Couple of events reverberating around the design world over the past couple of days that are sort of indicative of where the profession is heading. The first was evangelical pastor Rick Warren, his publisher Zondervan, and their collective decision to hold a $5,000 (upped from the original $3K) book cover design contest on 99designs. The second was iStockphoto’s announcement that they would be offering “pre-fab” stock logos, promising a $5 submission “bonus” for the first 10,000 logos “approved” under their new service. Another similar event, this time on Crowdspring was self-help Guru (sorry, “Peak Performance Strategist”) Tony Robbins‘ $1000 web design contest, but it went largely unnoticed and thus escaped being carped about on various blogs, forums and Twitter.
Oh, the unfairness of it all
Many of the protests and verbal denouncements took a similar, and plaintive, approach – “Oh, iStockphoto, how could you?” Numerous blog posts (and even an open letter) asked Rick Warren to reconsider how he was damaging the design industry, and how spec work and design contests are “unfair” to professional designers. Damn straight they’re unfair (Warren’s contest featured over 3,000 entries, only a couple of dozen with a rating of any sort). Damn straight they’re unethical (also featured a whole bunch of stock photos, something which was forbidden by the contest brief and against the licensing agreements for most of the images). Does iStockphoto threaten to nick away at an already shrinking design market? Maybe (though I’m still not sure on this one). And I’m sure if anyone noticed Tony Robbins‘ gig on Crowdspring, they’d be begging him to help save the industry as well. Folks, you’re talking to the wrong people.
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In an announcement that took some in the design industry by surprise, iStockphoto today announced that they were planning to roll out some sort of stock logo service, presumably after the New Year. Shortly after the news hit Twitter (and after receiving an e-mail from David Airey about the plan) I received this e-mail from the popular stock photo and artwork service.
“We’re excited to announce a whole new product coming to the iStock collection in just a few months: logo designs. Our clients will be able to download a unique logo to brand their business or organization right here at iStock from designers like you. As a designer, you’ve probably created hundreds of different logos over the course of your career and we’re offering you an outlet to start selling new logos to the world’s largest community of creative buyers. If you create one of the first 10,000 approved logo designs for iStockphoto by January 1, 2010, we’ll pay you $5 per approved logo and another $5 if we reach 10,000 approved logos by that date. So fire up Illustrator to create some amazing logos or dust off all those much-loved logos that never made it past the third round with a client. We will begin taking applications from potential iStock logo designers soon. There will be a Logo Training Manual made available before we begin accepting files. In the meantime, please join the discussion about logos here.”
Designers often talk, a great lengths, why a logo design has to be simple, some going as far to say it’s a “carved in stone” kinda rule. While I agree in principle with that basic premise, it’s a rule that we’ve been guilty of breaking, on numerous occasions (in our defense, we always make sure if an illustrative logo treatment is appropriate, according to future plans for the design). Was out for an early motorcycle ride this morning and stumbled across a classic example of why this ’simple is better’ is the rule, rather than the exception (pardon the photograph quality, but it was overcast and the pics were taken with my handy-dandy iPhone).
Different applications. Different results.
Take a look at the sign above. It’s a big one (actually, identical billboards have been placed in about four locations, to grab eyeballs from every traffic direction). The logo in the middle is for the real estate development featured. Uses either a photograph or a photo-realistic representation of a magnolia as the central theme, accented with torn photo edges and drop shadow. Nothing terribly wrong with the logo itself. It’s nicely designed, probably looks smashing on glossy business cards, textured letterheads and highly-varnished presentation folders given out to prospective home buyers. Has a nice vibe, presents a decent upscale image (needed with the price of houses these days) and is an example that most designers wouldn’t mind having in their portfolio. So what’s the issue? Well, that logo was ONLY designed with print (or web) use in mind. When it comes to other applications, the logo presents some very real problems.
As part of our brand and site retooling, we’re planning to release a regular series of podcasts through iTunes and our site. Gearing up for a weekly release, though that might be a tad optimistic if earlier efforts are any indication.
Previous Podcast fail
We started recording podcasts last year, but our ‘weekly’ series fell quickly to the wayside after one pretty lame attempt (still available on iTunes and here). Complete and utter podcast fail. Several reasons really. One: I relied on too much technology. Had a flipping semi-pro level recording studio set up before I uttered my first podcast word. This meant I had to talk into a mike while wearing headphones and became too formal and stilted in my presentation. Two: I hate my voice. People tell me that they hate their voice too, which is fair enough, but I really, really hate mine and Three: I am a disorganized cluster feck. We’re working on One & Three, and I’m just going to have to deal with Two.
Tags: news, Podcast, social media, studio news
Any logo designer worth their salt knows that vector formats are the only way to go when it comes to logo design. The vector-capability boundaries between Illustrator and Photoshop have blurred a little over the years (yes, you can create vector based in images, but it’s still a little hinky). Years ago, when it came to quick and dirty (often very dirty) vector conversion, we used a handy little utility called Streamline at the shop. Put out by Adobe, most of Streamline’s vector conversion properties were bundled into Illustrator CS and renamed Live Trace.
Auto-tracing. A little hit & miss.
Never been much of a fan of ‘auto-trace’ solutions for anything – they tend to create ‘choppy’ graphics, are a little control point happy, and leave a lot to be desired when it comes to overlaying one vector object over another. Most auto-conversion programs tend to leave little ‘gaps’ between the objects (attempting to butt shapes together like a jig-saw puzzle, rather than overlaying one on top of another as a series of layers). At the end of the day, I’ve always felt that manual hand-tracing is always the way to go (see our logo repair section for more), especially when you want smooth curves and what have you. Auto-tracing an image, then hand-editing it to acceptable standards often takes MORE time that hand-tracing from scratch.
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