6 ms·

I think you would end up with a better logo if you just did a call to your mailing list for designer recommendations, and paid a real designer $500 for a few ho

I think you would end up with a better logo if you just did a call to your mailing list for designer recommendations, and paid a real designer $500 for a few hours of their work to come up with their best effort. By opening a contest, you're not only going to get a much lower quality of submissions, but in the end, the final decision is going to be made by you, someone "useless at anything artistic". Paying a designer $500 won't get you a full brand identity makeover, but that's not what you're going for. You should be able to find a talented designer who will spend an hour discussing what you want to get our of your logo, some time going over a number of their own ideas, and then wrap up the project and give you the sizes you need and a vector file if you ever need to scale your logo up or down.

joelhooks 13y ago
Paying a single designer directly can be really frustrating. $500 only buys you so many variations, and if none of them hit the mark, you are SOL, either settling for something "meh" or forking out more $$ for another round. At the low end, crowd sourcing logo design makes a lot of sense.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  Yes. And possibly even through the mid to mid-high end.
cperciva 13y ago
in the end, the final decision is going to be made by you, someone "useless at anything artistic". That's a fair point... but I do know what Tarsnap is, and it's not exactly "typical". I don't know how many non-tarsnap-using designers would come up with something which is consistent with the rest of the "tarsnap brand".
- ericdykstra 13y ago
  Well, part of the $500 would presumably be talking through the goals of the project, what message you want to convey with the logo, how you might want to extend the Tarsnap brand in the future, etc. To put it another way, if you needed to roll out a new feature for Tarsnap but couldn't do it yourself, would you hire someone on contract, or do a contest for it?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    He just wants something cool looking and memorable for the FreeBSD sponsors page and for his website. This is part of the problem with paying for designers (something I've done a bunch of times, to varying effect) --- they want to have a conversation about your brand and the message of the logo. No doubt there are productive conversations like that to be had with good designers --- but not in $500 logo projects.
    - rcgs 13y ago
      To pay someone $500 and then not want to spend an hour with them making them understand your product/idea/whatever seems like a bit of a waste of money to me, likely making the results hit and miss. Or have I misunderstood and you're saying that for $500 finding a designer than can hold that conversation is unlikely?
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I think he will have a hard time getting a qualified designer to take a $500 project seriously. I have no doubt he can get something for $500, but it won't be something he likes.
        miloshadzic 13y ago
        You are right if you focus solely on designers from countries with a high cost of living. I'm pretty sure the friend who did my little shop's logo(you can see it at http://rightfold.io http://rightfold.io) could make something that Colin likes for less than 500$.
sixQuarks 13y ago
I don't agree. He's looking for something that he can't put his finger on. The likelihood that the one designer he chooses comes up with the best idea is low. By holding the contest, he can get dozens of submissions. They may not be well-designed, but he can use the best theme from the designs submitted to hire a top-notch designer and polish it up, if need be.
- prawn 13y ago
  Reread this and imagine it's a code contest. Less subjective maybe, but would you want to build for someone with such a vague demand? "I need it to do, err, I don't know. Can't quite put my finger on it."
  - sixQuarks 13y ago
    but it's not a code contest. Design is totally different.
    - virgi1 13y ago
      No it's not. Good design is about solving a problem, and you can't do that without understanding the problem. Just like you (and me! because I'm a compiler programmer, at heart) can't really solve a problem we don't understand. You can't come to me and tell me to build you a mobile app for your business, just because I know the ARM architecture... I need to understand your business first. You know what's funny? We use the word "design" for software, and you wouldn't think that you could run a contest to pick the design of a software system. But nevertheless you think someone can design his communication strategy & brand identity by a contest, without spending the time to write down the requirements first. To the OP: my advice is, just don't bother with a contest or a logo. Find someone (a friend) who is good at typography, and ask him to typeset the word "Tarsnap" for you in a way that looks good on that banner. Just use that as a logo, until you have the time & resources to hire someone to do a proper brand identity for you (because that's what you are asking for here, not just a logo)
6ren 13y ago
contest -> publicity
elwell 13y ago
The $500 is worth the marketing value of a contest alone.
neilk 13y ago
You have a point, but one thing logo contests do well is they get a wide variety of concepts, from a community that knows what tarsnap means to them. Then you call in a real designer to look over the submissions and pick the one that inspires them, and do an improved version of that.
invalidOrTaken 13y ago
Question---how do designers who do this survive? $500 is not a lot of money---you'd need 100 of these projects/year to make 50K. Do designers do that many? If you've got bigger projects, something like this seems valuable as a sales tool rather than your bread and butter.
- davidw 13y ago
  $500 is quite a bit of money if you live someplace relatively cheap. That could be Eastern Europe, somewhere in the midwestern US, the Philippines, or elsewhere. Granted, there may be more transaction costs working with people in those places, but in some situations, that may be worth it for the savings.

joelhooks 13y ago

Paying a single designer directly can be really frustrating. $500 only buys you so many variations, and if none of them hit the mark, you are SOL, either settling for something "meh" or forking out more $$ for another round. At the low end, crowd sourcing logo design makes a lot of sense.

unclebucknasty 13y ago
Yes. And possibly even through the mid to mid-high end.

cperciva 13y ago

in the end, the final decision is going to be made by you, someone "useless at anything artistic". That's a fair point... but I do know what Tarsnap is, and it's not exactly "typical". I don't know how many non-tarsnap-using designers would come up with something which is consistent with the rest of the "tarsnap brand".

ericdykstra 13y ago
Well, part of the $500 would presumably be talking through the goals of the project, what message you want to convey with the logo, how you might want to extend the Tarsnap brand in the future, etc. To put it another way, if you needed to roll out a new feature for Tarsnap but couldn't do it yourself, would you hire someone on contract, or do a contest for it?
- tptacek 13y ago
  He just wants something cool looking and memorable for the FreeBSD sponsors page and for his website. This is part of the problem with paying for designers (something I've done a bunch of times, to varying effect) --- they want to have a conversation about your brand and the message of the logo. No doubt there are productive conversations like that to be had with good designers --- but not in $500 logo projects.
  - rcgs 13y ago
    To pay someone $500 and then not want to spend an hour with them making them understand your product/idea/whatever seems like a bit of a waste of money to me, likely making the results hit and miss. Or have I misunderstood and you're saying that for $500 finding a designer than can hold that conversation is unlikely?
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I think he will have a hard time getting a qualified designer to take a $500 project seriously. I have no doubt he can get something for $500, but it won't be something he likes.
      - miloshadzic 13y ago
        You are right if you focus solely on designers from countries with a high cost of living. I'm pretty sure the friend who did my little shop's logo(you can see it at http://rightfold.io http://rightfold.io) could make something that Colin likes for less than 500$.

sixQuarks 13y ago

I don't agree. He's looking for something that he can't put his finger on. The likelihood that the one designer he chooses comes up with the best idea is low. By holding the contest, he can get dozens of submissions. They may not be well-designed, but he can use the best theme from the designs submitted to hire a top-notch designer and polish it up, if need be.

prawn 13y ago
Reread this and imagine it's a code contest. Less subjective maybe, but would you want to build for someone with such a vague demand? "I need it to do, err, I don't know. Can't quite put my finger on it."
- sixQuarks 13y ago
  but it's not a code contest. Design is totally different.
  - virgi1 13y ago
    No it's not. Good design is about solving a problem, and you can't do that without understanding the problem. Just like you (and me! because I'm a compiler programmer, at heart) can't really solve a problem we don't understand. You can't come to me and tell me to build you a mobile app for your business, just because I know the ARM architecture... I need to understand your business first. You know what's funny? We use the word "design" for software, and you wouldn't think that you could run a contest to pick the design of a software system. But nevertheless you think someone can design his communication strategy & brand identity by a contest, without spending the time to write down the requirements first. To the OP: my advice is, just don't bother with a contest or a logo. Find someone (a friend) who is good at typography, and ask him to typeset the word "Tarsnap" for you in a way that looks good on that banner. Just use that as a logo, until you have the time & resources to hire someone to do a proper brand identity for you (because that's what you are asking for here, not just a logo)

6ren 13y ago

contest -> publicity

elwell 13y ago

The $500 is worth the marketing value of a contest alone.

neilk 13y ago

You have a point, but one thing logo contests do well is they get a wide variety of concepts, from a community that knows what tarsnap means to them. Then you call in a real designer to look over the submissions and pick the one that inspires them, and do an improved version of that.

invalidOrTaken 13y ago

Question---how do designers who do this survive? $500 is not a lot of money---you'd need 100 of these projects/year to make 50K. Do designers do that many? If you've got bigger projects, something like this seems valuable as a sales tool rather than your bread and butter.

davidw 13y ago
$500 is quite a bit of money if you live someplace relatively cheap. That could be Eastern Europe, somewhere in the midwestern US, the Philippines, or elsewhere. Granted, there may be more transaction costs working with people in those places, but in some situations, that may be worth it for the savings.