Logo Contest Sites: Good news for designers, or ripoffs?
Logo Contest Sites: Good news for designers, or ripoffs?
Logo contest sites are becoming big business. They’re also attracting a lot of flak online as ripoffs, providing low returns for winners and depriving graphic artists of fair returns. The battle has become one of ideology as much as commercial realities.
The logo contest sites have simple contracts regarding ownership of materials. If your entry wins, you sign over the rights to the logo. If it loses, it’s your property. Some monitor the contests to ensure that the contests are healthy, providing feedback. The sites offer profiles online for artists, useful for those who don’t have websites or want commercial exposure as freelancers in a marketplace. These sites are entirely unapologetic about any defects, and sail on regardless of criticism. It’s a typical internet phenomenon.
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The arguments for and against have taken up strong positions:
The pro-logo contest advocates say the contests are great experience, they pay about as well as some freelance jobs, and they’re good portfolio material. They also have high profiles. If you can say you beat 800 other people in a design contest, you do have a talking point.
There are a few undeniable points in this position. Getting a break as a freelance graphic artist is very difficult. The artist profiles are useful, particularly on well known sites. Anything which beefs up the portfolio is good business. It is good experience, and does make artists try to perform at their best, so their work quality is generally high, or at least market standard.
The anti-logo contest crowd say that the contests are ripoffs, not paying a fraction of commercial rates. They also say that the contests waste a lot of valuable time with unsuccessful entries, which would be better spent getting real jobs. They also have many reservations about the designs, many of which look like other commercial designs, and aren’t particularly creative.
These arguments do have factual elements. The prizes are usually nothing like graphic rates, although a few do pay very highly, on a par with commercial rates. The time factor, which may be many hours, does matter. The innuendo about plagiarism isn’t entirely misplaced, although it can be overstated. There’s a whole class of similar-looking “safe” logo designs, most of which are stock vector-based swirls and icons, which could be called “mainstream fodder”.
The fact is that logos are part of advertising budgets. If you have an advertising budget of $10,000 you can spend half of it on a professionally designed logo, or you can put it up for a contest for $250. It’s a no-brainer, and win lose or draw, you own the new logo through logo contest contracts. Against which, the El Cheapo approach can result in buying the basis of a lawsuit. The misgivings about unhealthy levels of similarity in the safe designs are well- founded. Logos are commercially sensitive, as are registered designs and trademarks.
The bottom line is enter these contests with your eyes open, and get starry-eyed after you get paid, not before.
Awesome Comments!
Contests are held for graphic design of any kind these days – t shirts, slogan and logo design, graphic poster design, website design or any other kind of graphic design. There is a great chance to express creativity, make money and friends and hang out with like-minded people as well.
Competitions are always good to stimulate new ideas, I think!
Ayaz Malik Reply:
June 25th, 2010 at 6:53 am
YES! i actually agree with u
Really day by day Logo contest sites are getting more popularity.Have you heard of 99designs.It is a disruptive startup which connects passionate designers from around the globe with savvy clients who need design projects completed in a timely fashion without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design.
“Logo contests” or “best design gets the job” situations are always in the designer’s worst interest.
Never give your ideas away for free and absolutely never design anything until a contract is signed and you collect a percentage of your estimate. Your ideas and time are your bread & butter. When you give it away, the client has no stake and if the client has no stake, then they’re free to walk away with their money and your ideas.
You have a very valid point Greg! i agree with you its one of the major Cons about it
The problem is that there are tons of people out there that design logos for barely any income. This hurts the good designers and wastes our time when it comes to sites like 99designs. If you want a truly professional logo don’t be cheap, go to a pro. But if you want a barely decent logo you can go on one of those websites like 99designs where people design logos in a day. Trust me you cant design a logo in a day it take time, research, sketches, and feedback to create a logo.Group competition sites will never offer that!
One of the biggest issues for graphic designers thus far in relation to online design contests have been the refund policies, in one companies case “100% money back guarantee – no prize money for the designer” policy. It does not seem fair to have designers already working on spec to be slapped in the face after hours of work to find the project they were working on has been refunded. Apparently this is happening at an alarming rate.
As a graphic designer myself I decided to build my own design contest website http://www.klick360.com/home where all contests are guaranteed. We are currently in Beta and testing for designers only. We have a host of exciting features that will be included in the near future providing designers additional methods to earn a decent income.
Agree with all your points, it really does showcases everyone’s creativity and talents.
I started a logo contest at logocontest.com a few days ago and I am very happy with the results so far. I never would have got logos like this anywhere for $250.00
“…the contests waste a lot of valuable time with unsuccessful entries, which would be better spent getting real jobs.”
I just signed up to one of those logo competition websites. I’m in the middle of one competition. I can already see how this wastes alot of peoples time. One logo easily has hundreds of artists working on it. And only one person gets paid.
What if you worked as a Dentist, or a waitress, or a police officer? And only one person out of 800 people got paid every couple days? Society would collapse.
As an artist, I don’t need to “build up my portfolio”. I’ve been working for decades and my portfolio has too many things in it as it is.
Further more, the client sometimes has bad taste, so the winner is their choice, so it’s not necessarily the best logo that wins. For example, the client gave an ugly designed logo 5 stars, because it had bold red letters. The logo was for a luxury company, not a cheap “Bob’s Crazy Liquidation Warehouse”. So you can’t educate the client — it’s just not a normal working relationship.
So, the logo i’m currently involved in is my first and might be my last.
But at least i’ll know how so many other artists are being exploited.
Unless the artists are like 19 years old, living with their parents in the basement, have no expenses, and have nothing better to do with their time, then fine — it can’t hurt.
Tayyab Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 5:14 am
@Barry B.
Thank you for taking time to write down all your experiences and help others. Your comment is very much appreciated.
“What if you worked as a Dentist, or a waitress, or a police officer? And only one person out of 800 people got paid every couple days? Society would collapse.”
Designing logos is a creative job, so it’s pretty different because you have to meet the client taste more than in other jobs. Any dentist can make the same thing for you, the only difference is in the price or in how good is the dentist, but there’s no creativity in the service offered. I don’t need some art design for my teeth, so I don’t need to choose a creative dentist
What I would say is that in a client point of view, getting a logo using a contest may be better because he/she can have more ideas to choose from, and more chances to get the right idea that meets his/her taste.
“Further more, the client sometimes has bad taste, so the winner is their choice, so it’s not necessarily the best logo that wins”
I agree, sometimes a client could have a bad taste, but who decides which is the best logo? Educating a client could be a good idea but in this case you use your own taste, so it also maybe not the best logo but just the best logo for you, that is not necessarily the best.
“Unless the artists are like 19 years old, living with their parents in the basement, have no expenses, and have nothing better to do with their time, then fine — it can’t hurt.”
I know that sometimes could be frustrating for the designers that don’t win the contest, but there are many professional designers happy to participate even just for fun.
Massimo Perini (webmaster LogoArena.com)