When it comes to marketing stuff on the internet, many logo design companies have developed split personalities, pretending they’re someone else, located somewhere they’re not, and offering the exact same services for different pricing on different websites. A look at the fine art of logo design sock puppetry

When it comes to selecting a logo designer, you’re probably going to do what we all do when looking for anything these days. Search for one on the internet. Very cool. A link from somewhere else is probably how you found our site, and probably this very article. That’s how all this is supposed to work. We touched on the lengths some logo design firms will go to get you to their websites in our SEO for logo designers article a while back. To sum up that monster sized screed, the lengths are very far indeed. See, selling logo design services on the interwebs is a very competitive business. It’s also a fairly lucrative one, if, that is, you can get enough eyes on your website. Or in the case of logo design sock puppetry, enough eyes on all of their websites. Having a bunch of websites promoting one company ain’t a big deal. Everybody does it. It’s when a whole bunch of websites promote a whole bunch of different companies, that are really all the same company that things get kind of odd. And when you factor in the lengths that these companies go to hide those connections, you’ve gotta be just a little concerned.

Right now, there’s a load of people all over the world skim reading this article, looking for bold versions of their various aliases and websites. They can relax. I’m not going to name names, nor am I going to hold anyone up to scrutiny. That’s not the point of this article, though it would make a fascinating read for people who’re into such things. This is about clients, and why they should be concerned about hiring a sock puppet design firm to create their new company logo.

Online diplomas, student loans and term papers?

For some odd reason, a lot of folks from South East Asia who are flogging logo design services, are also heavily connected to dodgy online college diplomas. Prefab college term papers. Student loans. College affiliate revenue (usually through ‘Request Free College Information‘ sections of their websites). Not sure what the connection is, save stuff that can be sold completely via the internet without much in the way of oversight, or overhead. Such connections often have some comical results, especially when they use fake physical addresses to bolster their USA location bona fides. There’s a couple of sites, run by a huge IT company in Pakistan, that featured one such US address on their website. Trouble is, that address just happened to be an abandoned warehouse in Delaware (due to Delaware’s lax foreign corporation laws), and just happened to get shown on a CNN report about a fake diploma and University degree scandal that had blown up at the United Nations that resulted in some high-profile firings. The logo design sites changed the town listed on their website pretty damn fast, but the street address remains the same, rendering it moot.

Determining a sock puppet website

How to tell a sock puppet website? One such way is their phone number (if their site even bothers to list one in the first place). See, websites are cheap. Toll free numbers, through US based VOIP modem phones aren’t, so a search of phone numbers will generally reveal connections with other sites. Often to phone numbers that are connected to spammers, as these VOIP numbers are recycled between customers. Trouble is, sock puppet sites are getting wise to this one, and are now featuring .gif phone number images to which search engine spiders are blind. But that’s okay. Most companies want their phone numbers to be picked up by search engines, so if the website you’re perusing has turned their phone number into an image, ask yourself ‘why did they turn their phone number into an image?’ Because they don’t want you to connect their various sock puppet sites is why.

Google Earth and its companion Street View are pretty cool too, and there’s quite a few logo design websites whose addresses are either empty fields or free-standing buildings that have nothing to do with logo design. I asked one site via chat window about their address being that of a stand-alone jewelry store, and they told me “we’re in the back”. Trouble is, there is no back, and the people in the jewelry store had never heard of the company. Funny enough, the jeweler told me, I wasn’t the first to ask. There’s another outfit who claims they’re a US based company with a Karachi office. As their Pennsylvania office consists of a couple of desks, while all their production is done in their Karachi facility, I’d argue they’re a Pakistan based company with a US office (their recent foray into the logo design contest & ‘crowdsourcing arena is being heavily promoted by a network of graphic design blogs, aimed at designers, that all deny connections to each other. The amount of logo raiding that forms most of the content for these blogs is astonishing). But it isn’t where these companies are located is the issue. It’s where they tell you they’re located, and the extreme lengths they’ll go to lie about it. Right to your face. Just business you say? Not where I’m from. I thought transparency was the key. We’d get more business if we pretended we were based in the US. It’s up to us to convince clients that a Canadian-based design shop can create decent logos.

The importance of being earnest

Why is all this important? Here’s why. If the people behind a sock puppet logo website have no issue with lying to you about who they are and where they are, and what they’ve done, how does that square with their other website claims? When they say they’ll put five designers on your project will they really? Or will it be some poor solo Mac jockey, harried, overworked and underpaid, trying to keep up with a flood of website orders tossed on his workstation? When they say that all work is 100% custom, is it, or are you paying to look at designs that have been rejected from previous projects and assembled for your consideration because they sorta look like the stuff you asked for in your web brief? A frankensteined tinker-toy logo with your company name slapped across the bottom after thirty seconds of Adobe editing. And when they tell you about their unlimited revisions, are they really ‘unlimited’ (usually not) or do they pull the plug once your revision requests have taken your project into the non-profit area? See, buying stuff on on the internet is, to a great degree, based on trust. And if a company is willing to lie to you about such fundamentals as their own identity, the credibility of their entire pitch becomes suspect. It’s not often that folks who are lying to your face to get your money, will have an honesty epiphany when they get it.

Cute little button eyes though.

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It’s not often that I snark on an individual blog post but will this time, partially to illustrate the lengths some companies will go to promote their design contest sites, but mostly ’cause Charlie asked.

Charlie B. Johnson (uh-huh) over at Graphic Design Blog is at it again, publishing a blog post entitled Do famous companies prefer Logo Design Contests – Yes or No? With Charlie’s awkward connections to Logo Design Guru‘s design contest site Mycroburst, I was willing to bet that the answer would be a resounding “yes”. Luckily, after reading the post, I wasn’t disappointed. But he did ask the question. So, I’ll try to answer.

Teeing up his evidence, Charlie tells us that there are “numerous irrational squabbles” going on about logo design contests, and that a “handful of designers, adverse to the concept of design contests, are lamenting over the emergence of this unique trend“. Irrational, Charlie? Hardly. There’s lots of designers who have laid out reasoned and rational arguments on blogs, forums and websites. Hell, even we took a rather sober look at the practice trying to avoid any lamenting. Tried to duck wailing or gnashing of teeth too. Ain’t a handful either Charlie. Practically every graphic design organization in the world. And a good chunk of the professional designers you’re going to run into. See, that’s the point Charlie. Only people who run design contest sites, Mycroburst let’s say, are completely gung-ho with the concept. Even participating designers would prefer to get paid for their work. You don’t have anything to do with Mycroburst or it’s parent company do you Charlie? Nah, of course not. ‘Cause that wouldn’t be very cool. Acting all independent and stuff, while pushing the site onto designers who’re not aware of your affiliation. There is that rather large Mycroburst ad on every page of your blog though, but I’m sure that’s just an oversight.

Toyota logo contest

Charlie then holds up a few famous companies to illustrate how they ‘prefer’ logo contests when it comes to their branding. First up: Toyota, who under their first family-oriented name Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd., did just like Charlie claims, holding a logo competition way back in 1938, receiving 27,000 (or 200, depending on the source) entries (how a logo contest in 1938 illustrates how Mycroburst-like sites is an “emerging trend” is anyone’s guess). Trouble is, none of the entries sat terribly well with the Toyoda family (partially due to Japanese numerology superstitions), so they altered one of the logos themselves, adding a brushstroke which changed the company name to Toyota. The history is a little complicated, and even a bit murky, but overall not too good for the ‘pro contest’ argument. In any case, that logo’s pretty well gone, and other than some employee pins (left), watches (right) and stickers for retro car memorabilia fans, it’s been relegated to the Toyota archives. Ain’t famous either, cause I be a lot of people reading this post are seeing it for the first time. Once the automobile company went world-wide, they used a simple font mark that spelled out Toyota (I remember that one. Stared up at me from the steering wheel of an old Cargo Van I used to drive). Further, the design that Charlie’s holding up as an example of a ‘famous company preferring logo contests’ (above) wasn’t designed by a contest, but was launched in 1989, shortly after Toyota announced their new Lexus line of premium automobiles, in order to differentiate between the two brands. Where did I get this info? Why, straight from the Toyota website.

Olympic Air logo contest

When Olympic Airlines, the national airline of Greece, was sold by the Greek government to Marfin Investment Group, the new owners decided to change the name to Olympic Air and hold, tah-dah, a logo contest. Charlie’s got that part right. Now, take a look at the old logo (above left) and compare it to the new logo (above right). Not much difference between the two. See, this contest was a publicity gimmick, and didn’t involve the design of a logo, but the tweaking of what already existed. Couldn’t wander too far from the original brand because Olympic Airlines still existed for a while after the acquisition. While this may be an example of a ‘famous company’ using a logo design contest, it isn’t a particularly good one. Brand New does an excellent job of chronicling the contest and dissecting the results.

Google flavicon ‘contest’

Not much of a contest actually. After messing about with a whole bunch of different flavicons for Google related sites (and generally being hammered for most attempts) big G turned to users to ‘suggest’ some alternatives. They ended up going with a style that was ‘inspired’ by André Resende, a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Campinas in Brazil. Apparently, André was the first to recommend a white lower-case ‘g’ on a colored background. While being mentioned as the ‘inspiration’ for the new flavicon, Google didn’t actually use his submission as is, telling us on their blog that the new version was an “reinterpretation of one contest submission” and that

Although we changed the color layout slightly and moved the ‘g’ off center, his submission formed the basis for our new design. Incorporating all four of Google’s colors (red, yellow, green, and blue) into the four corners of the favicon was a theme we liked in many submissions. We also saw this idea in the designs submitted by Hadi Onur Demirsoy, Lucian E. Marin, and Yusuf Sevgen.

See, if this was a logo design contest, and as Google didn’t use any of the submissions, it would hardly be considered a ringing endorsement of same. But as a flavicon isn’t a logo, arguing the matter would be kind of pointless. So we won’t. Granted, Google does host on ongoing series of Doodle 4 Google logo contests, but they’re aimed at K-12 high school students and don’t represent logos per se.

EU Organic Certification logo contest

Not everyone was thrilled with the contest, or the three logos they had to choose from. Organic association Bioform issued a statement by director Leen Laenens, supposedly representing “many” in the industry, that read in part “they (the three proposals) have no visible link with the sector. One could ask the question whether the consumer is aware the an organic product is involved“.

Okay, you can’t please everyone all the time, so if the European Union was a ‘famous company’, I suppose this could be an example of a ‘famous company preferring logo design contests’. But it isn’t. So it’s not.

Spud Webb Enterprises logo contest

Charlie rounds off his examples of famous companies using logo contests with some outfit called Spudd Web Enterprises. I’m not a big basketball fan, but apparently that company is owned by Anthony Jerome Webb, who according to Wiki is “better known as Spud Webb, is a retired American NBA professional basketball point guard. He is currently the President of Basketball Operations for the unnamed D-League franchise in Frisco, Texas“. Qualifies as ‘famous’ I suppose, but oddly (not really) this is an ongoing contest on Mycroburst (quelle surprise) and is, as Charlie tells us, “a big slam dunk opportunity for logo designers who have the opportunity to win USD $300“. Cool and everything, but all this to pimp a link to a Mycroburst logo contest? Or some more SEO folly? Seems so. Out of common courtesy, I’m not going to hack on other designers’ work, or raid any of the logos, so you’ll have to decide for yourself how well this contest is panning out.

See Charlie, I’ve never been shy about debating the spec work and design contest issue. But if we’ve axes to grind, let’s be upfront about the axes. That’s not to say ‘famous companies’ don’t use logo contests. They do. There’s the Dish logo contest on Crowdspring. There was the CP+B gig for electric motorcycle manufacturer Brammo too. I guess Charlie doesn’t want to link to competitive sites so the examples he’s got to work with are sorta thin. Which kinda puts paid to the objectivity of the entire premise and his rather awkwardly worded closing question (which I’ll quote, running the risk of getting boned by Google for keyword stuffing):

“If logo design contests are allegedly bad, then why famous corporations have been opting for them? After witnessing such legendary cases of corporate identities, do you still believe that logo design contests warrant the cynicism they get? Don’t you think ”logo design contests” have been playing an important role in providing memorable logo designs to the industry?”

Must have missed the “legendary cases of corporate identities” in Charlie’s article, but no mind. Though I might argue that it’s posts like this driving some of the “cynicism” he refers to. And in closing, let’s take a look at the payouts of the examples, just to see how peachy keen logo contests are for participating designers. EU Organic logo contest: €6,000 prize ($8,006). Cool. Olympic Air logo contest: €20,000 prize ($26,690). Cool. Mycroburst logo contest: €224 prize ($300). Not so much.

Oddy, I’m reminded of apples. And a lot of oranges.

[1936 Toyoda Model AA (main photograph): Mytho88]

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“We provide you the battlefield and weaponry to conquer the creative world. Creative soldiers have the opportunity to battle their enemies for monetary prizes, develop a reputation by climbing the ranks, construct professional profiles and meet new creative allies. Enlist and prepare your artistic weaponry. Victory can be yours!”

Oh wait. Sorry, that’s from the about us page from Guerra Creativa, another one of these design contest sites, when describing their services to designers. [Guerra Creativa]

Several Pint Tips I should get out of the way before we get too much further. Anyone who’s been following the logo design game, especially as it relates to the internet, is probably aware of the shenanigans some people get up to in order to place well in search engine result pages (we’ve touched on it before in our logo wars post from a few years back). Looks like designers are starting to notice, which is good, and starting to tell folks about it, which is even better. UK based logo designer Graham Smith takes a look at what’s going on in a great post on his ImJustCreative blog, delving into some of the questionable (and sometimes downright unethical) approaches some logo design companies are taking. In a similar vein, Australia based designer Duane Kinsey opines that Google doesn’t understand professional logo design on his Logobird site. If that weren’t enough, Logo Design Love reveals the folly of logo design SEO in a post by UK based David Airey. All three articles are excellent summaries of the minefield that anyone’s presented with when they type in the words “logo + design” into a Google search bar.

Speaking of design contest sites (oh yes, we were) there’s yet another game in town. Calling themselves White Label Design Contest, this outfit has a newer angle than most of the others now plying their trade all over the interwebs. Their home page asks us tantalizingly “Want to create a website that works like 99designs?” and then goes on to describe how they can help you “set up your own design contest site with [their] hassle-free application. Our platform has the same functionality as 99designs, you can use it to create a website based on the concept of designers submitting their work to design projects (“contests”)“. Oh, that sounds just peachy. The money bit? Don’t worry your pretty little head: “Our business model is based on revenue sharing, which means that the revenue generated by your site is shared between us and you, and you only have to pay us once your business starts making money“. No mention how designers get paid, though if it’s like most design contest sites, that’s not part of the equation. As they won’t be. [White Label Contests].

Best selling author John Winsor is gung-ho about crowdsourcing and what have you, but as he’s one of the founders of Victors & Spoils, billed as “the worlds first advertising agency built on crowdsourcing principles” can’t really blame him. Brimming with enthusiasm, John’s just published a blog post entitled “It’s only the beginning”, in which he tells us that the current buzz around crowdsourcing is, well, only the beginning. Standard pro spec work and crowdsourcing fare, except for one notable exception. John tells us about the future of the genre which includes “the expectation of transparency, the further digitization of the workforce and the rise of the curator class“. Rise of the curator class? Jeezus, that doesn’t sound snooty at all. John mustn’t have got the memo. [John Winsor]

Crowdsourcing: Opportunity or Time Suck? That’s the question asked by Entrepreneur magazine in a website article published last week. I’m thinking time suck, but then again, no-one’s ever accused me of being the most unbiased cat on the subject. Unlike most rah-rah design contest and crowdsourcing puff pieces, author Michelle Goodman takes a decent, level-headed look at the issue, outlining the generally accepted pros and cons of the practice (unfortunately falling for the crowdsourcing numbers game used by most of the outfits mentioned in the piece). Her overall conclusion? Crowdsourcing may not be for everyone, but it’s here to stay. Alas, she’s probably right on both counts. [Entrepreneur]

Looks like AT&T is messing around with their logo. If the video at the link is any indication, they’re not rebranding completely, but simply removing the AT&T typography that’s been featured below and at the right of their little death starish icon. The people at Gizmodo are less than impressed, wondering if the phone company could focus their funds on addressing dropped calls first. Fair criticism I suppose. [Gizmodo]

Speaking of logo design and video games (we sorta were, alluding to it in the War or Warcraft bit) seems there’s now a company that will design logos for people to use in the Second Life universe. According to this post on the Second Life blog pages, your design will be tackled by someone with “in-game experience so that you receive the highest standards of design“. They also tell us that a logo is important to “establish brand Identity”, “retain loyalty”, “gain more clients” and “increase sales”. Whether this is in the real world, or the make believe world of Second Life is anyone’s guess, but hats off for these cats finding a niche that no-one had even though about. [Second Life blogs]

Designers are always going on about how a logo adds an air of legitimacy to any business offering (guilty as charged). Looks like spammers have now caught on to this principle, using the IRS logo to legitimize a fairly cynical phishing scam to try and score personal information. As this is tax time, the spammers are trying to fool people using subject headers like “You’ve Overpaid” and offering fast-tracked tax refunds. The official looking e-mail will take you to a website that also looks legit, asking you to provide personal information goodies which can then be used for identity theft, or to drain your bank account. To counter the scam, the IRS has put out an official statement that explains they’ll never ask for your personal information over the phone or online so, if you get one of these e-mails either just hit delete or forward it on to phishing@IRS.gov. We got a ton of these last week, pretty well to every mail account at our domain, but while the IRS has a long arm indeed, it probably doesn’t stretch across the 49th. [Channel 9 News Syracuse]

Happy Tax Day.

Have an interesting blog piece, logo or ‘different’ take on the graphic design industry that might make interesting fodder for an upcoming Snippet feature? Feel free to drop us a line. You can also hit us up on Twitter.

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I understand how this happened Sam. That logo is in the number one or two spot when you search for the keywords pizza and logo on Google. Does pretty well for “pizzeria logo” too. Bottom line, it’s a decent design and it’s really easy to find. That didn’t happen by accident Sam. Far from it. We had to write some nice copy about pizza logos and feature some examples from our portfolio on one of our web pages. We even gave some tips on how to design a pizzeria logo. Hopefully, people who were looking for design firms, especially those that were good at designing pizza logos, might find our site when using their favorite search engine. Maybe even hire us to design a logo for their restaurant. And if they wanted to try designing one themselves, we gave a few tips that might help.

Here’s the thing Sam. Our portfolio and website is our advertising, very similar to the website you’re building for your pizza parlor. And like the mailers you send to people in your neighborhood, hoping that they’ll order pizza and wings by phone. Or visit your fine establishment when they want to dine out. Trouble is Sam, when you wanted to add a logo to your website and mailers, you decided to nick the design you liked so much right off our website. You, or some designer you hired, took the image, removed the name of the client we originally designed the logo for, and put in your restaurant’s name. Pretty badly too Sam, because this design wasn’t built for the name of your restaurant, it was built for the original client’s name. But that’s neither here nor there. This letter isn’t about good or bad logo design. It’s about intellectual property.

See Sam, I didn’t think I’d have to tell you this. I thought you’d understand, being a small business owner like myself, that our companies represent a way of making a living to the people who work for us. Our designers and admin staff. Just like your servers and chefs. Our logos and design work are just like your pizza and chicken wings Sam. You know, product. The things we sell to keep the lights on, the doors open and the paychecks signed. Or in your case, the doors to your pizza pub restaurant open, your wait staff smiling and your pizza ovens nice and hot.

Maybe we’re too expensive for your budget Sam, and that’s okay. Just like your pizza may be more expensive than the Domino’s and Pizza Pizza chains across the street from your shop. You’ll tell your customers that your pizzas and wings are more expensive because they’re better than those other guys. Better, fresher ingredients. Home made pie crust. Hand mixed sauces. That’s kind of our position on our pricing too, Sam. We only present custom work, no templates or clip art here, and we have to price our design services in order to maintain that level of quality. We try to have great customer service and warm, knowledgeable bodies answering phones when clients need help with their logos. There are cheaper solutions to be sure, and you’re welcome to use those guys too. Free market and all that. Just like the people in your area are welcome to buy their wings and pizzas from those large chains that don’t take as much pride in their menu items as you do. You have breaded shrimps too? That’s awesome.

But here’s the thing Sam. When you decided that we were too rich for your tastes, or your budget, you didn’t go to the other, cheaper guys. You just took our artwork, property that belongs to someone else, and made it yours. You didn’t pay for it. You didn’t even ask. It would be like me breaking into your restaurant and taking your pizza (I’m partial to pepperoni, mushroom and pineapple) without asking you, because I thought you were charging too much. Or taking your pepperoni, mushrooms, pineapples and home made pie dough, right out of your fridge, so that I could try and make my own pizza. Pizza that, hopefully, would taste just like yours. You might think artwork on the internet is different Sam, but it’s not really. You’re taking something that doesn’t belong to you. And using it for your own benefit. Without asking the rightful owner, or the creator, if they’re okay with you using it.

Judging by the way your website is set up (5.7 MBs for your about page is a bit heavy Sam) you may be new to the internet and not know this. While it’s cool to find all sorts of stuff, logo design examples let’s say, the internet is also a weird place. A very weird place indeed. I’ve never heard of your pizza parlor, nor did I know about your new website. Trouble is, someone from your neighborhood, perhaps even a customer of yours, knows about us. They seem to be quite familiar with our site too, being able to find a very old contact form that’s not easy to find on our new site. I think they might be a graphic designer Sam, because they were really, really unhappy to see our client’s logo being used to promote your restaurant. So unhappy that they took some time out of their busy day to tell us. And just like you used the internet search machine to find examples of pizza logos, we used the internet search machine to find you. Now, whether you really want to or not, you’re going to have to have a new logo designed. You won’t hire us because after all this, you probably think I’m not a very nice person. That bad blood is sad really, because we didn’t do anything wrong. Other than advertise our services on the internet. Just like you advertise your pizzas and wings on the internet. But you’re going to have to hire somebody I suppose. Here’s a few tips on selecting a logo designer. And if you’ve printed our work on business cards, letterheads or heaven forbid, your menus, it’s going to cost a lot more than the couple of hundred bucks you saved by not hiring us. The sad footnote to this is that you’ve probably lost a customer too. Remember the designer that told us about this little incident? Apparently, they don’t want to support a business that appears to think so little about theirs. The big chains across the street are cheaper too.

I want to keep this quiet Sam, because I’m sure you’re a nice guy who may not have understood that this kind of thing is wrong. Many people seem to think that once something is on the internet, it’s available for use by anyone. It isn’t. There’s this little wrinkle to that called copyright. Trademark works too. Some may feel that pinching artwork off the internet is just like downloading MP3s or movies via a file-sharing network. It’s not. MP3s and bootleg movies are downloaded into a private stash on a hard drive that no-one else sees. While it’s still very illegal, it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever get caught. By their nature, logos are very, very public. That’s the point in the first place. And when you use a logo how it’s supposed to be used, plastered over your advertising, you run a very real risk of the owner finding out. In many different and wondrous ways. If they don’t find it themselves, it could come down to some graphic designer who reads a website, or a logo design blog like this one, dropping into your shop for an undoubtedly wonderful slice of pizza. And then half the internet will be raging about yet another example of someone knocking off someone else’s design work. Funny thing, I wrote about that kind of thing just a few days ago. They’re called Twitter Storms and they can get really, really nasty. That won’t happen this time Sam, because I’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure the search engine machines don’t connect this post with your restaurant. See, I just wanted you to stop using our work. And to leave our client’s logo alone. And who knows. Maybe if the Mrs. and I ever plan a road trip down your way, we’ll drop in for a slice or two. Or maybe some of those lovely looking shrimps.

The preceding was based on an actual event. Sam is not the actual name of the restaurant owner addressed. So it doesn’t get picked up by search engines, we’ve left the name of his restaurant out of the article too. Also should mention that after being contacted, the logo was removed from Sam’s website.

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Step #1: Find a suitable image

First, you should take a look at what the contest is all about. In this instance, you’ll be entering a contest for a marina boat repair business. Cool. That would need some boat artwork, so let’s hop over to Google and run a search for related terms. Ah hell, cut right to the chase and type in ‘boat logo‘. Awesome. Lots of stuff, and Big ‘G’ even doles up mini images as part of the search. Liking the first one, from some online outfit called The Logo Factory. That would be perfect for a marina boat repair design, no?

Step #2: Adapt said image to personal tastes

Lessee. You don’t want to submit a complete knock-off as that wouldn’t be cool (logo contest value and all that). Also wouldn’t want people to notice our ‘homage’, so we’ll need to perform a few perfunctory changes to make the design completely ours.

Step #3: Upload new image and hope nobody notices

Once we’ve finished, ahm, tweaking the logo into its new form, we can upload to the 99designs contest and hope for the best. If our entry doesn’t win, it falls squarely under the “nothing ventured, nothing gained” category. Even if it doesn’t win, let’s not forget all those lovely, ever-so-important stars we’ll receive from the ever-so-grateful contest holder. Not really sure how, but apparently these will make us a better designer. And if we win, huzah! 150 bones straight to our handy-dandy PayPal account, or in this case, the PayPal account of some user called [re]Design (alas, I wish I was kidding) who uploaded our beautifully reworked logo thusly:

Step #4: Let someone else have a go

Having invested five or ten minutes with this contest (the maximum you’ll wish to expend to keep things ‘profitable’), you should probably stand back and let other participants have a go. Let them use Step #1. Find the image and rework it from a different angle. Perhaps removing the portholes and the waves was a little spartan for the contest holders tastes, so the next entrant may want to leave the waves in this time. A word of caution. Two (or more) people entering a logo ‘homage’ from the same source is going to require some designery soft shoe as we mix things up a little.

And we still wouldn’t have to design anything.

Related posts:

1. Spec work hackery redux. More of our work copied & entered into 99designs logo design contest
2. Oh c’mon now
3. Yet another 99designs logo contest knock-off

From the “Here We Go Again” Department. No point in rehashing the dangers of logo design contests, save this simple “spec work is bad” equation:

A whole bunch anonymous people who may, or may not, be actual designers +
A very small chance of getting paid for their design work +
A web-based logo design contest on ANY ‘design contest’ site =
An extraordinarily high risk of copied work.

The proof, as they say, is always “in the pudding“. So let’s take a look at some recent pudding from our old pals at 99designs, this time in a logo contest for the good folks at Storm Factory, undoubtedly nice people who like to think of themselves as an “awesome entertainment company“. The brief for the $270 contest is pretty straight forward, asking for a design that incorporates “a factory and/or a storm in some kind of creative way.” Cool. This tanning salon logo (designed by our shop back in 2003) features a factory (right), so let’s add some lightning bolts (in a “creative” way I suppose) and we’re all set. Not that this is the contest holder’s fault (other than holding a contest in the first place). They can’t be expected to know every logo in the history of ever. And as 99designs can’t, or won’t, monitor every single contest on their server, identifying knocked-off stuff is left to other contest participants. As is notifying 99designs administrators about the hackery (though “please do this very quietly, lest contest holders realize they’re paying for a bunch of copied logos that they can’t use” seems to be the policy de jour). Not that this “let’s leave monitoring contests to the plebes” concept always works out so well. Anyone remember this spec work parable when it didn’t?

As is generally the case, and after being notified, the lads at 99designs quietly withdraw the copied design (or as in this case, multiple variations) from the contest proper, but leave it on their server so that others can be, ahm, inspired by it (or for search engine rankings, whichever comes first). You can’t imagine how thrilled I am to have work that’s been cribbed from our logo design portfolio, being used to promote 99designs and their services. Nor, how positively chuffed I am knowing that when 99designs claims they’re a better alternative to our shop, or other designers, because “clients” get “more design options“, some of those “more design options” are ripped straight from our galleries. And those of other designers and design firms. While we’re at it, wonder if ripped designs count in the “97 designs” average submissions per contest these guys claim?

Meanwhile, the would be designer who’s now shown us that he’s not above lifting others’ work so blatantly, is free to enter more contests held by unsuspecting contest holders. He’s active in six right now. Ain’t the first time this nonsense has happened. Or the second time either. Copied designs being entered into logo contests and so-called crowdsourcing sites is a regular occurrence. Or is this just another example of someone being a snooty designer who won’t get with the program?

Related posts:

1. Yet another 99designs logo contest knock-off
2. New! Spec work. Schmeck work. Proudly announcing our groovy new design contest factory!
3. How to enter a logo design contest in ten minutes flat. Without having to design anything

If you’re the curator of a niche blog (in this case, one centered on logo design) it’s generally ill-advised to get involved in politics, especially in these extremely divisive right-wing vs. left-wing times. No real mileage in doing so, as we always risks alienating 50% of our audience, and as this isn’t a political blog, I tend to avoid the subject altogether, unless the issue involves logos. And is particularly noteworthy. Or involves a certain level of schadenfreude that’s worth discussing for a few laughs. I think when several high-profile conservative bloggers ‘find’ an Islamic Crescent hidden in “Obama’s” “new” missile defense “logo” and stage a mid-level freakout about it certainly qualifies. If it’s true. And especially so, as in this instance, if it’s not. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what all the fuss is about. And as the logo isn’t new, probably isn’t a logo and doesn’t feature a crescent if it were, why it’s a load of malarkey.

Tell me, is it a coincidence it also looks like an Islamic Crescent?

“Call me paranoid, but isn’t that a kind of star and crescent?”

and ultimately making this connection

“That butthole Obama is just FLAUNTING that he is a Muslim in our faces, but the kool-aid drinking Liberals in the media will deny it even when they see Obama on his knees facing East praying on a flying carpet 5 times a day before strapping on a dynamite vest.”

Jeebus on a crutch. All of this over one logo? Alas, we’re not done yet.

Conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart was next up, twattering to his 15,000+ followers via his Twitter account this ominous question “Can this be true? New Obama Missile Defense logo includes a crescent“. If you don’t know who Breitbart is, he’s the darling of the right-wing, an anti-mainstream media maverick who runs several websites including Big Government, Big Hollywood and is the dude behind the media barrage about the video ‘sting’ of ACORN last fall (you may remember that episode in which student journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles went ‘undercover’ as a pimp and prostitute, soliciting advice on running a brothel from unsuspecting ACORN staffers). Anyhoo, if you clicked on Breitbart’s Twitter link, you’d be taken to his Big Government site, where another conservative pundit, Frank Gaffney would also ask “Can this be true?” suggesting that the “new logo” was evidence that something “nefarious is afoot” and that the new Missile Defense Agency shield “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star“. Gaffney and Breitbart aren’t the end of it either. There’s much, much more. Even this morning, Pamela Geller wrote about the fracas on her tight-tilting blog Atlas Shrugs, calling the logo an example of “cultural jihad“. The comments over there weren’t any, ahm, kinder:

“I suspect this design was created by a muslim artist, and probably given preference in the name of diversity.”

And this one

“Barry is flipping America off right in the open. How can anyone look at his actions and say that he is not muslim?”

Those are the ‘quotable’ ones. Just a few problems with all of this:

It ain’t new. There’s no crescent. May not even be a logo

Bottom line, a lot of heavy hitters from the conservative side of the aisle had found an Islamic crescent in the “new” Obama MDA logo, and that wasn’t very cool at all. And I guess if it were true, it might not be. Just a few itty, bitty hitches in all this wondrous tin-foil hattery. The “new logo” may not even be a logo. It isn’t new. The old logo hasn’t been replaced. And the design that can be found on the agency’s website doesn’t even feature a crescent.

Let’s take a look at the Missile Defense Agency website. You pulled it up? Good. Now, scroll w-a-a-a-a-y down to the bottom. Well, I’ll be. The “old” Missile Defense Agency logo (technically, as there’s no “new logo”, it ain’t an “old logo” but it’s simpler this way). You can view the “old logo” in the screen cap above (and right). See, the item at the top, the one that everyone’s peaking about, may not even be a logo. It’s more than likely what’s known in the design biz as a “design element” or a “graphic accent“. That translates loosely into “meaningless eye-candy that we place on a website to make it look prettier“. There’s not one shred of evidence that the logo’s been changed at all. Ah-hah, some bloggers will exclaim, “the new logo was unveiled last October. The ad agency twittered about it“. Okay folks, just a couple of things. If the design agency in charge twattered about the new logo last October, it ain’t exactly new, is it? But let’s take a look. You’re right, TMP Government, the ad agency responsible for the new website design, did in fact post about the new design last October. Here’s the Tweet.

Like any proud web design firm, they announced the launch of the MDA’s website and new “branding” (and a logo isn’t a brand, remember?) Not a single word about a new logo to be found. A look at the Wiki page about the agency features the “old logo” too and while Wikipeadia often misses the boat on small details, they’re usually pretty fast at updating pages about stuff like this. Nada. And what about the claims that this “new logo” contains an Islamic crescent? Nope. Should point out that like most religious symbols, the so-called Islamic Crescent and star has very specific methodology in its portrayal. If there was a crescent in the MDA’s not-logo, it’s not only backwards and tilted the wrong way (the logo Drudge used was actually The Nation of Islam flag) but the star is inside the crescent. That alone makes it not an Islamic crescent. If some radical graphic designer was trying to secretly “sneak” an Islamic logo into government funded paraphernalia, they did an extraordinarily bad job of doing so. Not only that, but technically, this crescent symbol (right) isn’t universally accepted as a Muslim symbol and while it’s sorta accepted by people in the west (an important distinction) the symbol isn’t Muslim in origin at all, and its use is often controversial among, well, Muslims themselves. While the symbol IS featured prominently on the flags of many countries in the Islamic world, notably Turkey and Pakistan, the symbol was actually the insignia of the Ottoman Empire, not of Islam as a whole (Hat tip: Religion Facts). We also touched on all these religious symbols a few years ago when the Red Cross got a new logo. So what’s the deal? Sigh.

Our old nemesis. Bevel filters

Here’s the thing. The “not new logo” looks like it may feature a crescent because of one, very simple thing. The overenthusiastic use of drop shadow and bevel filters. If we dissect the design using fairly obvious logo symbolism as our guide, we can see several elements at work. The star obviously represents a missile in flight (but can also represent the “star” bit of the Stars and Stripes (see our logo symbolism feature from yesterday for more of his kinda thing). Maybe even a rocket blowing up real good, after getting smacked by aforementioned missile, the purpose of this entire exercise. The red swooshes obviously are meant to represent a missle plume, broken into three components to represent the American flag. You know, the “stripes” part of the Stars and Stripes. The round thing that the swooshes are, well, swooshing around, is the Earth. You know, as it would be seen from space, the space bit of the Space Defense Initiative. Rather than some “nefarious” symbology, the “logo” is standard patriotic fare that one would expect to find on a US Defense Department website. Still not convinced? Okay, let’s take away the colors and lose those infernal bevel and drop shadows.

Seems that when the design firm wanted to turn the website dashboard and navigation bar into a sci-fi themed design worthy of Star Trek, they placed the graphic into a circle and applied a liberal dosing of Photoshop filters for that added “something” that people who use bevel filters are always looking for. Trouble is, bevel filters work in two ways. They can add an outer bevel, which gives the object 3D mass, or they can be used as an ‘emboss’ effect, which adds a concave effect, making the object appear to be carved out. Guess which way our hapless web designer rolled?

Left-wing design conspiracy? Hardly

As some point in all the tin-foil fun, it was opined that the not-insertion of the not-Islamic Crescent into the not-logo was evidence of a liberal conspiracy. Some sort of clandestine socialist takeover of a vital national defense organization. If it wasn’t Barack Obama himself, perhaps some crazed liberal design agency, furthering the cause of America’s enemies from within. A Manchurian Candidate graphic designer perhaps? Tin foil’s on a little tight folks. If we take a look at TMP Government’s portfolio, we’ll see that they boast a wide range of clients including Blackwater the private security firm, and hardly a cause célèbre amongst the liberal set. Seeing as how Blackwater re-branded themselves as Xe at the beginning of the Obama administration, it would appear that this agency was involved with designing government stuff during the George Bush administration too. See, TMP design government and lobby group websites from all over the political landscape, describing themselves as an agency that “develop(s) and implement(s) interactive and traditional outreach communications programs for government, contractors and associations“. Hardly a bastion of liberal elitism.

Lessons to be learned?

Politically speaking, it would be wise before freaking the feck out, to do a little bit of fact-checking. Perhaps some common sense reflection before pressing the Full Metal Jihad button (pun intended). In this heated political climate, it’s always tempting to smash ideological opponents with unbridled joy but if not careful (and I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re from) someone might just end up creating what amounts to a very high profile tempest in a teacup. Or looking like a tool Or a drawer full of tools. Before I forget, blog commenters may want to tone down some of their bigoted blather, as some of the comments on the blogs upstairs are, for lack of a better word, nasty. And that’s about as much political advice as I’m ever going to give, on this blog anyway.

In terms of what all this means for designers, heh, that’s easier. First, this illustrates the very real power of a logo, and why tossing something, anything, on a website isn’t something that should be approached lightly. Second, it’s always advisable to keep the logo above the fold on a website, regardless of how tempting it is to turn the top half into a navigation system worthy of the starship Enterprise bridge. Finally, and this is advice that’s always good, whenever you’re tempted to go Full Metal jihad (pun intended) with bevels, drop shadows and other Photoshop effects, don’t. And if you insist on using them, for the love of all things holy, make sure they’re pointing in the right direction.

Update:

Looks like we were right on this one after all. The Missile Defense Agency’s Richard Lehner has stepped forward and dismisses the controversy thusly:

“It’s ridiculous. It isn’t a new logo to replace the official logo. It’s a logo developed for recruiting materials and for our public website. Also, it was used prior to the 2008 election and it has no link to any political campaign.”

Heh.

Related posts:

1. Missile Defense Agency logo. More tin-foil hattery
2. Another Obama logo. Another Islamic crescent.
3. Logo design schadenfreude. Missile Defense Agency ‘Logogate’ goes mainstream on CNN & FOX

I originally wanted to title this post “Why Websites that Scrape Content are a Pain in the Ass“. Which is probably more accurate, albeit a little salty for a blog title. Because they are. A. Pain. In. The. Ass. As a professional who earns his living selling what amounts to intellectual property, I’m of the opinion that copyright is sacrosanct. For me, you and any other ‘creative’ who creates, well, anything. Logo design, illustration, photography, articles, whatever. Flipped around, I’m not terribly keen on people pinching our, or our client’s stuff, whether it be logos (especially, as if often the case, for submission logo design contest) or, as in the instance we’ll take a look at, a blog post article.

Blogging is all about the love

If you publish a blog, I’m sure you put a helluva lot of love and effort into keeping it fresh. You’re passionate about graphic design, photography, fishing, model trains, politics or whatever your personal obsession happens to be. As the studio blog of The Logo Factory, our humble ramblings are usually about logo design and matters related to the graphic design industry (even if it’s six degrees of separation). Have my special interests too. I’m a pretty vocal critic of spec work, logo design contests and what have you. I try not to be terribly frothing in my rants, attempting (you can judge how successfully) to write my anti-spec articles in an even-keeled manner. Quoting Ross Kimbarovsky (co-founder of Crowdspring, someone that I rarely agree with when it comes to the design profession, debating with quite often) I try to be a “critic” as opposed to a “hater“.

Full Metal Jihads are easy to write. Level headed pieces that remain passionate, not so much. They take time. Sometimes an awful lot of time. They have to be edited several times over, lest I say something that wanders too close to libel. I need to check my facts. Not that I’m complaining – upkeep of this blog is part of my job as creative director of The Logo Factory and something I’m passionate about. I’m not the best writer in the world and articles often descend into meaningless blather, too long to read for everyone but the most interested viewer. On the other hand, there are posts that, while certainly not brilliant or Pulitzer caliber, I’m proud of. The Platitudes of Spec Work for example, probably one of my better articles during which I took great of time, and put in a lot of effort, to discuss a highly controversial topic of the day – advertising agency CP+B doling out one of their client’s logos via a design contest. Won’t rehash here, you can read at the link if interested.

One article. Three blogs. None ours.

Understanding all of this, imagine how thrilled I was to discover that this article had been copied and pasted onto somebody else’s blogs, not once, not twice, but three times. And that if you searched for this article in Google, the website on which the copied version sat outranked my original. And if that wasn’t enough, each of the copied articles hotlinked to two images on our blog, effectively stealing bandwidth and resources from our server. Some dopey amateur? Hardly. This was an A-list art director, head of his city’s Creative Director’s Guild and someone who claimed to have been a design professional for more than a decade. In essence, a competitor (as much as one graphic designer is a competitor against another) was using my article, my images and my server resources, in order to promote his company through search engines. Worse, if you looked for the article via Google, you wouldn’t find our site. You’d find someone elses. The whole idea of our blog is to promote our design studio. Here was another design studio, using my work, to promote themselves. Not cool at all.

Gonna cut the guy some slack and not mention his name. Hell, I’ll even blur out the identifying info in the screengrabs (he removed the copied work once I contacted him so I want to be fair). This isn’t an isolated case, but an issue that we’ve been dealing with for years now. As have a lot of bloggers that I know. I think it’s worthwhile to look at the issue of content scraping (taking copy from another website in order to rank in search engines), both from a content producer, and a content copier’s point of view. Why, when you find that someone’s duplicated your content, you should go after them. And why, if you’re thinking about copying someone’s stuff, you should probably think again.

Copyright applies to blog posts too

Many people, some well-intentioned, others not so much, seem to believe that anything that’s published on the internet is somehow public domain, devoid of copyright protection. Alas, that’s demonstrably not true. If a copyright notice was needed (which it’s not) most blogs (including this one) feature a copyright notice somewhere on the page (look w-a-y down at the bottom. It’s there).

If you didn’t know, copyright means, quite literally, the right to copy. And in most cases, the only person who has the right to copy is the person that wrote the article, designed the blog, took the photograph drew the picture, designed the artwork. Just because a blog article is posted on the internet does not mean it comes with a “please put this article on your blog” or that copyright, which most people have a basic grasp of, doesn’t apply. This isn’t snootiness. Or being uncooperative. Or being some type of elitest who won’t get with the program. Most blog authors, myself included, are perfectly cool with someone taking a few paragraphs (with credit and link, natch). That’s the natural give-and-take of the internet. I’m perfectly fine, quite flattered actually, when people ask my permission to reproduce any of my verbal meanderings. On several occasions I’ve even rewritten the requested article, updating copy with additional or new information. On the other hand, taking an article whole cloth without permission is simply not cool. From the “letter of the law” department, taking an article and putting it on your own blog or website isn’t “stealing” per se. It’s copyright infringement. Whether it’s stealing under the “spirit of the law” is another matter entirely.

The copyright infringing, passive agressive, dating ritual

Confronting someone who’s plagiarized your material is almost a dating ritual. This time was no different. Predictably, he went down the tired-and-true list of excuses that people who get caught pinching other people’s IP go down. “I don’t know how it got there” becomes “someone else [insert employee, girlfriend, boyfriend, some freelance guy that we fired last week] did it“. Which leads to me going down the tired-and-true reasons why they were categorically full of crap. In this particular instance, our blog has this javascript thingy (not really sure how it works) that automatically puts a “read more” text with a link at the bottom of a cut-and-paste.

Nothing cloak-and-dagger, but an attempt to get a back-link when someone posts a quote somewhere else. Sure enough, at the bottom of one of these blogs, there it was. This guy (we’ll call him Sam) hadn’t noticed that the link was there for over five months. Not that I needed ‘proof’ – I had the original – but that bit of text was a slam dunk. Further, when the article was first published, Sam had recommended it through his Twitter account, linking to our site, and the original article. That was easy to find too. That Tweet date was after the publication date of the original article, but before the publication on any of his blogs. Gig is up sparky.

It’s all about the permission

Now that we’ve established the “who owns what and who copied it” part of the relationship, we move on to the “justification” part of this happy little dance. Usually along the lines of “but I credited/will credit you” or “I gave/will give you a link“. That’s all nice and stuff, but links and/or credit aren’t a panacea against copyright. In fact, they’re completely and utterly irrelevant. Copyright is about permission and the right to copy. Links and/or credit are about being cool and hat-tipping the original author, designer or writer after you’ve already obtained permission and that right to copy. Or, you’ve found an interesting article, quoted a few bits and pieces and then linked to the original. Or, as in this case, “I’m a dick that copied your stuff and I’m trying to rationalize my bad behaviour“. A few problems with this. First, the article you wrote to promote your company or website is on someone else’s site and promoting their company or website. A credit, unless there’s some context (ie: “so-and-so is an expert at X, and we recommend you hire him here“) means nothing. Any link that is featured (if it’s on a blog platform will probably have a “no follow” tag, rendering any SEO benefit worthless) will either be too far down the page to be any benefit, or for the readers who do find it, it probably won’t be active. No clicky. No linky.

How copied articles can ruin your search engine rankings

Remember this. No matter how hard people bleat that they copied your material to do you a favor, the simple truth is they nicked your stuff to promote themselves, more than likely through search engines. They’re trying to steal your traffic. And if you wrote that killer article to get eyeballs to your site, they’re trying to steal those eyeballs. They’ve gone to all this effort to get people to their site. They’re hardly going to invite their visitors to go to yours. The trouble is that these people are often using your content on very-high ranking domains like Blogger, WordPress or other “social-media’ sites, and these sites will (as in this case) beat out your site in the search engine game. It’s highly likely that the copied material will come up higher in search results, and you’ll lose a hefty portion of the readers you spent hours creating that article to attract. In the case we’re using as an example, one of the copied versions beat out my original in a search, even when I typed in the somewhat convoluted title. Verbatum.

None of the sites told us who wrote the article (me), or where it came from originally (here). Of course, no-one is going to be using the keywords “Platitudes of Spec” to search for anything, but that’s the point. Even when I was looking specifically for that article, I still wouldn’t have found the original. And it gets worse. While there’s some debate about whether a ‘duplicate content’ Google filter exists, or how draconian it is, it’s quite possible that not only will the copied material beat you in ranking, but Google may remove your page from the search results entirely, the result of a duplicate content penalty. That’s enough of a reason not to ignore people when they pinch your stuff.

Getting material removed. The not-so-nice way.

Once we’ve gotten through this “don’t know how this happened” rite of passage, we move on to the “take it down” part of our courtship. Some suggest that a politely worded e-mail will do the trick. Oddly, people who’ve pinched stuff put up a surprising amount of resistance to this demand, regardless of how politely worded it is. Which is weird in one respect – it’s not their property – while perfectly understandable from another. They pinched your copy in order to get content for search engines. They found your copy through a search engine, via a keyword search that appeals to them. By now, they’ve probably achieved some of the rankings they’re after and aren’t too keen to give it up. Tough titty. They’ll take your material off because if they don’t, you’re going to complain loud. And often. And very publicly. Via the internet, the very place they’re using your content to market themselves. And if your site is ranking well enough to appeal to copy thieves, it’s ranking well enough to draw attention to their nefarious activities. Top illustrator Von Glitschka is a classic example of how this works. Von’s one of the most copied designers I know, and he keeps his Rogue’s Gallery and Twitter feed up to date with people who have absconded with his work. We kinda do the same thing with our Copycats section, but that isn’t quite as current (and awaiting reworking into the new format). I’ve found that “name and shame” works infinitely better than ANY DMCA takedown notice. As long as you use lots of “allegedly” and “looks like” and “could be argued“, you should stay clear of the lawyers’ gunsights. Truth is a remarkably effective antidote to bullshit.

Why all the copying?

Why all the content copying and plagiarism? That’s the easy part of the equation. Blogs are voracious consumers of content. Due to their time-sensitive nature, one of the SEO benefits of writing posts is that they’re indexed at a rapid clip by most search engines. A well written post can skyrocket to the top of the search engine results within minutes.

If the post has a ‘hook’, it can get picked up on Twitter and bounced around the internet for a few hours. Or days. That’s the upside. The downside is that this lift is often temporary, and the blog post will “settle down” through the organic search results as newer, similarly themed content, comes online. Twitter is extremely fleeting, so your killer blog post will be forgotten, just as quickly as it was retweeted by everyone and their brother.

It’s all about the money

After that initial hoorah, It sometimes takes a few weeks for a blog post to get indexed permanently in search engines, so in the meantime we’ll have to launch another post. Which will get a boost and then settle. And so on. Trouble is, as we discussed earlier, writing actual articles, as well as assembling accompanying illustrations takes time. Which equates into money. If you’re writing your own blog posts, that means less time spent with other money-making activities like servicing clients. If you’re paying someone to write your blogs, that equates into money because, well, you’re paying someone to write blogs. More blogs equals more money. Most commercial sites are hesitant to use Google Adwords to finance their blogs – why go to the trouble to get people to a site, only to invite them to click through to another, often for a mere pennies in ad revenue, when the real purpose is to get them to buy something for a whole lot more. One cost-cutting solution? Copy someone else’s material. If it’s from the same general area (graphic design for example) the SEO benefits will work quite nicely. It’s a great plan if it didn’t have one major flaw.

Finding copied stuff on the internet is easy. For now.

See, here’s the point. Finding out who’s honking on your material is a relatively easy thing to do. All it takes is typing a couple of keywords into a Google search bar. There’s even a service, Copyscape, which will troll the internet looking for instances of your prose (doesn’t have to be full pages, Copyscape will find sentences and paragraphs with uncanny accuracy). Even better, Copyscape will allow you to run a few searches for free. Have a go. If you publish a blog, you’ll probably be surprised by what you find.

Content scrapers are getting smarter

Content scrapers are getting wise to anti-plagiarism tactics. There’s tons of job postings on sites like Scriptlance and Getafreelancer requesting copy editors who can “get around Copyscape“. These so-called editors will take relevant blog posts and articles (lifted from other blogs) and rewrite them, word by word, stuffing one keyword after another into the new version. As many of these ‘copy-editors’ understand English as a second language, this rewording often ends up with some strangely mangled results. This isn’t limited to one-off copy editing jobs either. There’s a fairly high-profile logo design company who’ve started their own cottage industry of pinching people’s copy, rewording it, often into almost indecipherable jibberish in order to generate content for their network of ‘shell blogs’. These blogs are set-up to send link love to the Mothership website so whether the reworded content makes sense isn’t really the point. Which is good. Cause it doesn’t.

I found some of our material, pinched from our illustrative logos article, that was a thinly reworded version of the original. Trouble is, whoever was tweaking the original had given up half way through, and a hefty bit of the piece was published on their WordPress splog intact, which enabled me to find it and ask for its removal. And it’s not just our humble shop. I think designers would be amazed as how much copy, and how much of their artwork (particularly logos, lifted from gallery sites like Logopond and Brandstack) are re-purposed as content for blogs who’s sole purpose is to inflate the SEO rankings of an online logo design company, and more recently, their design contest spec site.

But we’ll leave that for another time.

Hotlinking images on your blog? Not a good idea.

Hotlinking to an image (embedding an HTML link that resolves to the image on someone else’s server, as opposed to placing the image on a server you maintain and linking to that) is not a good idea. Two reasons. The first is that it’s not cool in a “can’t we all get along” kind of way. If you hotlink to an image, you’re using up the originating servers’s bandwidth. On a commercial server with pretty high bandwidth limitations, that’s not a big issue. On smaller co-hosted sites who might have bandwidth caps, you’re essentially stealing their bandwidth, and if a lot of people bring up your page, you might just get the original page disabled once their monthly bandwidth allocation has been used up. In a karmic sense, that falls on the ‘not cool’ side of the fence.

Hotlinking images gives someone access to your webpage.

Okay, let’s say you don’t give a shit about using someone else’s resources, karma or any namby-pamby “can’t we all play nice” vibe. Using the same logic as spammers, you’ll do what you can get away with, because you can get away with it. Nyah, nyah. Fair enough. But you shouldn’t hotlink images either. Hotlinking images gives the person who originally uploaded the images to their server, a direct pipeline into your webpage. All they have to do is change the original image on their server, and viola, it changes on yours. And that opens up all sorts of creative avenues. By spending one minute in Fireworks, changing two file names and then updating my orginal ‘Platitudes‘ article, the cat who had pinched my stuff now announced to the world that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the virtual shed. On all three of his blogs.

Juvenile? Perhaps. But that’s the point. By poaching someone’s images, you’ve left yourself open to all sorts of pranks, even if it’s by a cat (me) who should really should start acting his age (guilty as charged). Should the websites that linked to the images placed them on their server and published locally? Not really. See, the image in question is a stock image. I paid for a license to use it on this blog and publishing it on another blog is violating the stock agency’s terms of service.

Taking it legal. How to file a DMCA takedown

Let’s say you’ve run into a really persistent copycat. Won’t take your article down, won’t answer your e-mails, and doesn’t seem to mind that you’ve substituted a rather provocative image on his, or her, webpage. Take it up a notch, with a DMCA takedown, sent straight to Google. Copyscape offers a simple step-by-step approach, starting with, tah-dah, the polite e-mail.

Related posts:

1. Snippets: Rolling Stone logo, Hindu Gods, Twitter copyright angst & crowdsourcing blog content edition
2. The design of this blog is crap. Refocusing our brand & redesigning our blog
3. Should designers blog?

Often times, the submissions to logo design contests aren’t very creative. Case in point…

Sigh. Every time I write about our work getting jacked and entered into a 99designs logo contest, I usually receive some e-mails advising me that I shouldn’t make such a fuss. Just an “isolated incident” I’ve been assured. Ironically, on more than one occasion. Well, here’s another one of those ahm, “isolated incidents”. This coffee lounge logo lifted from our gallery (inset above), rejigged and entered into this contest on 99designs’ website (below). This one is a particularly nasty rework, no doubt created by running the original image through Adobe Illustrator‘s handy-dandy Live Trace. Not terribly well, at that.

While the so-called ‘creative’ (apparently on their first outing) has tried to reverse engineer the word coffee back into the design, they neglected to notice the outline of the exclamation mark from the original. Wonderful. Ripping our stuff isn’t good enough. They have to make it look bad as well? It’s at this point I usually launch into my anti-contest screed. Logo contests are bad for business.. don’t work.. clients and designers get ripped.. not a professional solution. Yaddy. Yadda. Yadda. Alas, I’m just getting over a bout of the flu (no, not swine) so I’m not up to my usual indignation.

Though if this keeps up, I’m going to be sending the good folks at 99designs a bill for consultation and art direction fees. From the amount of links to our website (“this is the kind of logo we’re looking for“) to absolute knock-offs being entered into their contests, it only seems fair.

Related posts:

1. Spec work hackery redux. More of our work copied & entered into 99designs logo design contest
2. More logo design contest nonsense…
3. The Jon Engle vs. Stockart.com story – an anti-spec work parable?

#1 – Forget About Clever Or Original Ideas

Logo design contests aren’t about presenting clever ideas that ‘work’. They’re about presenting overdone and overused logos that the buyer ‘likes’. Accordingly, don’t try to come up with original ideas or clever concepts. Save them for paying customers (if you have any left). You see, any really clever ideas that do fly, will only be poached by other designers, and the ‘buyer’ doesn’t really care who came up with the idea first. By being original and clever, you only run the risk of helping someone else win prize money that’s rightfully yours when they take your idea, throw in some new fonts and put the icon beside the typography, rather than above it. Bottom line – it’s much more profitable to be a ‘poacher’ than a ‘poachee’. Make sure you only copy the basic concept of a potentially winning logo, not the execution of the design itself (so that you don’t fall victim to Tip #7 – Totally Rat Out Your Contest Mates). And if there’s no ideas to poach, and you insist on entering your own clever idea, make sure you wait till the last minute before submitting it into the contest. Remember what I said about ‘poachee’ and ‘poacher’? There’s cash on the line – now’s not the time to start supplying others with your ideas. I’ll say it again…

#2 – Wait Till The Last Minute

People holding contests very rarely select a logo that squares with their original request. Once they’ve been presented with a whole bunch of logos, all of which illustrate why their first idea isn’t any good, they’ll change course dramatically after receiving about 20 – 30 entries. Don’t be one of those unpaid suckers that waste their time helping the ‘buyer’ realize that. Wait till later on, even up to the very last minute. Not only does this technique save you oodles of time over conceptualizing your own ideas – you’ll be able to poach ideas from other folks’ logos – but your designs will be at the top of the first page at contest close. Meanwhile, the poor saps who’ve been slogging it out all along will see their entries buried 4 pages deep. long erased from the buyer’s mind. You the know the way people bid-snipe on eBay. Same sort of idea.

Bonus tip – add a ton of micro-variations of your proposals right at the last minute. Simple color changes. Move text and icon portions around a bit. By entering a lot of variations of your design at the last minute, you’ll bury your competitors logos ‘below the fold’ (good) or even onto a ‘next’ page. (better). See Design Contest Necromancy for more details on this valuable technique.

#3 – Hurry Up. No, REALLY Hurry Up.

If my figures are accurate at all, you run between a 7% and 9% chance of winning ANY logo design contest. Sorry, but that’s it – regardless of how much fun and riches you’re promised. While the tips we’ll discuss here will up your chances significantly, they’ll still be about 87% lower than a real paying gig. So, keep that in mind when you’re creating your new logo submission. This isn’t about design. It certainly isn’t about winning awards. And it isn’t about helping the ‘buyer’ brand their new company. Logo design contests are about winning. And making money. Accordingly, don’t spend too much time on any single submission – it’s just not worth it. The idea probably won’t win, it will be poached by other ‘creatives’, stolen by people trawling the internet looking for ideas to post into logo design contests they’re entering, pinched by logo template sites and it’s probably been right-clicked by the contest holder themselves the minute it was posted. Last but not least – you’ve given a non-exclusive, irrevocable license to the contest site itself (while these ‘licenses’ probably aren’t terribly enforceable, it’s difficult to get your work removed from the contest galleries once it’s up there) so if you’re going to give up a precious design, it’s probably better to give up one that didn’t take too much time.

Spend no longer than 30 minutes on each contest submission. 30 minutes isn’t too much time to give up for the chance of winning $300, and if you do win, you’re getting paid about $230 per hour (once you factor in file prep and what-not). That’s not too bad in the coinage department now, is it? Unfortunately, once you factor in ALL the design contests you have to enter in order to win one, that figure will drop to about $2.75 per hour. We’re still trying to figure out how to get around this one.

#4 – Chatty ‘Buyer’ Will Tell You What They Want. Eventually. Wait Until They Do.

Once ‘buyers’ have posted a ‘creative brief’ for their project, they can’t re-write it, even though they WILL completely change their mind by the time the contest closes. Because the ‘creative brief’ is static, changes to the direction take place in the comment section of any design contest. Only idiots start designing after reading the brief rather than waiting until the ‘buyer’ figures out what they want. Not you. You’re going to wait and see what direction the contest is going, read the buyer’s comments carefully to see how their direction has morphed, and then poach ideas from the high-rated entries at the last minute. Careful though – many designers STILL submit designs long after the contest has begun, without realizing that the direction of the project has changed profoundly in the comment section. Don’t be influenced by their ideas. Pay particular attention to the criticism of other designers’ work. If you wait long enough, the ‘buyer’, in dismissing other competitor’s designs, will tell you what they like, what they don’t, the colors that they like and even their font preference. A mid-contest name change isn’t out of the question either. Let others flesh this out through their unpaid efforts and time. You can spend that valuable time looking for a real job.

Exercise extreme caution if the ‘buyer’ isn’t very active, or not commenting on your competitors’ designs at all. Chances are they have no idea what they want or even what a good design is. They’re the “I’ll know it when I see it” types and winning their contest comes down to blind luck and performing an endless dog-and-pony show with their dozens of revision requests and tweaks. Not very profitable at all. The other possibility is that they’re subbing your work to THEIR clients (usually at a hefty markup, explaining to THEIR clients that they “get what they pay for”). Trouble is, this type can be vague in their comments and are only interested in the designs THEIR client is interested in, NOT interested in helping designers improve their craft.

Bonus tip – look at the comment section real carefully to see if a contest holder is favoring a design early in the festivities. Even though they’ve already picked that design as a winner, they’ll let the contest run out, in the off-chance that they’ll get a better design – I’ve always referred to this as ‘purse shopping’. Don’t waste your time entering designs after it’s become clear that a ‘buyer’ has selected a winner because you won’t change their mind, regardless of how hard you try. Let the other suckers run out the clock, as the ‘buyer’ wants to squeeze every last entry out of every designer participating, just so the ‘buyer’ feels he’s got his money’s worth. Best move on to another competition that you can win. Be careful though. Apparently, ‘buyers’ sometimes pick winning designs very early in the contest and ‘private message’ instructions to the winning designer, as not to ‘tip off’ other ‘creatives’ who’d then stop supplying more designs that have absolutely no chance of winning. The ‘buyer’ wants to get the most ‘bang for their buck’ and aren’t opposed to wasting a lot of people’s time to do so. No way to defend against that I’m afraid (though you can use it to your advantage by talking to the ‘buyer’ off-the-grid). Another trick ‘buyers’ like to do is submit their own designs at contest close (usually under a buddy’s e-mail and Paypal combo) so that they can scoop the ideas presented to them, without paying a dime (other than the percentage that the contest site charges them to run the contest in the first place). Not much you can do about that, but keep it in mind when someone criticizes you for something called ‘ethics’.

#5 – Design Contest Necromancy

If, for some completely irrational reason, you’ve ignored the advice in Tip #2, have entered a logo during the opening hours of a logo contest, and it’s scrolled back 4 pages, we still have a chance of winning that illusive prize money. “How so?” you ask. By performing design contest necromancy. Simply take your earlier entry, perform a few perfunctionary changes and enter it again. Just before the contest ends. As you’ve already entered an earlier design that’s very close to this one, it wouldn’t hurt if you added a nice little note in the comments section to explain it’s re-appearance. Always start off the note with a personal touch

“Mr/Ms {Contest Holder}, I was thinking more about your {subject of logo] business and how you had mentioned {take some contest holder quote from the brief or other comments}. Well, I thought this revision of my earlier attempt was better because [add some rationale for the minute changes]“.

That will boost your design to the top of the contest page, and your comment will be at the top of the comments section. Keep this in mind too – contest holders are usually given a week or so after the contest to choose a winner. Shouldn’t your design and comments be the first thing they see when they log in? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

#6 – Use Lots Of Colors. Bright Ones Too. Lots Of Blends Help.

I realize that using lots of colors in a logo is problematic. As is using blends, gradients and even the Illustrator transparency feature. Trouble is, logos with PANTONE or CMYK colors don’t ‘pop’ on a webpage, and you submissions tend to look washed-out compared to other entries. So go ahead – color ‘em up. Use the RGB palette. Preferably web safe colors too. They’re much brighter and translates into a more vibrant image on a design contest gallery. And while gradients are hell in many applications, this isn’t your problem. ‘Buyers’ love gradients – has that 3D look – and as they’ve not been coached on what is, or isn’t, a decent logo setup, your protests about RGB colors not printing will be ignored. Or deleted (we’ll use that to our advantage in a minute). This is all about what the buyer ‘likes’ to look at, not what’s important for future use. If you’re feeling particularly competitive toss in drop shadows, bevels, lens flares. They like that. Let the other designers gripe about how your logos won’t print. If they bad-mouth you publicly in the comments section, PM the site owners. They don’t like quarrels going on in the open – looks bad on the ‘community’ – and they’ll remove the pest’s comment forthwith. Maybe even ban them completely. And you know what that means – less competition for you. One down. 14,357 to go.

#7 – Totally Rat Out Your Contest Mates

While poaching ideas will certainly work in your favor, there’s absolutely no reason why you should let people competing against you have a similar advantage. Accordingly, the minute you see a copied design – rat out your contest mate. This serves two functions. 1) It removes unnecessary competition and 2) it keeps the owners of the design contest site too busy trying to figure out which logo was first to notice the other prize-winning tactics you’re employing. Don’t overdo it though – you’ll get a reputation as a ‘rabble rouser’ – about a one complaint per four contest ratio is pretty cool. Don’t complain openly in the contest comment thread (these get deleted very quickly and are often not acted upon) but through the website private messaging system (unless you’re going to be passive-aggressive, something we’ll cover in a minute). Course, if you have friends on the system, or sock-puppet accounts, it’s better if complaints come from them. Complaints are a lot more credible if they come from someone NOT involved in the design contest you’re complaining about. Looks like they’re looking after ‘the community’ rather than for personal gain. Even if it’s close call, go ahead. Rat away. This is all about winning cash – and you don’t win any cash if you play nice. Get your competitor’s submissions withdrawn any way you can.

Yet another bonus tip. If a logo looks like it’s a stock art illustration, it probably is. Don’t wait for the client to realize this (they won’t). Don’t wait for the site owners to find out (they won’t). Only by searching for these images yourself will you be able to find out if the artwork’s been pinched from someone else. Use Google image search and key words that are related to the artwork you think’s been nicked. Drill down in the results too. People using Google image search to find related artwork to borrow, usually don’t pinch stuff from the first few pages of search engine results (though you might be surprised). They figure lifting something from page 5 is deep enough in search engine listings to keep them from being found out. Use the built in search engines on stock artwork sites. If you find the artwork came from istock, DON’T rat out your competitor directly. FInd out who created the artwork originally and contact them with an e-mail. Something like this “I noticed that your great artwork was being entered into a contest here [supply link]. I found you through istock and love your work”. They’ll tear off a ‘take my artwork off your site’ e-mail faster than snot, and you won’t be looked upon by the contest site as a ‘rabble-rouser’. Best use a sock-puppet lest the original designer tells the contest site that you told them. End result – one competitor down and you’re not even connected to the complaint.

#8 – Make Sure Your Entry Has Flourescent Frame Or Border

This simple technique will help grab the ‘buyer’s’ attention. The dozens of designs entered into their contests are all previewed in 2″ thumbnails. This is so that the ‘buyer’ thinks they’re getting lots of stuff. Which is cool and all, but it doesn’t help you get noticed. Truth to tell, all those hundreds of entries start to look the same after a while, and unless the ‘buyer’ zooms in on the image, you run the very real risk of being lost in the design cacophony. Here’s a trick – place a colored border around your submission. Make it small enough that it doesn’t interfere with the design submission itself, but just thick enough to make your submissions stand out when presented with 24 others. Almost like a ‘look at me’ border. Make it bright. Hot pink. Fluorescent green. Bonus tip, the thumbnail previews are square, so make sure your submission image is square too (helps avoid your lovely day-glow border being cut off when reduced in size). Use the contest site submission template if you can – images placed inside those crop marks scale perfectly.

#9 – Make Sure Your Web Address Is On Every Entry

You’ll be able to do this for a while, at least until the design contest owners tell you to stop. Put your web address on every single submission you make. Don’t just slap in on, make it look nice. Not too big or overbearing. Simple font too. You can work it into the frame we just talked about. You’ve been told not to worry about getting paid, and that contest sites are all about exposure. Get. The. Exposure. What’s also cool is that contest holders will try and contact you ‘off the grid’ – ie: directly and through your website (some may try to contact you through private messaging on the contest site itself. Trouble is, many won’t, fearing their private conversations aren’t so private, which by the way, they probably aren’t). They’ll probably ask you to design their logo cheaper than what the contest site is asking. Go for it. Sure, you may take a little cut in the overall price, but this way you’re positively guaranteed to win. In order to look legit, the ‘buyer’ will pick one of your submissions at contest close and you can do a little extra work – say stationery design – to make up the difference. Or, they’ll have a pal set up a ‘creative’ account, submit some bogus logos, and the ‘buyer’ will pick that design while they work with you “off the grid”. Always keep this in mind – design contests are NOT about design. It’s about winning stuff if you’re a designer. And getting “more stuff for less” if you’re a buyer. Any tactic that meets that basic philosophy is fair game.

If any of this is against the contract you clicked before joining the community worry not, the chances of any of these contracts standing up in court are pretty close to zero. While I’m not a lawyer (that’s known as a legal disclaimer) I’d think that anti-competitive clauses and unfair labor practices will trump every time. Besides, there isn’t a contest site on the planet who’s going to spend $1000s of dollars to chase you half way around the world to recoup a few hundred dollars. They also don’t want to see their contracts – and business model itself – challenged in a real court so they’ll just leave you alone. They might ban you from their website, but if you’ve got other user names and proxy IP#s ready to go, you’ll be submitting more logos in no time at all. It’s all good.

#10 – The Minute A Logo Isn’t Doing Well, Withdraw It

This is very important. If the contest ‘buyer’ has ignored your logo design submission, while commenting and ranking the entries all around yours, get it out of there. Fast. If it’s any good at all, someone will ‘refine’ your entry and submit it later on (using these tips perhaps). If it’s a pretty specific design – a horse ranch lets say – you need to store that design until another horse-themed design contest comes along, and you can enter it into that one. If it’s a pretty generic icon or symbol, it’s of particular value – it can be entered into whatever the hell contest you want. If it’s a letter based logo – the letter A let’s suppose – it can be added into any contest for a company that’s name begins with the letter ‘A’. No point in leaving your spiffy unloved logo in the contest where more eyes will see it (and rat you out if you try to submit to multiple contests) or to give ideas to other ‘creatives’ looking to build their library of pre-fab logos. The faster you withdraw unselected or low-ranked logos the better.

#11 – The Contracts You’ve Clicked On Mean Nothing. Enter Many. Enter Often

Most of these sites will tell you that by uploading an image tor their forum, you’ve given them some sort of license to your copyright. Nonsense. Highly unlikely that any of these ‘contracts’ will stand up in court. See, while I’m not a lawyer (legal disclaimer and all that), you’re not getting any ‘consideration’ (entering your logo into their contest probably doesn’t mean squat) and as you’re from a different jurisdiction, it won’t matter even if they did. Accordingly, when you get a decent design, swap out the text and enter it into as many contests as you can. Probably not on the same site (though that is possible if you ‘sake and bake’ a little) but across different ones. If you design a logo (with poached concept, natch) for an accounting firm, find a whole bunch of accounting company logo contests and enter them too. You might think about changing the colors or layout slightly so that the casual observer won’t notice. If you win multiple contests with the same logo, don’t fret. Most of the companies using the winning design will be out of business (if they ever get off the launch pad at all) and the chances that you get found out are almost nil. Also, the contracts that these contest sites use are probably unenforceable, and it’s highly unlikely the pissed off buyer will go after you. They’ll go after the contest site instead – they’re the ones that took the money originally, in order to perform a service (most clients don’t realize that the contest site claims they have no legal responsibility) and it’s the site owner’s name that’s on their credit card bill, not yours. The credit card companies are having a real hard time figuring out if their business model is even legit, so they’ll rule on the side of their customer and charge back the card. Any money you won is safe. Though it might help if you…

#12 – Clear Out Your Pay Pal Account

When you win a design contest, clear out your Pay Pal account as soon as you can. No explanation needed really.

#13 – Create Several Accounts

When you’ve created an account on any logo design contest site, go ahead and create a few more. You’re going to need some sock puppet accounts – to rabble rouse – and a few ‘sleeper’ usernames – in case you get booted off the system for being naughty. If you don’t know what a Proxy IP is, now’s the time to learn, because most contest sites also ban IP#s as well. If one of your active accounts gets banned, you’re going to need another Paypal account too (or at least one that allows you to use multiple e-mail addresses to login under).

#14 – Be Passive Aggressive

If you have to contact the site owners about anything, be ‘passive aggressive’. Don’t appear too knowledgeable (they get hundreds of daft questions a day and a rational e-mail will get their attention – remember, we don’t want their attention). If you’re going to rat someone out about copied designs, always start with “I don’t know if it’s me but [entry] looks exactly like [link to original work]. I could be wrong as I’m new to this”. Always say you’re “new to this”.

If you’re ratting out someone for pinching ideas, and the site owners have been less than responsive, take it to the comment section. This requires a great deal of care, but becoming passive-aggressive should get your comment to the ‘buyer’s’ eyes before its nuked by moderators. Rather than ranting “you totally ripped off my design asshole” (not good), try the passive aggressive approach “I liked the way you incorporated my idea into yours, though I wonder if it’s not a little close” (better) or “your logo [link] is a nice homage to [established company logo] – I think the ‘buyer’ should end the contest now and award you the prize” (best). The purpose here is to establish lack of trust in everyone BUT you in the originality department. Don’t overdo it – two or three passive agressive comments per contest is about right.

#15 – Beg, Borrow Or Steal

The internet is awash in logos, clip art and illustrations. Nuff said? Nuff said.

#16 – Claim Ignorance. On Everything.

Years ago I became a certified diver. Eager to learn more, I then became a Divemaster. Used to flash my Divemaster before boarding a boat, so proud I was of my new credentials. Big mistake. If people think you’re qualified, they hold you to to a higher standard. You’re expected to know your shit. In my diving example, I was expected to help out the dive charter and any beginner divers. Being a Divemaster actually ruined my dive. I quickly learned to flash my basic certification card and act stupid, people left me alone, and I could get back to my original goal – enjoying a leisurely hour underwater. Acting like a novice actually helps me enjoy scuba diving. People expect less. The same principle holds true for logo design contests. The fact that people who aren’t really designers, and don’t have any real professional experience make up the majority of people participating in design contests works to your favor. Nobody expects someone who’s submitting logos as part of a design contest to actually know anything about design, logos or the intracies of intellectual property. Whatever you do, don’t boast how you’re a professional in your profile. It’s better if you write something about your dog, or your cat. Buyer’s like that sort of stuff – it humanizes you. Buyers are already a little squishy about the vibe of exploiting unpaid labor, but they won’t mind exploiting you if they think you’re a ‘snooty’ design professional bragging about their qualifications. Buyer’s positively hate professional designers – and why shouldn’t they? People who own design contest sites spend all day twittering and blogging about how pro designers are ‘elitests’ and ‘gatekeepers’ trying to keep the ‘little guy’ down. So be one of the ‘little guys’. Design contest sites also claim that design experience and qualifications no longer matter (level playing field and all that) so boasting about your design degrees and years of studio work will only be frowned upon by ‘buyers’ who’ll view you as a ‘snooty’ interloper who deserves to be put in your place for not “adapting to the new reality”. On the other hand, you might get a ‘buyer’ in the guilt department if your profile paints a sympathetic character who’s struggling to get by, and who also happened to own a couple of puppies. Puppies with epilepsy is even better. Shilling as a design dork also allows you to claim ignorance on everything you do. “I’m a housewife with 3 epileptic puppies, but I’m really sorry that I messed up your logo” goes a lot further than bragging “I have a BA in graphic arts, 30 years agency level and I set your damn files up the right way!”. Speaking of setting up files…

#17 – Don’t Worry About File Setup. Nobody Cares Anyway.

If entering logo design contests is going to be profitable at all, you’ll have to cut the amount of time spent to the quick. That includes time spent after your win (oddly, you’re expected to perform revisions to your logo after it’s won a contest – how co-operative you want to be is a personal call). But let’s think technical set-up. When inexperienced designers create logos in illustrator, they tend to go vector happy (see Bad Designer – No Donut for more). Designers who know what they’re doing spend a lot of time cleaning up messy vectors and closing shapes and polygons. Why bother? If you win a contest send the ‘buyer’ what you have. Don’t worry – nobody actually checks files at these logo contest sites (most of the people behind the scenes wouldn’t have a clue if they did). Chances are the ‘buyer’ doesn’t have illustrator, and can only view .JPGs and other bitmap based graphics. They’ll have to take your word that the files are set up correctly and it won’t be until the artwork hits print that they’ll find out if there’s any problem. There’s about a 50/50 chance that everything will work out (a lot higher than your chances of actually winning a contest) and even if there are problems, you can always revert to Tip #12 and claim complete ignorance. Remember, people are marketing these sites as ‘leveling of the playing field’ – how much technical knowledge can a housewife from Peoria be expected to have? And don’t forget to mention the puppies…

#18 – Send Me A Cut

Accordingly to people who are pro design contests, design firms and designers have to learn “how to evolve”, “adapt” and stop “defending the status quo” about getting paid and stuff. Apparently that translates to professional designers doing something other than designing professionally. With these helpful suggestions in mind, this is my new “evolving” position. Send me a cut of your contest winnings. Or I’m going to tell your competitors how they can beat you.

Related posts:

1. The Design Contest Factory
2. Spec work hackery redux. More of our work copied & entered into 99designs logo design contest
3. Creative crowdsourcing & design contests. Hype or reality? Contest holder & buyer’s edition