It used to be hard to explain to someone that being a logo designer was such a specific skill set and that you could be considered a specialist. Among your peers that was a noble and respected asset to your list of services and I’ve had many fellow designers ask me to help out with the logo portion of their ID projects.

Now, it seems that with the surge of hobbyists and clip art users our once highly regarded profession is now just trivial. I’m sure it will eventually change the way things are done, but at what cost?

Perhaps business owners will realize that just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should.

What businesses don’t get is that their investment in their own company, by paying for a well-designed logo, should reflect how much they expect other people to pay THEM for their product.

ALSO, when they get their regurgitated crappy logo from lil’ sis, they’ll soon realize that the logo they got isn’t the BRANDING they need.

sad day.

@nickwichman

Working on a budget and not wanting to burn any bridges with my existing design suppliers, I felt frankly dirty and cheap stooping to a $375 contest-generated logo. And to be honest, most of the responses were pretty cheap-looking as well – with most designers missing the finer nuances of typography and balance. But I was pleasantly surprised by the creativity and depth of thinking that the various designers from Malaysia to Russia and back again applied, and I am perhaps 87.5% sold on the logo we eventually selected. Not perfect or gorund-breaking, but professional and versatile, and the winning designer from the UK has a solid eye and good service ethic- so he’s now on my list of suppliers for future client work.

I blogged early in the process here, and an interesting discussion started: http://www.begtodiffer.com/2009/06/your-word-of-the-day-crowdsourcing/

Originality is the clincher for a lot of ‘better logos’, but also the execution of them. I have seen ‘young gun’ designers come up with great ideas, but failed to execute them for a number of reasons, usually typography, letter spacing etc. Which can really bring on the rain clouds and tarnish an otherwise good logo.

So originality, technical and practical skill/experience with the various aspects is a good mix.

lack of confidence can also show through in logo design, if you feel you have to over compensate with ‘effects’ just to get noticed.

But in any case, there are a lot of individual ingredients that can be mixed and mashed.

I think the major difference between cheap rubbish and a decent identity is originality.

It takes some serious skill and experience to be original (and yet practical still for application) in a giant sea of logos.

Great blog :)

And yes, I walk away from work when it looks like I could be fighting a uphill battle. I just don't need it. I left my full time work to get away from all that crap, not to walk straight back into it.

I am now the one in control. Woop. :)

The only problem is, and the one we keep going back to is that a lot of the time the client will not understand about brand and identity values. To them, a logo is just a small graphic that should cost just a few pounds. Yet they don't see that 'this' logo is their identity, how people will perceive them. It's a strange world.

New Rule: The value of a logo should be directly proportional to the value the business owner puts on his business.