-...
- ericwaller 18y ago
  Is this really an issue with spec work? What recourse do you have if a non-spec designer uses stolen illustrations in your logo?
- jcl 18y ago
  That's a great article. (The word is "rife", btw.) As the article hints, it's a problem of economics. With spec work, the artist only gets paid on a few works out of many. To make many works and still earn a living wage, the artist must make each work with a fraction of the resources usually allocated to a professional work -- which on average can't compete with stolen works produced with more resources. If spec work paid more, real artists might be able to compete -- but the only reason people want spec work is because it is cheaper... in the short term at least.
cwilson 18y ago
I could care less about the 5k logo designers, but spec work is horrible and if you use sites like 99designs you are getting exactly what you pay for. No GOOD designer is going to spend hours tweaking a logo to your liking when he's competing with 100's of other designers and no guarantee he's going to win, ESPECIALLY for $300. Try convincing a developer to do anything remotely close to this and you'll be laughed at as well.

cwilson 18y ago

Any designer worth his salt is going to spend some time going through a discovery process with you. This is where he or she would find out exactly what you are thinking and then translate that to good design. You may think this ugly ass dog looks good, but I can promise pretty much no one else does, so you're doing your brand and yourself an injustice to pretend you're the expert, when you're obviously not. I am constantly baffled by designers and developers not understanding or appreciating each others craft.

moe 18y ago

Interesting how he accompanies his text with one of the worst logos I have seen in a while.

slig 18y ago
I did't catch that up too, but after he says: "Nope, wasn't "implying" that! In fact, a careful read would have indicated the Chowhound logo was NOT created according to this advice. It was, in fact, done by a pro with vast experience, "condensation" or not."
paulgb 18y ago
Keep in mind that it was probably chowhound.com's logo in the late 90s. I agree that it looks ugly now, but in the late 90s it wouldn't have been too out of place.
coglethorpe 18y ago
The post reminds me of this comic: http://highered.prblogs.org/files/2007/07/dilbert-graphic-design.jpg http://highered.prblogs.org/files/2007/07/dilbert-graphic-de...
jhickner 18y ago
His logo example uses bad typography, questionable color choices, and is too busy. But it also fails one of the most basic, objective tests of logo-ness, which is: Can it be scaled down easily? It can't. There are too many fine details. This is an incredibly common rookie mistake. If you're having a logo done, just think to yourself: would this logo work as well on the spine of a CD cover as it would on a billboard? Someday you will need to print your logo somewhere small. Apple logo, Nike swoosh, facebook's "f", twitter's "t", etc. - Recognizeable at any size. Also ask, would this logo work just as well in 2-color? Because you'll be printing it that way all the time, on invoices, etc.

mattmaroon 18y ago

Just go to logoworks, plunk down $400, get a pretty decent one, call it a day.

mahmud 18y ago

Get a good designer and trust his/her intuition. A client of mine once paid for a logo and 10 days later got two squiggly lines back. How underwhelming! We kept it and sent for the letterheads and other office supplies to be printed. When they came, the thing looked JUST right on paper. Nice, crisp and to the point (we didn't know the logo went into a certain area on paper, it wasn't centered like in our printout.) One logo might look OK on a printout, but imagine being in an office where nearly everything has that logo? The two Squiggly lines had space around them and stood out. Anything meatier and we would have gone nuts. Looked gorgeous on their custom lamps too; they had reading lamps made of a murky glass bowl, except the logo area was see through. The whole thing just looked pro.

marthacom 18y ago

Wow Jim, harsh for you. I've almost always have had great experience with designers as long as the "front load" is good --what you want in concept/brand. I wouldn't presume, though I have other skills, do to what they do.