99designs Launches $99 Logo Store

by apowell • 16 years ago

87 83 16 years ago

va_coder• 16 years ago

wow smart idea and good implementation

apowell• 16 years ago

I'm curious to see what the HN community thinks of this. I've used 99designs in the past with moderate success, and this looks like a natural next step for their logo market. For a while, the participating designers have submitted the same logo, modified for a company, for any contest where it would fit. This marketplace appears to be aimed at ending that silly charade.

Would you consider buying a logo here? I can see using it to get a quick-and-dirty logo for an early stage project, but I didn't see many I'd be excited to build a major brand on.

patio115• 16 years ago

I think it is a poor choice for me but a great choice for my neighborhood pizza shop, who would love to have a professionally-done logo and do not care a whit if it is shared with a pizza shop in Normal Bloomington, Moscow, and London.

This is the democratization of design, where the Fortune 5 Million can have routine access to mass-customized graphic art somewhere above the quality of MS Word ClipArt and (I'll be charitable) below the quality of the designers who want to charge four figures for a logo which embodies the unique values and messaging of The Neighborhood Pizza Shop.

tptacek13• 16 years ago

I think this is a great choice for you. Nobody in your target market will know that you bought a logo off the rack and had it tailored. They're just going to think you're so professional that you have a logo like a Microsoft product.

The median-quality logo here --- and I don't think this will give offense since you didn't do your own logo --- looks more professional than your current one.

webwright3• 16 years ago

WHY is it a poor choice for you? I've always been impressed by your metrics-driven choices.

Do you think that if you A/B tested your favorite choice from this service that it'd meaningfully change your success? I don't hate your current logo, but as an (sorta ex) designer, I wouldn't nominate it for any awards. What is the business value of "embodying the unique values and messaging" of your business?

Related: trying to ignore what you've come to believe about Google, do you think their original logo embodied their unique values and messaging? I sure as heck don't.

My view is that the logo is a pretty damn tiny part of the BRAND-- and the brand is where the value is. Your business is awesome because of your brand. A great logo or crappy logo can nudge the quality of the brand but not as much as designers think.

tjr2• 16 years ago

No different than using a website template / theme, or royalty free music. It all depends on what you're doing, and what parts of your business you want to be unique about.

For some businesses, and perhaps some stage of nearly any business, a logo from the 99designs store seems perfectly reasonable to me.

empire29• 16 years ago

interesting.. its like a frugal man's crowdspring, i like it.

jaiken2• 16 years ago

Did you know that crowdspring got their logo designed using the our site: http://99designs.com/contests/321

The contest model at 99designs.com does between 550-600 new projects every week - That's dwarfs all other similar sites including CS combined.

Just FYI.

Cheers, Jason

jaiken2• 16 years ago

Please forgive the typo :)

dylano• 16 years ago

I've seen you say this here and on Twitter. Who cares that crowdspring got their logo designed on your site? Steve Jobs used another computer before Apple. Sergei Brin and Larry Page used other search engines. The fact that you keep saying this over and over shows that you're threatened by them and your other competitors. And while you introduced a $99 logo, crowdspring has an $80,000 LG phone design competition. They're swimming upstream and you're bottom fishing. A bit of irony there.

andrewhyde• 16 years ago

I've hated their core business model in the past. For it to work someone had to be exploited.

I think it is a pyramid scheme when someone has to complete a professional task for the slight chance of non noteworthy payment as a norm. It isn't sustainable.

That being said, this is a much better step. I see it being much more sustainable to everyone involved (and far less exploitative) for non custom logos being sold at a flat rate.

tptacek13• 16 years ago

Reasonable people can disagree about whether this is "exploitation". I don't think they can disagree about the fact that it isn't a pyramid scheme. Words mean things.

I'm on the other side of the spec-work debate as you; I respect where you're coming from but disagree that designers should exist in a market that functions differently from all other professional services.

I also think that this new, designer-"friendly", less-exploitative approach is going to do more violence to the bill rates of graphic designers than spec work contests ever could.

patio115• 16 years ago

Absolutely right on that last point. A design contest has, let's call it, two dozen developers competing for the attention of Bob's Crab Shack. 23 of them will lose. That is potentially 23 perfectly good crab shack logos that get shelved, never to be seen again.

With this innovation in the business model, those 23 perfectly good crab shack logos aren't wasted: indeed, they can be applied to hundreds of crab shacks over the coming years.

Econ 101 suggests that if the supply of a good which was previously perishable a) vastly increases and b) is made nonperishable and c) sees transaction costs dwindle (because picking clothes off the rack is easier than detailing your needs to a tailor), well, price comes way the heck down.

soyelmango3• 16 years ago

I have a love/hate thing with these companies - 99designs is not the only one out there.

In favour of them:

* they offer affordable logos

* you know exactly what you're getting for a fixed price

On the flipside, there is plenty wrong with these logos:

* Me too: if the logo's any good, there's a good chance someone else will buy it too. It would be like turning up to a party, and finding that you've got the same dress on (... a nightmare situation for some!)

* They look like $99 logos, or any other logo churned out by these companies

* It devalues the work of designers - a good designer understands what your company is about, and produces a fitting logo for you.

I'm sure there are many other fors/againsts than these, and it would be interesting to hear what others think of these services.

adambard• 16 years ago

They do sell full rights for an extra $199:

"All logos cost just $99, or if the logo has not been purchased before, you can buy it exclusively and own the full rights to the logo for an extra $199. "

I can see how this would be really attractive to many businesses; after all, most people who don't interact with designers on a regular basis view a logo as a very secondary matter, and if they can get a unique one for $300, that's probably good enough for them.

These people are probably crummy clients for any designer anyhow, so I don't feel like designers are really losing out. Heck, it might even be a worthwhile place to sell extra materials (e.g. logos that were not accepted).

soyelmango3• 16 years ago

Thanks for the clarification, and you make a good point there about how a client who wants to pay $99 for a logo is likely to be a difficult client! It looks like $99designs does designers a favour by allowing cheap/difficult clients to eliminate themselves from the client pool.

tbgvi• 16 years ago

A tip to anyone who hasn't treaded these waters before:

Do not, under any circumstances, bring up 99 designs when speaking with a professional designer.

I warned you! But seriously, most entries for logo contests on 99 designs were already templates. If you look through a contest you'll see tons of leaves, swooshes, stylized people, etc... This just drives the cost down in most cases (the average contest is at least $99).

huhtenberg• 16 years ago

> most entries for logo contests on 99 designs were already templates

What's more relevant, there are a lot of quick-buck rip-offs created by simply copying a piece from http://logopond.com and tweaking it slightly. You buy one of these and you are on the hook for your name being dragged through the mud and for a copyright violation lawsuit.

Perhaps they have implemented a proper due diligence process for their $99 store, i.e. they do verify the authenticity and uniqueness of the design before accepting it for sale. If so, then great. If not, then just use http://brandstack.com which was the first place to let the designers sell their unused concepts.

mshafrir• 16 years ago

Thanks for the link to brandstack, looks great. Is there any way to gauge a fair price for a custom logo?

soyelmango3• 16 years ago

Too true. I considered using their logo contests when I was looking for a designer for my logo. A quick browse through the current contests showed that most 'designers' had not even read the brief and were submitting generic logos that in no way reflected the company's aims. That was enough to make me realise that 99designs was a false economy.

tjogin• 16 years ago

You get what you pay for. It's not the economy that is false — what is false is your expectations of what you can get for about one hour of a professional's time.

thiele• 16 years ago

Good advice. I'm very tied to the design community (my wife is a brand identity [i.e. logo] designer as are several of our friends), cheap logo services and contests boil their blood. Tread lightly :)

thechangelog• 16 years ago

Much like mentioning rent-a-coder services, I imagine.

hunter029• 16 years ago

You could also try http://upstack.com, Brandstack's new site for custom design. They screen their designers before letting them join a project.

stevejalim• 16 years ago

How about a two-tier system where 99 bucks gets you a version with your wording, while $999 (or whatever) gets you a version of the logo with the wording and gets it removed from the site. Or is that already how it works and I skimmed too lightly?

tptacek13• 16 years ago

You skimmed too lightly. Drop another $200 and you get an exclusive.

nathanh• 16 years ago

"if the logo has not been purchased before, you can buy it exclusively and own the full rights to the logo for an extra $199." http://99designs.com/readymade/help/howitworks

chrisduesing• 16 years ago

It doesn't appear that you can search for only logos that have not been purchased before, which seems like a highly desirable filter.

clistctrl• 16 years ago

you can actually get an exclusive license for an additional $199

phsr3• 16 years ago

http://99designs.com/readymade/help/manual#pricing

"The first customer to purchase your logo has the option to buy all rights to your design. This will cost them an additional $199, bringing the total cost to $298. For some customers exclusivity is a must, so for them this option will be very compelling. "

tptacek13• 16 years ago

This is fantastic. Most businesses --- the overwhelming majority of them, in fact --- need a distinct and competant bespoke logo, but absolutely don't need a custom couture treatment.

I'm betting that had this been available a year ago, one of these would be Patrick McKenzie's logo.

The only concern I have with 99designs is the policing. I'd like to know more about what they're doing to make sure the work up there is original --- a friend had a bad experience with this issue. If they can put a lid on that, I think this offering solves a huge problem.

patio115• 16 years ago

I'm betting that had this been available a year ago, one of these would be Patrick McKenzie's logos.

I sympathize with the general point, but you're false in the specifics. I am totally willing to buy custom design at 3rd world prices rather than trying to shave that even farther and getting something which is generic.

http://www.bingocardcreator.com/images/blog_logo.gif

I got three concepts done for the above from the same designer, and it cost me (checks records) $117 total. The two losing logos got shelved. Doing it the custom way let me get specify two things: that the BCC logo actually have a stylized bingo card on it (surprisingly hard to find in clip art -- trust me, I've looked) and that it use the blue/green color scheme I was going for.

But yeah, in general, design is too cheap these days for me to ever do a project without it. I kid you not, I have three applications to give conference presentations in the works at the moment and they all are getting custom logos. There is an 80/20 return to visual design and I want to get the 80 rather than wasting it.

phsr3• 16 years ago

http://99designs.com/logo-design/store/1152

This is the Windows logo rotated 1/4 counter clockwise and skewed slightly...Hopefully they have some sort of way of reporting/dealing with issues like this (aka image stolen from somewhere else)

jfornear• 16 years ago

It looks like there's a "Report this logo" link at the bottom of the page

phsr3• 16 years ago

I reported the logo, as its 5am there, I dont expect to hear from them til later, but I'm curious of the process for an artist that gets ripped off. Something like the example I listed is easy to take care of (we know windows had it first)

efsavage• 16 years ago

Note the submitter's username...

leftnode• 16 years ago

Ironically from a user named be.unique.

adoyle• 16 years ago

At least they are equal-opportunity. http://99designs.com/logo-design/store/2372 is pretty close to Ubuntu. Even if you're working on a design with designers working from scratch, you have to watch out for things like this. One of the designs someone did for one of my projects wound up being pretty nearly a copy of the Space Imaging logo.

tjr2• 16 years ago

I wonder where the line is between being a copy of another design and not. Just in this 99designs logo store alone we have examples of thousands of logo designs. If someone where to sit down and make a new logo design, what are the odds it would be noticeable similar to one of these?

In programming, we have "design patterns" and such, that no-one would argue "hey, you copied me!" over. What about design patterns in logo design? I'm not a logo designer, but I find it hard to believe that each and every logo design is, or plausibly could be, designed entirely from scratch.

nonrecursive• 16 years ago

also worth checking out is http://logoworks.com/ . They're more expensive (logo packages start at $300) but still cheap. They did my logo for http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com . I think Guy Kawasaki also has used and recommended them.

lotides4• 16 years ago

As a former visual/graphic designer, now a stay-at-home father, I have to chime in on this. I've done branding and identity work for some very large companies (e.g. The Coca-Cola Company) so I can tell you that the logo is a very important part of any business strategy.

First, I'm surprised how little respect design gets in the tech industry and from programmers. Good design can sell a poor product or inform consumers about a superior product. It can drastically reduce support costs (UI design) or encourage consumers to pay a little more for a product (i.e. The Apple "Tax"). Design is important to the overall success of most business ventures and should be budgeted for and planned for accordingly.

These logo (I'll be nice here) marketplaces are better than design-it-yourself or no design at all in most cases. But you get what you pay for. Many of the designs will come from students that have little to no experience and an incomplete grasp of the principles of design. Most of the rest will come from international locales far away with different cultural identities and little understanding of yours. After all, a logo is not just something attractive, it communicates a message visually.

What you will get in abundance is poorly thought-out concepts, logos stolen or similar to others and rushed work with a total disregard to overall quality. Does your logo need to be legible from far away or at small sizes? They probably didn't account for that. Some of these logos will land you in court (trademark/copyright violations) and I guarantee the guy that "designed" it for you on these website will disappear.

Bottom line: These logos are great for a placeholder until you can afford a designer, until your product grows or launches or for presentations to investors, etc.

tptacek13• 16 years ago

Coca Cola overspends and has custom everything. There are industry verticals that absolutely require couture design, including print, large-scale retail, and mass market food products. But most companies aren't in those verticals.

A 200 person asset management firm doesn't need couture design. They need competant bespoke tailoring. Same goes for a chain of dental offices, a regional law firm, an HVAC company, and most enterprise software companies.

Most businesses shouldn't be spending the kind of money Coke spends on a one-off project. Not for their entire company.

Your concerns about stolen logos are valid (like I said earlier, saw that happen). But those same concerns exist at the lower end of the custom "consultatative" design market as well. And the fact is, most of the logos on the 99designs logo market aren't stolen. They're just derivative and boring. Which is fine.

lotides4• 16 years ago

Is 99designs yours? Do you own or work for a similar company? You seem to be defending these practices beyond that of a disinterested observer.

Yes, Coca-Cola spends a lot of money. I've seen plenty of projects where they've wasted it. That's not the point and this isn't about that particular company.

I'm not sure where this "couture" stuff comes from, nobody speaks that way outside the fashion industry. Those of us in the design industry make a point to design a logo that is appropriate to the client.

Which brings me to another point: communication. It doesn't exist in any realistic form in 99designs or any of their competition. A one-on-one relationship with a designer can steer the client away from trends and copy-cat design and towards something long-lasting, professional, appropriate and even affordable (how many of your can afford full 4-color offset for everything you produce including large-scale signage?). Professional design has little to do with being snotty or "couture." You wouldn't build your building without an architect and you shouldn't build your brand without a designer. A 1-person company (I've owned a few) can benefit greatly from a designer consulting on the identity.

When you think of design: think function. Don't focus on the form. Yes, a tremendous part of our education and experience is in creating something beautiful, efficient and visually engaging. But just as much is put in to something function correctly. I've saved clients thousands of dollars by designing materials to be more efficient.

If cost is a concern, go directly to the designer. Here's a little secret: creative directors don't really do shit. Designers come up with the ideas, create the iterations and execute them. Many design agencies pay their designers around $30/hour with few benefits while they charge $200+/hour. Find a designer you like (portfolios and references) and see if they can fit your budget.

Finally: If you can't afford a few hundred for a logo then you don't really have a business do you? It takes money to make money. If that kind of investment in your business isn't possible then you're either not serious or you're not going to make it anyway.

shabda• 16 years ago

If you sell a million bottle of cola a day with your logo on it, how much extra per logo impression are you paying between a 50$ and 50K$ logo?

I agree with your later points, but saying overspends here "Coca Cola overspends and has custom everything." is wrong and inconsitent with what you sya later.

ique• 16 years ago

All you're arguments are absolutely valid and true, but I don't think anyone isn't aware of them. Everyone knows design sells products, it's not about that.

I've done a bunch of designwork, including logos, for very small-scale projects like day-care centers, local sports organizations and so forth, and I can tell you they would be soo much better off just buying something they like from this place.

The marketplace isn't intended for Apple or Coca-Cola and any company understands the differences. No day-care center, no matter how stupid you think they are, pretend like they're getting the same for 99 bucks as they are with a professional design-firm. They don't want a professional design, they want something to stick on their letterhead for the annual newsletter.

These kinds of sites aren't competition to real designers, they offload crap-designers like me who would rather code.

hkuo• 16 years ago

Do you see a trend of logos becoming less important to a company's success in the past decade, as focus turns online and brand becomes more of a conversation? Consider the logos of Google, Facebook, eBay. Look at that completely generic Y up in the left corner. Is the TechCrunch logo lighting your world on fire? Ustream's? YouTube? I dare you to tell me that YouTube logo is a shining example of design success. They can hardly even make a favicon of it.

I'm not saying that a logo has no importance, but as the lipstick and makeup of brands becomes more transparent and users are intent on knowing companies on a deeper level, I do see the traditional sense of brand styleguides diminishing, and while sites like CraigsList and reddit and TripAdvisor and OpenTable are finding phenomenal success despite amateur logos, I begin to question their importance more and more.

lsc2• 16 years ago

Eh, actually, I think that most of the logos you cite are fairly unique, and even their amateurish style added something. I would argue that a memorable, unique and ugly logo is worth quite a bit more than a perfect, beautiful and forgettably generic logo.

I had this discussion with chris a while back... he came up with a rather nice web 2.0 pastel logo for prgmr.com. I stuck with figlet. His argument was that a generic logo made people more comfortable, while I thought that the 'rounded corners' made me look like a knockoff. I'm pretty invested in my brand; like me or hate me, I want you to remember me.

webwright3• 16 years ago

I'm a designer (sorta) and have done a mess of small biz design consulting in my day, and I will tell you that you decidedly do NOT get what you pay for.

I've seen $50k logos that were pretty ineffective. We've all seen HUGE branding campaigns fall face first. We've also seen cheap/free logos turn into icons (Google, Yahoo, Nike).

The difference in VALUE between a $99 logo here (or designed by a student designer abroad) and a $30,000 logo designed by a seasoned pro is NOT $29,000 for 99.9% of companies.

Interestingly enough-- this is true for a lot of coding tasks, too. Most web apps are simple CRUD apps that will never need to scale and don't really merit "rockstar" talent.

I don't think you need to sell anyone here on the value of good UX design and "good enough" graphic design. But GREAT graphic design clearly isn't a major factor in winning on the web. Don't believe me? Judged entirely on composition alone (i.e. ignoring their fame and success) how many of these sites would you be proud to have in your graphic design portfolio? http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US

tptacek13• 16 years ago

Feature we need: ability to transfer karma from our own unjustly high-ranked comments to new, better comments.

bonsaitree2• 16 years ago

Let me get this straight, I pay them $300 for the exclusive license for pre-made logo.

Considering I can contract out multiple iterations of a bespoke, cross-media, hand-dithered (e.g. newsprint, 4-color, b&w, web, etc.) logo for $1-$2k from full-service design/marketing firms HOW is this a competitive solution?

What project or firm who even tangentially cares about their brand identity would go down this path? Logos typically last the lifetime of the brand (years) and those sunk costs can be easily justified by that lengthy amortization.

Honestly, this seems like a service without a market; at least in the United States.

tptacek13• 16 years ago

Nobody who cares deeply about their "brand identity" is going to go this route. Most companies don't care deeply about their brand identity.

To demonstrate that, let's play a game. Go to Hoovers. Pick a major metro area. Drill down into "Banking & Finance", "Investment Management", and then drill into the 2nd or 3rd largest city in that metro area (in Chicago, that's something like Schaumburg or Naperville).

Now Google the top employers in the resulting set, and pick the company with the median-quality logo, and the company with the worst-quality logo.

I'm betting that in some major metros (Chicago is an example of this), the median and the worst-quality logo is worse than the typical 99designs logo.

In webtwopointopia, we're in a very status-conscious, egocentric estuary of the US economy. It's easy to forget that a lot of things we care deeply about (Helvetica! Not Arial!!!) are absolutely irrelevant to most customers.

bonsaitree2• 16 years ago

Touché. Your point is well-taken and was effortlessly re-enforced this afternoon as, for the first time, I noticed the non-logos of my favorite local dry-cleaners and diner.

Having lived in the Schaumburg area for several months also doubly-reinforces your argument.

Well-Played. Estuary indeed.

nym• 16 years ago

Have a design company but no good at designing? http://99designs.com/logo-design/store/search?q=design has design company logos for you :-)

kullar• 16 years ago

There are ways within 99designs to filter the initial mass down to better quality competitors and to stop wasting other designers time, e.g. by eliminating bad designs early. Either way, its not good for a $40/hour designer to be competing against a guy that might only need to win 1 project a month to pay the bills. James Goldsmith was right back in 1994- look at social indices, not economic! Dude saw the future. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI

moron4hire• 16 years ago

This is great for the little mom-and-pop coffee shop type place

tptacek13• 16 years ago

Here are 3 companies in metro Chicago with more than 100 employees:

http://www.daigger.com/about-us/index.jsp http://www.aleri.com/ http://www.emkay.com/flash/introPage/index.htm

(Selected at random from Hoovers).

Not one of them has a logo that is better than the median logo on this site.

My point is: this is great for a lot more than just mom-and-pop coffee shops.

eps• 16 years ago

But how many 100 employee companies would opt for using a shared logo? Because this is the only thing that makes 99design different from other ready-made logo stores.

ardit33• 16 years ago

I have used 99designs for something else than a logo, and so far it i has been a good success for me.

You are going to get some good submissions, mediocre ones, and some crappy ones.

Be willing to pay a more than a $200 - $300, and you will get good submissions.

If you are a big corp, and have a huge brand to work on, you might not want to use them. If you just want to get something really decent looking out of the door, then they are really good choice.

Once your site/company/whatever, starts making millions, you can spend the money on high end designs.

At the end of the day you get what you pay for. Put your logo for $500, and it is guaranteed you will get a lot of good submissions (and a river of bad ones).

I honestly think this is much better than just working with a individual designer. The main reason is that you might get submissions that are really creative and you would have never thought of.

Again, if you pay pay $300 - $500 and you will get better results.

rapind• 16 years ago

Since there's probably a lot of ticked off designers in this thread...

I could use some designer help with an open source project I'm working on. http://grokphoto.org

And for the record, no, I never have and never will use one of these logo crowdsourcing shops. Great design is far too important imo.

ThomPete• 16 years ago

I used to tell myself that creativity would be the last thing that technology would be able to replace. As someone who designs for a living that was somehow comforting.

I realize now how wrong I was.

It's not that technology will ultimately be able to replace creativity it's that it will commoditize some parts of it such as logo's, websites layouts etc.

Making a logo is not design it's illustration. You don't solve problems with logos you create a style.

Templates and logo's go hand in hand with the types of companies that needs them.

If your company can really be made with logos and templates then good for you.

I am happy there are companies out there such as 99designs, they make something that should be simple cheap.

But it's not design, it's not problem solving. The day that computers will be able to do that then we are all out of jobs anyway.

voidpointer• 16 years ago

99 bucks to get your company name and a piece of clip-art? I think people who go for this just don't deserve any better.

One should probably just automate this. Pay $20 to istockphoto for a piece of vector art and put the company name beside it. That's an easy made $79. So if easterbunny inc. needs logo, just license http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-11054108-rabbi... and you're done. The quality would be comparable to those logo templates.

Many people obviously have started to believe that a logo is a bit of illustration plus your name.

lsc2• 16 years ago

Great idea. automate it. And while you are at it, throw in a styesheet/template for my website that matches the automatically generated logo, maybe charge me an extra $20 for that. Especially if I could easily tab through possibilities to see what they look like, that'd be pretty useful for us fashion challenged.

thinkbohemian• 16 years ago

I'm running on a shoestring budget so I built my own logo. Does anyone know where one can go to get my logo critiqued?

eagleal• 16 years ago

I don't want to spam here, so if you think it is I'll remove the link, but I have a post[1] that seems to fit the arguments discussed here (especially those of tptacek, patio11, and lotides). This is what I call branding. Basically:

In summary the logo creation didn't require a lot of time, I didn't even tried different proposals (no need to do so). It just come naturally. It was modeled together with the culture and the product itself (research, prototypes, mockups, etc). It was a (design) product of a visual evolution (more on this later).

[1] I wrote it this evenening (CET), it's related to this topic but not a response, http://www.pmura.com/blog/2010/03/kuse-vision-logo

whatwhatwhat• 16 years ago

Who cares? Why is HN an advertisement portal? This is stupid.

JohnIdol• 16 years ago

99$ and 24 hours reminds me of Wokhei.com --> http://www.wokhei.com/ - with the difference that those are not templates

davidedicillo• 16 years ago

If you want a nice gradient on an unrelated shape and some shadow/reflection effects, go for it.

99designs Launches $99 Logo Store

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