Mar

More on those fabulous logo design contests…

Steve Douglas on March 9th, 2007

Ah yes. The Logo Design Contest (what some are now referring to as design crowdsourcing). What a terribly ill-advised way to develop a logo (see our logo design contests article for a little more). Some folks seem to love these things because there’s a sense that they’re somehow getting more ‘bang for their buck’ – more designers giving a project their ‘all’ in order to win some prize – sometimes cash, other times the ‘honor’ of designing the logo is the payoff. The dog and pony show that follows is seen as somehow adding more worth to a logo.

Trouble is, there’s a industry-wide logo contest debate and resultant effort to stop this practice, so most top-flight designers aren’t even entering (there goes the ‘best logo design‘ idea). and now, surprisingly, the battle is starting to get some mainstream attention.

Witness the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s article – Logo competition upsets local graphic designers – published this morning. Apparently, the unsuspecting folks at The Cleveland Foundation launched a logo design contest for their new brand, and I imagine were not prepared for the backlash from the design community that’s now hitting the papers opining that logo contests just don’t work. For anyone involved.

James Lubetkin, senior communications editor at the foundation, said the organization initiated the competition “to give students or owners of small design firms a chance” to win a major assignment. “We thought frankly this was opportunity to cast a wider net.” (So now designers are fish?). According to The Dealer eleven Cleveland-area graphic designers signed a letter protesting the competition as demeaning and as something that would “cheapen” the role of designers urges designers not to enter the competition. Not such a big deal.

Getting the whole issue printed in the local fishwrapper – a little bigger on the bad PR scale…