Can Crowd Sourcing Solve Your Logo Design Needs?
by Cono Fusco
It’s classic association- potential clients and customers better recall a company’s name, product or service and quality when they are immortalized in ink. Leaving the best lingering impression, then, is a matter of finding the professionals to craft you an aesthetically powerful logo to represent your business. Like any other service, there are several considerations in doing this to avoid a compromised product, from avoiding the pitfalls of the crowd-sourcing scenario to finding reputable logo design providers.
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Proponents of crowd sourcing argue that it is a collaborative form of outsourcing in which a number of participants work together to draft designs for the client that assigned the project. This “design by contest” often takes place over various websites, affording no personal interaction between the client and the designers. In reality, it is a cutthroat environment that creates strain on the competitors as they vie to create their designs first to present to the client. The resulting outcome is often a handful of hastily sketched concepts offered at lowball prices to win the client over.
Outsourcing to a group of competing entities like this doesn’t work because it displaces competition, changing it from a mutually beneficial motivator to a hindrance. Competition needs to exist between professionals before the client makes their final decision, not after.
In the crowd-sourcing environment, the lack of any formal regulation can spell trouble for both the logo design provider and the client because of possible copyright violation issues. With minimal or no oversight, logo designers are also prone to re-submitting their losing concepts to new clients. With no confinement or minimum on the amount of participants involved in a crowd-sourcing contest, clients are either bombarded with ubiquitous ideas and offers or left without a single one.
Now that you know what to avoid, there are a number of telling indications of quality design professionals that should be present in your final selection. First, knowing the workings of the process from the first meet to the final touches is the first step in finding a logo provider that professionally adheres to it. True professional logo designers will effectively communicate with you one-on-one to assess your branding needs, target your market, and analyze any early attempts at a logo that you may have in the making. An experienced professional will also listen closely enough to gauge your intentions for the design and use their creative ability to render concepts according to those wishes.
Throughout the drafting process, they will communicate with you early on, introducing concepts when they are basic enough to be changed to your liking but advanced enough to show a definitive direction. Finally, they will offer multiple options for your selection as the final logo, each one incorporating your vision in a distinct way.
So what kind of expertise do experienced logo designers possess? In their constructive advising of your design ideas as well as the creation of their own, they will incorporate a number of tried concepts. First, they will have an advanced understanding of the connotations that colors carry. Professional logo designers will know, for example, that blue is associated with trust, loyalty, and dignity, while red is associated with passion and power. They also know how to establish visual balance and alignment, proximity, and contrast in their designs among many other skills. When searching for a solid design professional, make sure that their website offers plenty of information about the abovementioned skills.
As it concerns the services that reputable design professionals offer, customizable packages for social media designs and other facets of logo branding such as e-mail signatures show an abundance of skill and flexibility. The more specific and articulate a company is about their services, the more likely it is that they deliver on their promises, especially if they have authentic testimonials to reinforce those promises.
Finally, nothing speaks louder for a professional logo designer than the final product. A quality logo evokes emotion with the text as well as the image, representing your brand creatively and accurately. Professional logo designers use the right kinds of fonts, colors, and imagery to permanently and positively engrain a company’s brand in the minds of prospective consumers.
Effective logos combine subtle yet powerful elements of color, text, emotive imagery and creativity to establish your company as an authority. After all of the toil involved in starting a business, you owe it to your employees, your constituency, and yourself to put your business on the map. Instead of settling for the often sub-par quality of crowd sourcing design contests, make the right investment once by employing the real professionals.
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