Need help with a logo, willing to pay.

[Ksandra]

Maybe California has warped my perception as every five feet there is a nail shop and most of the time their logo/sign isn't even in English.

[Ishido]

Maybe California has warped my perception as every five feet there is a nail shop and most of the time their logo/sign isn't even in English.

But you apparently know what they are so looks like they're not failing that badly!

[Ksandra]

But you apparently know what they are so looks like they're not failing that badly!

very true! I don't even think my personal nail shop even has a logo hahaha. And they are one of the lasts to survive in their building because their business does so well. Word of mouth goes a long way when it comes to nail shops. They don't even usually advertise in the papers. (out here at least)

[Zigma]

the communication side of things is why i had Zigma, send me his contact info ,ive already forwarded it to my friend told her to contact him mention me etc.

Thanks Gokku. Your friend is awesome and we've spoken. This logo will lead to a bigger job in the next couple of months once I get the budget for it in place.

[miokomioko]

How would crowd-sourcing be ruining the industry? If your product is superior then you will get the contracts.

No, it's not that simple. There is still money involved.

The business people who contract design work (yet have zero ability to recognize good design) are blinded by the lack of dollar signs when they can turn it into a fun little "contest" and act like the *real prize* is a portfolio piece for some little unheard of designer, like they are doing the artist a favor. If someone is talented enough to create the best logo for your bank, they don't fucking need a portfolio piece, they need money for their time/effort and, obviously, their superior talent. It would be less of a problem if the exposure got you noticed by someone who then paid you. However, it leads to other businesses trying to pull the same shit on you. The problem doesn't stop just because you got one decent name on your client list.

This isn't really about CrowdSpring specifically, there are a ton of sites exactly like this where instead of a business researching some designers, asking for estimates/bids, and paying for a quality product which is tailored specifically for them, they give $100 to one of the 500 community college kids who makes something that tickles their fancy and proceeds to take any and all rights to it indefinitely because the kid in question don't know any better.

This is slowly setting a standard business practice which makes the industry harder and harder to make a living in for all involved, including the established professionals.

The same thing happened to editorial photography. You can no longer make a living doing fashion spreads/stories (the ones you find towards the end of a W magazine, for example) because magazines got wise to the idea that they can pay the artists in publicity instead of money due to the overflow of "art students" these days. It got to a point where there's very few employers/art directors/etc. who understand "you get what you pay for" and thus, commercial art is devolving into "featured artist" bullshit.

Anyways, this has little to do with this business in question as I know it's a small business with a small budget looking for an artist who could use a couple bucks. I apologize for starting this tangent, but spec work is something has been making my industry a massive pile of shit in the last decade or so.

Professional artists don't like their game getting blown up by the millions of people with artistic talent but little drive to actually make a go of it.

If only they all actually had talent... This whole system has been a massive breeding pool for foreign plagiarists. While it is a huge shortcut for lazy artists to attempt to get the eyeballs of a potentially huge client, there's a ton of luck involved thanks to the sheer number of submissions, which defeats the purpose. It's the equivalent of hoping they pick your question to answer in the next FFXIV live letter, yet they keep answering retarded bullshit.

[zoobernut]

Crowdsourcing is a terrible system that allows businesses to completely rip off the commercial art industry by consistently devaluing illustration and design work. The monetary rewards for being chosen on sites like crowdspring for large, legitimate businesses are complete fucking jokes. I hate linking catchy little video explanations, but whatever.

This is the truth. It has gotten really bad lately, new students graduating are so desperate to "get into the industry" that they are willing to work for peanuts which devalues the work for everyone else. If you are an artist it is almost always not a good idea to do work for cheap or free "for recognition" or "to get your name out there" Your work is valuable even if you are new and you should be getting both compensation and recognition for your work.

Edit: when an artist works for free or cheap in exchange for recognition the artist rarely sees a return on that investment. The business usually doesn't go out of their way to send more work to the artist and if they do often the new clients expect the same deal. The end result is a vicious cycle of an artist doing a lot of valuable work with very little return for their efforts. While the businesses get a huge return in the product that they wanted. I have seen this happen a lot to photographers too. Magazines and newspapers try to get free usage of a photographers photo by promising them good exposure.

[archibaldcrane]

Damn you capitalism!

Labor supply and demand makes me so madddd!

[zoobernut]

Damn you capitalism!

Labor supply and demand makes me so madddd!

That isn't what I am talking about at all. Way to read. When new artists are duped into working for free or extremely cheap on the promise of something that is never delivered they personally never see a return on their investment and it damages the entire industry.

[Ksandra]

on the promise of something that is never delivered they personally never see a return on their investment

What is never delivered? And how can you say they don't see a return on their investment?

[miokomioko]

A lot of blame lies in the billions of shitty art schools that are popping up all over this country to take advantage of all the naive little teenagers (and their parents) who want to be "artists." They don't educate about the industry at all. They rarely even teach shit about the business side of things at all regarding usage, copyright, contracts, bids/estimates, etc. Because of that, the only thing they have in their head when they graduate from a terrible cesspool like AI is "exposure = good" and continue to work for free. Businesses love that and continue to reap the rewards. This is why I ask businesses not to contribute to this problem.

Here's a useful little flow chart about working for free by a talented illustrator/typographer who's usually pretty vocal about this topic.

http://shouldiworkforfree.com/

[Ddz]

I clicked this expecting some examples of logos people did, wow what a bitch fest lol. I've been a graphic designer for 10 years, 5 of which were strictly on a 1099 basis. Now I just moonlight outside of my full time job. Did you find a designer yet?

[zoobernut]

What is never delivered? And how can you say they don't see a return on their investment?

I was pretty clear on this point in my post. Businesses rarely deliver on their promise for more business or exposure or recognition. An artist working for cheap or free rarely sees a return on their investment (doing work for a business) in the form of new business. Working for cheap or free rarely leads to working for a normal amount. If a business does make good on their promise to send an artist new customers those new customers often go in with the expectation they will get the same treatment as the original business. Suddenly the artist is trapped in a vicious cycle of doing work for recognition and exposure and never getting paid or getting paid very little.

http://rising.blackstar.com/photographers-excuses.html

http://mariabrophy.com/business-of-a...r-artwork.html

http://photoprofessionals.wordpress.com/

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/10/13/...e-photography/

I know this are for photography but you can easily replace photography with "art form x" and photographer with "artist". Hopefully this helps explain Ksandara. This is just a small sampling of websites I found when doing a search for this topic.

[Ksandra]

Oh no, I remember you were the one trying to get me to pay an extra 1k for video at my wedding which was way over my budget (so glad I didn't).

Thanks for reminding me why artists are overpriced. They are like car dealerships who want to get you to pay more than what you actually wanted.

[Intervention]

Welcome to a flooded job market. Hate to be that guy, but the barrier if entry for graphic design jobs is so low. And with the rise of for-profit schools there are many more "artists" coming.

I can see how easily see this field can be a very cutthroat field. Since you are at the whims of your client subjectivity you could be damn Picasso and yet they hate your work.

My field is the exact same, Animation, it sold to people via schools as an easy fun job that you make tons of money in. Then guess what, now the field is super saturated with graduates with 100k+ loans looming over their heads. All of them willing to do anything to get a job.

But you know what, tough shit. You either evolve or stagnate. Crowd sourcing sucks and from what it sounds like it has become a standard. Maybe it's time to do something different.

[miokomioko]

Not to mention that winning a design contest on a crowdsourcing site isn't going to mean anything to a legitimate business who's looking to hire and work with an artist. The business who paid CrowdSpring or 99Designs to host their contest as a way to get cheap artwork isn't going to give a shit about the individual who came up with the logo they picked out of the thousands of submissions. They take the design, smile, and walk away with it. There was no actual relationship or communication between the artist and the client, so there's nothing to even vouch for other than that the individual in question came up with a nifty little thing. The paying business who needs someone to overhaul their brand or corporate identity has no fucking clue if this random contest winner delivers artwork on schedule, responds to revisions well, communicates consistently, or anything else that's entirely necessary when working with a client, as opposed to turning a mission statement into a logo.

artists are overpriced

Anything that someone can do that others cannot is valued appropriately. People constantly devalue "art" like you're doing just because it isn't directly tied to massive amounts of expensive schooling like our society does with law/medicine/etc. It takes an eye, and a lot of experience... and I'm willing to say more hours of practice/honing than any surgeon will do in their lifetime.

[zoobernut]

Oh no, I remember you were the one trying to get me to pay an extra 1k for video at my wedding which was way over my budget (so glad I didn't).

Thanks for reminding me why artists are overpriced. They are like car dealerships who want to get you to pay more than what you actually wanted.

What? How is this even close to what I said. Saying it is bad to work for free is not even close to the same thing as trying to upsell yourself. If your wedding photographer tried to get you to pay an extra $1k for video they were trying to upsell you because they are a business and they make their living doing that. Every business in the world that sells something does that if it doesn't want to fail. You as the customer have the right to say no to the extra video you don't want but you didn't ask for the photographer to do the whole wedding (the parts you did ask for) for free in exchange for exposure did you? Because then that would relate to what I was saying.

[Ksandra]

@ mioko Why is all that necessary for small business?

Sounds like you guys want to force people to pay for more than what they want.

[Intervention]

Anything that someone can do that others cannot is valued appropriately. People like to devalue "art" like you're doing just because it isn't directly tied to massive amounts of expensive schooling like our society does with law/medicine/etc. It takes an eye, and a lot of experience... and I'm willing to say more hours of practice/honing than any surgeon will do in their lifetime.

Art is subjective, the average person could care less. Plus adds nothing to a zombie apocalypse.

[zoobernut]

@ mioko Why is all that necessary for small business?

Sounds like you guys want to force people to pay for more than what they want.

No it sounds like we want people to be willing to pay for exactly what they want. I don't know how I can simplify it anymore than this for you so you can understand. I can't walk into a sandwich shop and order a sandwich and say "instead of paying you today I am going to go out and tell some friends about how awesome your sandwiches are." Any business that allowed this would go under fast.

Edit: Ksandra it just sounds like you want to get stuff for free from businesses. If art is so easy that you think it should be free then why don't you go out and do it. Or tell your husband to do his work for "recognition" and "exposure" instead of bringing home a paycheck.

[Ksandra]

What? How is this even close to what I said. Saying it is bad to work for free is not even close to the same thing as trying to upsell yourself. If your wedding photographer tried to get you to pay an extra $1k for video they were trying to upsell you because they are a business and they make their living doing that. Every business in the world that sells something does that if it doesn't want to fail. You as the customer have the right to say no to the extra video you don't want but you didn't ask for the photographer to do the whole wedding (the parts you did ask for) for free in exchange for exposure did you? Because then that would relate to what I was saying.

no YOU tried to get me to pay an extra 1k, not the photographer. I made a thread asking about cameras to have a friend do the film and ya flipped your shit when I said videographers were expensive.