The internet & design

The effect of the internet on design. Not all of it good

Like most service sectors, the Internet has changed the graphic design industry in many ways. Some good. Some not so good. In theory, the Internet is a perfect medium for graphic designers and their clients – communication is fast and reliable, artwork can be viewed on web sites, digital files can be delivered immediately, and designers can showcase their work to an entire world, not just the local Chamber of Commerce. Conversely, the Internet gives clients and buyers the opportunity to access talent that they may otherwise not have had a chance to meet, offering a wide range of choices and options when it comes to graphic design services (it was that realization that influenced The Logo Factory to launch online in 1996 – you can read about our design company here). Since then we’ve watched the online logo industry turn into a free-for-all, a veritable flea market where for as little as $10, you can have a logo designed by someone plying their wares on a website. It is, as they say, a jungle out there, and sorting through the dross can help you understand what it, and what isn’t possible when you’ve decided to go online to seek out the identity that will represent your company, service or product.

The Internet, online design & flat rate pricing

With the movement of graphic design studios to an online model, we’ve seen what many are calling the “commodization” of design, and in this context, the development of company logos into what can be described as a product, rather than as a service. The Internet has seen rise to ‘flat rate pricing’ on many design services, an almost horrific thing to consider for many designers, though pretty well standard for anyone attempting to work with remote clients via an online studio. In pre-web days, designers worked on hourly rates (or quoted projects based on the number of hours projected) and while hourly billables are ultimately better for the designer (they get paid for how long they work) and often times the client (they can choose how much time, and effort, goes into the development of their corporate identity) at the end of the day, this isn’t a practical approach to pricing services via the Internet. Designers are now talking directly to the end user, the owner of the company that’s hiring the design firm in the first place. As opposed to OPM (other people’s money) these small business owners are using their own funds, and want to know exactly how much their logo is going to cost. Not how many hours it ‘might’ take, or a ballpark figure, but pricing down to the penny. Many graphic design organizations opine that publishing prices on a website is ‘shady’. I’ve even read the practice being referred to as ‘unethical’ and while I understand the general theory, from a purely pragmatic point of view, I tend to disagree.

If, for example, The Logo Factory didn’t have a section for pricing, then we’d spend the entire day answering the number one question we get asked – ‘how much does a logo cost’. With a couple of thousand unique visitors a day, a quick ‘do it yourself’ pricing section is a must or we’d eat up valuable design time answering the pricing question from people who may only be marginally interested in our services. Also, the internet is by its very nature, a self-serve medium – visitors want to click on a link and find the information they’re looking for. They may not want to pick up the phone. They may not want to send in an e-mail. They want the info right now. And as the Internet is global, people end up visiting an online studio, at all hours of the day, and 7 days a week. Business hours simply don’t apply to the web, so why would any designer restrict client interaction to 9 to 5, and only in what ever time zone they happen to be headquartered in?

Forget about the design. It’s the keywords that count

if you’re running an online design studio, the first task at hand is not showcasing your best work. It’s not setting up a website that’s info-packed and helpful for potential clients. It’s making sure that your site is optimized enough for search engines, and that it shows up when potential clients enter the appropriate phrase into a Google search window (yes, our site is optimized, but the lack of maniacal logo design SEO garners us lackluster search engine results – last time I looked we were on page #4 for a ‘logo design’ keyword search). SEO performance is a deal breaker for any designer or studio attempting to develop an online model. How important? One company boasts that they’re the biggest logo design company in the world, and while they claim this comes from being the best, their success is based on one thing, and one thing only – being number one when people search for the phrase ‘logo design‘. Number two is the next biggest, etc. Not that there’s anything wrong with this – it is the nature of the online model – but the emphasis on SEO creates a sometimes bizarre set of industry standards when clients seek out design services. Firstly, by searching online for a design firm, you run the risk of missing out on a vast variety of talent that exists outside the top ten results of a search result. You’re finding the sites that you do, not because they’re particularly good at design (though some are), but because they’re adroit at getting their sites to the top of search engine listings. No more. No less. And the also rans (those out of the top ten) need to do something to get potential clients to click on their links – that’s where the wildly fluctuating pricing and remarkable sales pitches come in. Unlimited revisions. $20 for a logo. All because the folks vying for your attention need to convince you that out of all the links presented, theirs is the one you need to click on.

And now – a few words from our sponsors

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Free Online Logo design (not really. this is either a printing company that allows you to choose an icon from a library of clip art when you puchase business card printing services or one of these so-called logo generators that allow you to play around with their nifty flash-driven interface, before paying to download the art files of what you’re ‘created’).
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Our community of 46,000 designers (yes, 46 THOUSAND!) designers are waiting to help you create your logo (referred to as ‘crowdspecking‘ or ‘crowdsourcing‘, these sites are glorified design contests with the same risks, intellectual property issues and the like).

And on. And on. All of these represent actual copy snipped from search results. While a little on the outlandish side, none have anything to do with getting a great design for your company. All can be accurately described as ‘link bait’. Can change in a heart beat too. Recently, one of the top ranked logo design sites took a relative nose dive in search traffic, and their knee-jerk reaction was to quickly fire up Google Adwords that promised $99 logo design packages, a rather hefty discount on their regularly priced services. The carefully worded ad links would have led you to believe that you could own a great corporate logo for under a hundred bucks. Trouble is, the ‘landing page’ that followed the click outlined how the $99 was merely a deposit on a design project (with another $200 due on completion), though the verbal gymnastics that attempted to obfuscate this fact were fairly amusing. Which then resulted in a competitor doing exactly the same thing – only this time their ‘come-hither’ link outlined and $89 dollar charge. The problem with all of this? Isn’t it just natural ‘competition’ and ‘market forces’? Yes. And no.

The online design model – some downsides

The SEO marketing model involves fierce competition that goes on, as this or that website, having been hammered in the top ten Google listings, tries just about anything, and everything, to get potential clients to click on their link – now presented as part of a Pay-per-click campaign – by convincing you that they are the wise choice. Often they’re the cheapest model. Wiser? Perhaps not. If you search for logo design services on Google, you’ll see prices that range from $10 (I kid you not) to several thousand. There has to be a difference, right? Of course there is. When it comes to pricing design, the real issue is time, and the cost of same, both to the client and the outfit selling the services. In order to get that sticker price down to a level that’s attractive enough to get buyers to click on the link, the cost that is incurred by the firm in the creation of that sparkling new identity has to be pared down.

In design, there’s only one way to cut cost and that’s to reduce the time spent – a simple dollars and cents formula. This has seen the evolution of shake-and-bake logo solutions – clip art, logo generators, logo design contest forums – all meant to create an attractive and sometimes ludicrous price point, while the entire point of the exercise, a great corporate identity, goes flying out the proverbial window. Despite protestations to the contrary, these solutions have very little to do with effective corporate logo design. They have everything to do with enabling the design firm to formulate a price point that, while remaining profitable to them, looks good as a clickable link. While market forces, and the resultant competition is opening day lesson of most business schools, the online design scenario is missing one vital ingredient – the quality of the product. The design itself. Many may think that I’m grousing about the profit margins about this or that design project, and to a certain degree you may have a point. But I’m also a design purist. Have been since I cut my teeth as a junior designer and why throughout The Logo Factory’s fifteen year history we’ve tried to stick to our original basic business model, supplying the best design possible, at reasonable rates. Old fashioned studio, with a shiny website store front. With thousands of projects under our collective belts, we could certainly set up a flash-driven logo generator and offer rejected logos for a few dollars. or frankenstein off casts together as ‘logo templates‘. Make a tidy profit too. But as i view these kinds of ‘solutions’ to be a disservice to the client, we don’t.

In fact, we’d rather give away these rejects for free. So we do. In our Morgue Files.