Spam. Based on a simple, if flawed concept. Send enough ‘get yer Viagra here’ laced e-mails to unsuspecting recipients, you will eventually find that one person who is willing to purchase. A hall of famer in the “it’s incredible how much effort folks will go to in order to avoid an honest day’s labor” category, it is dopey and (with response rates in the 1/100000’s) pretty ineffectual. Targeted marketing is much more efficient, will net far greater results, and in the long run - a much higher payback. Spam’s only real appeal is that it’s cheap, if not free, for the so-called ‘advertiser’. How does this relate to a logo design article, you might ask. Well, in my humble opinion, design contests and so-called crowdsourcing are nothing more than visual Spam. With similar results and driven by similar motives. Here’s the usual pitch - somebody who wants a new logo created for their fledgling business offers a prize (I’ve seen everything between $50 to a few grand and some with nothing but the ‘glory’ of designing the job) as part of a contest (or spec project) during which designers will submit their work, without any contract, payment or agreement (other than the ‘winner’), in the hopes of having their work selected. It uses the ‘visual Spam’ theory - if enough designers, throw enough ideas (for free, natch) at a project, one of these entries ’should’ be a winner. It’s also a variant of the ’something for nothing’ approach. And my mother has been lecturing me on that one since I was a wee lad…

Logo design contests, crowdsourcing and other 'Spec' work

If I had a nickel for every time I heard this - “if you show me what you’re proposing for my business logo, and if I like it, I’ll pay for it”, I’d be a rich man. Or at least the proud owner of a lot of nickels. My answer is and has been always the same - “No thanks”. Firstly, a design studio is like any other business. Overhead. Salaries. Day-to-day expenses. It’s downright impractical and illogical to give our product away for free (that part should be obvious). Running The Logo Factory studio with ‘hope to get paid’ projects, while our designers are of the “definitely getting paid” variety is a formula that any first year business student would see as fundamentally flawed. In-demand designers (the good ones) always get paid. Conversely, I never ask our clients for ‘free stuff’. Ain’t nice. Ain’t professional. I also wouldn’t think of asking my neighborhood accountants to submit final tax returns as a contest (I’d be begging for an audit), a bevy of dentists to work on my molars in ‘hope of getting paid (might as well sign up for those dentures now) or ask for mechanics to fix my brakes on ’spec’ (hope my insurance is paid up). In other ‘professional’ fields, it’s accepted practice to select a service provider based on a myriad of factors. Your needs and budget. Their experience and expertise. And it is a generally accepted philosophy that “you get what you pay for”.

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Design contests - logo development as a competitive sport

It could also be argued that ’spec’ work has further, less obvious, ramifications - for designer and buyers alike. Some examples? From a purely pragmatic point of view, whenever designers are performing ’spec’ work, they are not working ‘with’ paying clients - folks who are the lifeblood of TLF. It’s not fair to ‘real clients’ who ‘have’ formed a professional working relationship with our studio. These are the clients that deserve (and get) our undivided attention and effort. Spec work is also based on a basic misunderstanding of what a logotype actually is - it is not a bunch of ’swirls’ created with illustration software. It’s not just the logo that ‘looks the best’ (as subjective a barometer as possible) - it should be gauged by a far more complicated litmus test including usability, application and market reach. It is the execution of an ‘idea’ - a concept. With a capital ‘C’. Generally, a successful logo is the percolation of the company’s personality into graphic form, created by detailed interaction and back-and-forth. It also involves the services of a designer who’s capable of executing the concept flawlessly and with technical proficiency. Not a random spray of squiggles and wiggles thrown ‘together’ in the ‘hope’ of winning this, or that, contest. Design is not a sporting event (and an amateur one at that). And at the risk of sounding snooty, I will guarantee you this - *if* I were to enter $100 spec logo contests, I would hold-back the best ideas (lest they get ‘lifted’ by someone who’s ethically challenged) and wouldn’t budget the time (and resultant effort) that a paid gig would get. After all, why should we release our ‘primo’ ideas into ‘the wild’ where they can be usurped by other folks (”I can use that idea, render it myself, and charge you less than they would”). Bottom line, while the logo we presented to you may be ‘better’ than the others, it would not contain the ‘blood and soul’ that our team usually pours into their work. It’s nothing personal. The ‘chance’ of winning $80 only buys so much time and effort. And unless we’ve run completely dry of paying gigs, we don’t have the time - a finite resource - to do anything more. Sorry, but it’s a dollars and cents equation.

It was if I had taken on a sacred cow, and the very freedom of the Western World (and a good chunk of the Eastern) were at stake. Many e-mails claimed that I was missing the point - that logo contests allowed small ‘mom and pop’ enterprises to get a great logo, selected from dozens of choices, while paying far less than the going rate. Fair enough I suppose. Could it be that I’m simply shortsighted? At the end of the day, are there benefits to the ‘client’ of logo contest sites, and am I simply missing the entire point of the exercise?

I understand why people who run design contest sites defend their position - after all, it isn’t every industry that someone can pimp out supposedly skilled professionals, without paying a dime in product development, collecting their own fees up front and without risk. The term ‘pimp’ gives a hint of other industries were this might work. Not a bad deal either. It is a breathtaking advantage over their self-professed ‘competition’, legitimate design businesses saddled with the overhead of running a professional service - wages, hardware, software, staff training, client communication and support. Running a design contest site represents little investment, no risk and 100% gain (though I might quibble about some of the legal issues involved). In fact, I grudgingly salute these people for the unmitigated gall that’s required to pull the whole deal off.

The design contest model features an entirely artificial environment and there’s so very little ‘real world’ experience to be gained that I’d argue that entering design contests would actually accomplish the exact opposite. Let’s take a look at how a typical ‘contest’ works - we’ll focus on a logo design contest - and compare it to how a more traditional approach would differ.

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The not-so-exhaustive design brief

When firing up a contest, ‘clients’ are directed to fill out a form that will be referenced by all the ‘entrants’. Pretty standard stuff. We kinda do the same, though the design contest version is mercifully short and consists of just 7 questions; The first three don’t count - Title (of the contest), Subtitle (displayed in the contest description), Short Summary (to get the designers attention) and the nub of the brief, four text fields - Brand Name, Description, What I Want, What I Don’t Want. I understand why this brief is so short - wouldn’t want to confuse the ‘client’ (often new to the design game in the first place) with a lot of unnecessary questions and techno-babble that they might not know the answers to. Planned usage. Market. Theme. Technical restrictions. Items that are critical to any successful design project but often outside a client’s area of experience or expertise. Generally speaking, it’s the designer’s job to educate the client about the design process, what works, what doesn’t and why this-or-that design solution is preferable over another. As designers, we’re supposed to know our stuff and be able to explain in simple terms, the crux of a decent logo. Why a pink fluffy kitten isn’t a good logo idea for a company that fixes tractors. On a logo design contest site, you get 100 different variations of a pink fluffy kitten.

Ah, but hitting the client with so many confusing questions up-front may intimidate them. Lead to a whole bunch of questions (in traditional scenarios answered by an experienced designer) or worse, send them Googling about the various concepts involved and onto, heaven forbid, another design site. Rather than effectively gathering information, the submission forms are designed for one thing only - to quickly move the client to the next phase - submitting credit card information with as little headache as possible. All fine and dandy in the ROI department, but not so good in getting a sense of what the client needs in their project. Unfortunately, the sparse design brief is where project information collection ends.

In a more traditional design process, it’s very rare that a designer will begin designing a logo on first blush - there’s usually a more in-depth one-on-one interaction with the client. A meet-and-greet (even if by phone or e-mail) where more detailed parameters can be hashed out. Often a client is advised that ‘what they want’ is impractical, at odds with their goals, or technically unwise. One assumes that’s one of the main reasons a client would approach a designer in the first place, rather than picking up a demo version of Adobe Illustrator and doing it themselves. A designer’s job is not just drawing a pretty picture, but sharing experience and advice on how the client can obtain their design goals. Often what a client ‘needs‘ dovetails with what they ‘want‘. Sometimes it doesn’t. At the risk of sounding elitist, ‘what I want’ is often not what is possible or advisable for the client, especially if we’re keeping their best interests at heart. If I approach an accountant and tell him that I don’t ‘want’ to pay any taxes, I’ll (hopefully) be advised that while I can maximize my write-offs, I’ll still be ponying up to Revenue Canada whether I want to or not. I’m paying for his advice and expertise, not telling him which deductions I ‘want‘ to be legit. The same concept should apply to design and designers.

As there’s no real follow-up, any logo contest begins without designer interaction at the concept level - the very essence of a design project. The project starts sans information that’s critical for a designer to evaluate the client’s needs, rather than simply what the client ‘wants’. We’ve had clients who ‘want’ War & Peace in their logo, but we’ve had to convince them that they ‘need’ a simple icon. Someone once said that the client is king, but they shouldn’t be art director. And that’s true enough. While ‘the customer is always right’ may work for Wal-Mart, there are times in design when the client is flat out wrong. It takes an experienced designer, with some fairly decent communication skills to tell a client this, at least without offending them or losing the account. Hopefully the client respects the designers gravitas enough to heed the advice or at least factor it into design decisions and direction. Simply taking ‘what I want’ and ‘what I don’t want’ and distilling it into a pretty picture that may not even represent a client’s best interests does not make one a ‘better designer’. It makes one a pixel pusher - a pair of hands for rent - not a capable designer able to help your clients make effective design choices.

I understand why the back-and-forth can’t happen with design contests - not enough time, too many disparate designers, contest holder isn’t paying enough money. All of them valid arguments from the contest site owner point-of-view, but as we’re talking about entering contests making someone a better designer, they have little to do with the equation.

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The design pitch

Ah yes. The logo contest pitch - were entrants upload their work (often after taking hours of effort) onto the site for viewing by the client. Fair enough - waiting breathlessly for the client’s thumbs up, thumbs down is an unfortunate part of any design process. There’s a difference with design contests though, and it is this - most of the times entrants don’t get to explain the whys-and-wherefores of their design. The thought process behind it. The pros and cons. If I wanted to be a wag, I’d argue that this isn’t a factor in design contests as there’s very little back-story to be told. Cranking out icons and submitting them to various contests is the only way to earn any money, but as we’re being highbrow, we’ll assume that every project, on every design contest, is approached with only the purist of intentions.

Is a designer explaining their work really important? I’d argue yes. Judging logos on first sight (designs are eliminated, often without comment) can miss some design gems. Take a look at the FedEx logo, arguably one of the most famous logos on the planet. The concept, designed by Lindon Leader and now accepted globally, was originally nixed by the Federal Express board of directors. It was only Ceo Fred Smith who recognized the simple elegance of the design, after being told about the logo back-story (and hidden arrow) by the logo creators. Under a design contest scenario, that logo would have been eliminated. And if FedEx wanted pink kittens, well dammit, they’d get pink kittens.

What’s worse is that in most logo contests, holders aren’t obliged to tell designers why their work is eliminated. In many cases designs are uploaded, eliminated from the contest without so much as a how-you-do. Many comment threads under the designs feature one word postings - usually along the lines of ‘feedback?!!” as designers wait patiently to be told why their efforts didn’t make the cut. We’ve already established that there’s no financial reward for entering (other than the winner) and whatever critiques we’re told might be helpful are generally not forthcoming. Whatever feedback that is offered is usually along the lines of “I don’t like it” or “not what I’m looking for”. All fine and dandy if the designer is getting paid, but as the vast majority of designers aren’t, then the stated benefit is supposed to be ‘valuable feedback’ that one can utilize to hone his/her craft. “I don’t like it” isn’t much help. If the rationale for entering design contests is to have work critiqued, almost every design forum features a show-and-tell section where people will be glad to tell you what they think of your work. Often with brutal honesty. And that’s much more valuable. At least if we’re talking about becoming a better designer.

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The dog and pony show

This is where design contests wander off the territory of actually being a contest at all. Generally speaking, a contest involves submitting an entry and then waiting for results from a presumably qualified judging panel. At least, that’s how contests are supposed to work. Design contests are completely different - holders actually request that designers change their entries, often at odds with the original project brief (after the contest holder had begun to understand a little about how these things work) and without any sense that they’re demanding unreasonable efforts from designers, the majority of whom are marginalized in the first place.

While I might understand why a designer would spend a few minutes cobbling together a logo and entering it into a contest in the hopes of winning a few bucks, it is beyond me why a designer would engage in a full-blown design project, with virtually unlimited revisions, at a contest holders whim and without any form of remuneration (or even helpful feedback). And oh, what a dog and pony show these ‘revision rounds’ invariably turn into.

With the contest holder lording over the proceedings, and very little that entrants won’t do to win a contest, the ‘revision’ round of the contest often turns into a free-for-all. Designers are requested to encapsulate other designers’ work into their versions. Use font treatments featured on others. Some designers don’t even have to be asked, freely borrowing from other entries to create a hybrid Frankenstein logo that hopefully grabs the holder’s attention. Not that this isn’t unexpected - the contest holder hasn’t really been informed that this is a no-no, and anyone who speaks up about such practices is often branded as uncooperative by the holder, the other entrants, and comments pointing out the shenanigans are often deleted, lest the overall site ‘look bad’.

Read some of the comments before they’re deleted - sometimes it ain’t pretty. Accusations of plagiarism fly quite often, with one entrant claiming that another has stole his/her ideas. All of which continues until, hopefully, the contest holder declares a winner, or abandons the contest completely, which if recent observations are any indication, happens an awful lot. Once again, in their favor, 99 Designs has now offered a prepaid contest option - where contest holders prepay their prizes - but if the home page this morning is any indication, not a lot of contest holders avail themselves of the option. Meaning there’s no guarantee anyone will get paid a red cent. Accordingly, many designers enter the same designs in multiple contests, which explains why you’ll see so many shiny, chromed generic logos without any real purpose other than serving as a bookend or a mantelpiece for a line of type.

While this may make you a faster designer (a necessity if you’re going to enter a load of contests at once) but as far as honing one’s craft (and developing a career) design contests are certainly not the deal. You may make a few bucks here and there, but you will eventually move on to greener pastures, no doubt regretting the time you wasted jumping through hoops like a trained seal. If, in the meantime, that’s your bag, all fair enough but don’t claim that it makes you a better designer (bitter more like). Decent designers (like the guy in the Site Point interview) on these sites were decent to begin with (and could probably earn a reasonable living elsewhere). The designers who are piss poor will remain piss poor. There’s nothing to be learned on contest sites other than some sort of design Darwinism and how low people will stoop to make, or save, a few bucks.

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Logo design contests - bad for clients?

Okay, so let’s take a look at this contest issue from a client’s point-of-view, keeping in mind the end goal of a logo contest - a decent mark that’s worthy of representing this or that company. A unique piece of graphic real estate that stands out in the crowd. Notice the emphasis on unique. On two contests running right now (on a high-profile design contest site), there’s an identical design (from the same designer) entered into both. Trouble is, that logo is a blatant knock-off of yet another design that won a different contest last week. Happens so often that designers are advised (in the Terms of Service) not to discuss these kind of issues ‘in the open’ - as it might make the site look ‘bad’ - but often ignore this ’suggestion’ and get into very public skirmishes about who ‘copied’ who in the comment threads. This is frowned upon by site owners, for obvious reasons (and more often than not, the comments are quickly redacted by admins), but the process isn’t exactly as transparent as the site owners would have us believe.

Keep in mind that I found the examples I refer to within a few minutes of knocking around, and personal experience has shown me this happens all the time, on every contest site there is. We’ve even had unauthorized knock-off designs entered into logo contests (one actually won) before other entrants, and then the holder, discovered the origins of the design. Alas, when a design project is driven down to the Darwinesque ’suppply and demand’ model that pro-contest folks seem so fond of - this stuff is bound to happen.

Entering the same design, in as many contests as possible (until it does win) is the only way that the system can work for designers - from a financial point-of-view anyway. Not so much for the ‘client’ who is being told that a logo design contest is a professional alternative - in some cases a superior one - to working with a designer or design firm one-on-one. The problem is that it isn’t.

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A lot of bad logos is better than a few good ones?

People who are pro-contests talk about the number of designs made available - like some Bulk Barn of Logos - as if that is somehow germane to whether the system works or not. It isn’t - a large percentage of the logos presented are poor, rudimentary and some even include photographs pinched from other sources (the stuff of copyright and reproduction nightmares). Not that this should be any surprise - these are the kind of mistakes that one would expect of ‘newbie designers and hobbyists‘ (as designers are described by a logo contest site owner in the comment section of a related Graphic Push post). Boasting that someone can get 99 or so designs - when 95 of those designs are demonstrably poor - may be a great way to market to people’s greed, but it is NOT an effective way to develop a company logo. In simple terms, selecting the best of a bad batch is certainly not a sensible approach to anything that I’m aware of.

Regarding the contest model, there’s one very big problem that no-one’s seen fit to mention - the framework of the model itself - splattering design concepts all over a publicly available forum. Logo design projects generally happen behind closed doors, with only the final version being made public. There’s a very pragmatic reason for that - during any logo project, there’s a ton of preliminary designs, concepts, variants and derivative works, all of which are close to the final, but just different enough to be confusing in the copyright and/or trademark department. These ‘close but no cigar’ designs are socked safely away to avoid potential feuds about who owns what, and who had what first. Intellectual property basics really.

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Ownership and copyright issues

To keep ownership hassles down to a minimum, only the final version hits the public eye and only after certain protections - prior use, trademark registration and/or copyright ownership are in place. Steal that final design and it’s pretty cut-and-dry in the legal department. In a contest, people are free to steal preliminary designs, derivatives, slight variations - a virtual grab bag of logo concepts that would be ever-so-appealing to ethically challenged folks who’re not above partaking in the first place. These preliminary designs (as well as the final logo itself) are available on a public forum from the get-to, released into the ‘wild’ before any protections are in place, and before ‘prior use’ can be established. What’s to stop me stealing a derivative design, changing it slightly, establishing first use and then demanding that the contest holder not use their design because it’s too close to my newly registered logo? Ethics aside, nothing at all. This just can’t happen when a client works with an experienced designer or graphic design firm.

Often, many logos that are featured on logo design contest sites find their way into collections of template logos, either pinched outright, or sold by the designers themselves for a few bucks (ever wonder where logo template sites get a lot of their offerings? Shouldn’t surprise you to find out that it’s from logo design contests). Take a stroll through any of these contest - ‘designers’ aren’t terribly sure about what constitutes conflicting ownership in the first place. There’s tons of examples where designers - often at the request of ‘contest holders - pinch various design elements from other designers (often resulting in wails of protest in the comment threads - quickly nuked by site administrators, ever mindful of ‘looking bad’). As a result, who actually owns the various derivative designs becomes extremely muddy. As most of the designers (except for the ‘winner’) aren’t paid. they’d argue - with some validity - that as no-one actually paid them for their work, it’s theirs to do with what they see fit. And that’s exactly what the designer ‘guidelines’ say. Accordingly, no one has any idea where these derivative designs - (sometimes strikingly similar to the selected final version) will end up.

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Who's responsible when things go wrong?

As I mentioned earlier, duplicate designs have a habit of showing up in multiple contests. Who’s held responsible when ownership goes awry? That’s not clear - the site owner’s TOS states that they’re not responsible for the behavior of their ‘designers’ - though as they’re also collecting a contest fee, I’d expect that “those guys are” isn’t worth the HTML it’s written in. They might not ‘want ‘ to be responsible, but if my experience in business is any measure, the minute you take a fee, you’re legally culpable to some degree. It’s like the nightclub coat check that insists they’re not responsible for your leather jacket after taking five bucks to look after it. They are. The ‘we’re not responsible’ sign stops 95% of people who’ve found their coats missing, from suing. Same goes for the car wash that just tore your windshield wipers off. They’ll pay to fix it, despite their claims to the contrary.

Logo contest sites could avoid all of this - if they cared one iota about their ‘clients’ or their ‘designers’ - by ‘locking out’ contests from public view and more importantly, search engines. They don’t, as the search engine ‘hits’ they get from a mass of listings in Google are far more important than protecting their ‘clients’ or ‘designers’ properties. They hope that by finding the contest in a search engine, and seeing the myriad of designs offered up, more business owners can be convinced to host their own contest. It’s a never-ending spiral of limiting protections for ‘clients’, the ‘designers’ and the end product itself. These sites are designed for one thing, and one thing only. To collect the initial $39 contest ‘fee’ while actually doing as little as possible for it.

I understand why these ‘crowdsourcing’ entrepreneurs would set up these sites. What I don’t understand is why ‘designers’ play along, or why ‘clients’ - often completely overwhelmed by the process itself - would think that this is a good way to develop one of the most important investments their fledgling company will make. Their logo.

Not that I’m entirely sympathetic - the number of ‘closed’ contests - without a winner being chosen, or the ‘client’ being ‘disappointed’ - is staggering. Seems many take these sites’ advice about abandoning contests quite literally. One contest holder decided to close his/her contest (for a web interface) after receiving dozens of entries, because - and I’m not making this up - ‘I’ve changed my mind’. I'll always remember one comment that I snagged just before a recent contest had closed. Apparently the contest holder had made some PM requests that a contest entrant had found to be ethically challenged, and the designer had subsequently withdrew his entries. The contest holder was going to use the designs anyway. Without paying. You don’t have to take my word for it - root around these sites yourself. Read the comments. Check out the designs. Search for various keywords.

It’s all there out in the open. It just takes a little work to connect the dots.

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