Logo galleries are all the rage in the internet, either in forum format (think the oddly named LogoPond, Logo Sauce and Logo Fave) or in blog format (think Logo of the Day). There’s been some discussion in the design community about the percentage of ‘fake company logos’ – it’s not the logo that’s ‘fake’, it’s the company – and whether or not these ‘pretend company’ logos are a measure of a designer’s skill and/or experience.
Some blogs put the percentage of faux company logos at about 60% to 70% (I would say it’s probably higher), and the discussion is being had in “various avenues on the web. Others feel that rather than cranking out ‘fake’ company logos, while still earning their ‘chops’, a designer’s time would be best spent on pro-bono logo projects for local charities. While I’m non-plussed overall (and wouldn’t consider this close to a design ‘controversy’) I think that the idea of presenting pseudo company logo examples does raise some interesting questions.
In The Logo Factory design galleries, there are logos that I positively hate. Loathe. Despise (no, I’m not going to tell). Alas, in a design process that so-closely involves the client, the final logo can sometimes be far removed from the original designer concepts and direction. Such is the nature of the beast when working directly with the end user.
I’d love to take these logos and redesign them into what a consider a better graphic. Unfortunately, we’re stuck. The vast majority of our company logo samples are the actual company logos (there’s a scant few examples in our portfolio where we use rejected designs, but every design that we showcase is an example of a real company, and the result of a real project). To edit them into a version that I like better than the client would be a disservice to them. And whatever input they had. These repurposed designs wouldn’t be examples of how we work with clients through the overall process. It also wouldn’t give potential clients an idea of our problem solving ability, nor give a true barometer of our inter-client skills when tackling company logo design assignments.
A company logo as a pretty picture
Also, presenting ‘pretend company’ logos (where the designer creates a nifty graphic and then crowbars a company identity into it) tends to treat logos more as ‘pretty pictures’ that only require a little bit of type addition to become a logo for this or that company. It’s also an easy way of developing what looks like a killer design concept that used existing company logo requirements and parameters, rather than a design for which the company identity was shoe horned into a nifty concept. All in all, the idea of creating pretend company logos isn’t terribly offensive – all designers at the beginning of their careers have to indulge – but does it give an accurate representation of a designer’s ability to deal with real-world client demands and actual company requirements? I’d say no. I guess at the end of the day, sites like Logopond and Logosauce are great for visual eye-candy, they’re not particularly helpful in seeing how designers attack real branding and logo development issues, nor how a designer can problem solve some of the more mundane and banal design problems that are presented in the ‘real’ world.
IncSpring – Company brand in a box
On a related note, there’s a relatively new website, IncSpring, a ‘stock logo’ site where business owners can purchase ‘pretend’ company logos (complete, in some instances, with company website and domain names) for fees ranging from a couple of bucks to several thousand. From what I can tell, many of the logos have been submitted from Logopond and Logosauce, and there’s the occasional logo design contest reject. Sort of a ‘brand in a box’ concept, the Inc. Spring website has already ruffled feathers in the design community who accuse the site owners of promoting spec design work. Some see this kind of deal as the harsh future of web design.
Personally, I don’t see anything terribly wrong with designers selling unused concepts and rejected designs (almost a stock logo kind of deal) and it’s something we’ve toyed with a little over the years. How valuable Inc Spring is to small business owners remains to be seen – I think it’s hardly likely that a reverse engineered brand is going to ‘fit’ with companies that are already in start-up (the purpose of looking for a logo in the first place). From a designer point-of-view, it’s probably a better alternative than so-called ‘design crowdsourcing‘ sites (where payment is peanuts, the ‘contest holder’ sets the price, and unless the designers ‘wins’, payment is nada). On the down side, and like any ‘community based’ platform, the potential for abuse is always present, either from featured designers getting their company logos pinched and repackaged elsewhere, or not-so-clued designers uploading company logo packages that have been purloined from another source.
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Since I kind of stumbled onto your site last year and became fascinated with logo design as well as the entire branding process, as a newbie, I appreciate your straight shooting. I dream of handling design in the manner you guys do! However, how is one, even an experienced designer, much less a newcomer or even a potential client, able to differentiate the fake company logos from the bona fide ones?
It seems to me that in the vast frontier of the web, policing is… well, sometimes an intangible.
I’ll admit; I peruse the pages of Logopond and aspire to the design skills I see on display. This post was a revelation to me.
[...] would like to quote Steve from Logo Factory on his view of fake logo designs as his opinion is exactly where I stand. All in all, the idea of [...]