99Designs = 99 Problems
A logo for a few hundred bucks? Yasssss please.
It might sound tempting. 99Designs and similar crowd-sourced design services sound pretty great when you’re a new or growing business on a budget. Some of these platforms promise no limit on the number of designs and boast millions of logos designed. Money back guarantee. Thousands of designers. Yada yada.
The more the better right?
At points in my career, there have been times when I’ve found myself in the situation – either independently or as part of a team – when dozens or more options are on the table… and nothing is working.
Most experienced creatives have been in a situation at some point where the client has seen round after round of ideas and nothing feels right. Nothing sticks. No design is just right after hours and hours of work.
The best designers have experienced this creep. No one is immune. So what’s going on? Over time, I’ve learned exactly what causes this phenomena.
Spiraling is a clear indicator of a need to center and refocus on the goals and direction of the project.
When nothing is landing, it is because the design or logo has become disassociated (in the minds of the decision-makers) from the essence and strategy (of the brand’s intent).
To stop the spiral we take a step back and return to the foundational work, reaffirm our objectives. With all that most crucial information top-of-mind, a fresh look at options that ladder back to these ideas will identify the one standout that works.
And guess what? The winner is often not that revolutionary. The real magic is that is just fits. It appropriately embodies the brand differentiators and reinforces the pillars that make it special, memorable, and shareable.
So think again before you jump in to the 99 design game and expect to find the identity that will carry your business to your goal. The old adage is true: you get what you pay for.
When you pay by an hourly rate model, you get hourly work.
Hourly employees don’t know you from Adam and are conditioned to pump out volume. Quantity over quality. This business model works because most brand owners don’t understand how closely linked identity and aesthetic appearance actually are to the purpose, positioning, and true essence of the brand.
In advertising a common idea is that the visual (image) should support the headline and the headline must explain the visual. It’s a symbiotic relationship that when done right, results in the optimum reaction to that ad.
Quick fix design services necessarily exist in a vaccuum without consideration of a larger strategy or goal.
The 99 designs model is a limited view based on a narrow or no understanding of the brand that often leads to an end product that might look fine, but provides little overall value or contribution to the goals of the business.
Even if you love the logo, how could it possibly relate perfectly to your brand when the person creating it has spent zero time with you or in understanding your business? It could be a great looking mark, but still be all wrong, simply because it doesn’t correlate or properly represent what’s essentially important about your brand.
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In our intensive process, we do a full brand development with logo at the end! This way, the identity embodies the full brand ethos, and all connects back to the foundational elements of the brand that make it unique, memorable, and sharable– all the things that increase marketability and profit.
You’re hiring us as the experts. We don’t expect you to provide the expertise when it comes to our part – in fact, asking you to contribute would effectively reduce the value of what we’re providing and why would we want to do that? Our whole point is to deliver the absolute best value for your investment of time and money, so let’s stop the madness of asking clients to share in the work they’ve hired us to do.
