I’m using 99designs.com right now on a logo contest. The best results are zeroing in on 3 talented artists out of a few hundred. I’ll probably work directly with one of them on larger projects.

These 3 that rose to the top of my contest have a record of winning 4 out of 100 contests.

A contest only sucks for the untalented artists. The ones that have talent can use it as a lead builder to larger projects.

Granted my contest at 99designs.com resulted in over 1000 submissions which were 2% fantastic ideas and 98% junk, but the freedom from being chained to a single firm is worth sifting through the rubble.

In contrast to the old school method this article praises, I experienced fast turn around times and the freedom to choose among the artists that were producing seriously good works. I communicated directly with the best artists to fine tune the ideas. I got tools for polling friends outside the contest to review the best of the best and I ended up with a vector art LOGO that is fantastic.

Being educated about logo concepts, good and bad ideas as well as getting as many people familiar with your business to look at submissions during a contest is the way to go. The more eyes that look at it the more you’ll find out how much it “looks like a nose” or something you may have totally missed.

A better article would be “how to run an effective logo contest”

Wait til you see the design……..it’s such a radical change. I’m sure the design firm got a lot of running around by the university, but this has got to be embarrassing.

As one-man-startup-company, I AM looking for some design because I know it will look horrible if I would do it myself. But I’m still trying to find out with path to choose….

I hope i’m getting the point from the discussion above: if you don’t want to do serious business or don’t have a product that you believe in, stop wining and fire up Photoshop. Don’t even bother to have someone design it for you.

On the other hand, isn’t there a way in the middle ? Like not spending a few thousand dollars but also not getting a crappy $99 logo from 16-year-old-wanabee designer ?

I absolutely see the (business) value of a well-designed company logo or stationary, but it’s not always possible to pay that amount of money for start-ups.

Any thoughts ?

That’s what I want to point out here. To this day I make a high echelon income year after year by catering as best I can to my client’s wants and wishes, with an eye to detail and how a logo and/or design will be implemented across the breadth of the client’s communications. Many times I have to make “personal compromises” re: taste, but if at all possible, I educate my clients why a certain idea or design change may not be financially a good choice for them.

The average person loves colorful, shiny, objects… much like a bird. Just take a quick look at http://logobids.com. Even the “community” is “Blinded By Bling™”. It’s a designer’s JOB to make the client aware that there are times, places, and printing/display jobs where you can throw on the Bling. However, the basis logo and design has to lend itself to different processes in the first place.

TIP for young designers: work in black and white FIRST… then add Bling. In fact I do all of my initial designs and concepts only in BW, positive and negative, as some other pros have pointed out above. Confession: yes, my design career started with inking logos, and then BW Postscript reduced using a repro-camera. Hard to break ol’ habits… but then again, why would I? As far as I’m concerned… it is the ONLY way, and the same as understanding shadow/light in photography and painting.

Also, I always start out my client presentations in BW as well. Then I start to add color treatments and variations, possibly a drop-shadow, or a 3D mock-up of assorted merchandise and displays, like die-cuts, etched signage, LED light signage, website fronts, etc… and lately App icons. With each treatment, I point out the versatility, recognition, and “cost-savings” I built into the design. This gets them every time I do receive a certain amount of the “savings”, but once, as opposed to the life of the design. Fair enough.

Re: Logo Design Contest sites
I think they’re OK for some people and businesses. Actually a good portion of my work and business is cleaning up after bad logo and initial design decisions. Truthfully, I have an easier time of convincing the clients after they’ve thrown their money down the drain a time or 2, and actively seek clients that have “experience” so-to-speak. Also, I get to see what they like and what they rejected, and ask pointed questions as we narrow down to a design solution.

My philosophy if anyone needs it or cares: I want my clients to be proud of their business image when they hand out their card, mail an invoice, or drive around in their delivery truck. I want them and their employees, to be enthusiastic and motivated every day they get to walk past their sign going to work in the morning. My taste and design-sense be damned… it is the client that has to embody their design and live with it plastered all over the place, day in and day out. I just hold their hand awhile design-wise through my expertise… so they can confidently… get on with theirs.

If your are looking for a good looking logo, go for an artist, she knows how to combine colors, forms and maybe, fonts. And will end up coming with a good looking “something” that may please you depending upon what you’ve briefed her.

Art doesn’t need to have a reason why supporting its process, at least not in its general concept. Art is for enjoying and not for “intelectualizing” it (yes this could turn into another discussion).

Design, in the other hand, must answer to another things: Concepts, objectives, targeting, requirements, market, competitors, styling and culture, to name a few. Sometimes, the brief from the client can cover everything, sometimes not. A professional designer or an agency could do some meetings to fill up the blanks, but when the price is low, commonly the designer fill up the blanks for himself, assuming some ideas that could be much accepted or deeply mistaken.

For the designer (as an artist) you could come to some forms, colors, ideas to “decorate”, that’s the fun part, but commonly, every decoration have a hidden reasoning behind. The methods in design, exist. And for you the design analphabets, I will tell you the two most common:

Scientific Method: You back up a lot of info about the product, the market, etc everything I mentioned before. Then, formulate and hypothesis, and create the prototype for this hypothesis. You try it and you evaluate it. Once the process is done, you’ll know how the prototype works and based on evaluating if the concept, objective, market, style and everything else, fulfills the original definitions, you decide what to change, what to not. Even then you could realize the concept, or an objective is wrong, you could even realize that your client doesn’t need a logo, he needs a fridge that keeps the beers cool for a longer period. That’s another part of our work, consulting.

Then, you could use another method also well known: back box (I don’t know if it’s called the same in english, but the idea is the same.
It’s called black box design because, you receive some requirements as before, and you enter the black box and come out with something. Sometimes is great and you have to analyze it so you could explain what did you do, but for most of the time, you will always end up with something that any designer could smash to pieces when analyzed, or so so.

From these two points of view, or methods to confront a design project, I dare you to guess what’s the one used in the contest low priced sites… black box.

In the other hand, sometimes clients seem to live in the basement of a bunker and came out for a logo because they hear in the radio that everyone has one.

If you have a product that doesn’t worth the money, I mean, you have a product that hasn’t been thought enough and there’s none eager to buy it, the design won’t solve your problem. Indeed, the design could increase the chances that someone MISTAKENLY buy your product. But it’ll surely end in the trash bin.

Commonly the clients looks for 3 things one can read in a design: Superb quality, uniqueness and exclusivity. WOW that’s at least stupid. The design won’t make your hygienic paper of superb quality whatever it says the design. You should change your working process and make the hygienic paper from a softer and tougher material!! A design won’t make your enterprise more reliable at all, but may obviously help with the image your clients take from your card… but if you attend a meeting in shorts, no design may save you.

So, investing great in good design and being aligned with your products or services and the marketing campaigns honoring the branding, would do a lot of good to your business.
Investing great and having your internal politics on the Corporate identity misaligned will end in a dissonant corporate image perceived, lowering the perception value of your business.
Investing poorly in good product will not be a problem, if the product is good you would sell it anyway and you could change your image afterward.
Investing poorly in a bad aligned product or service, will throw you to the trash bin or at least will be a perfect companion for a bad thing.

My 2 cents.