I am intrigued to know if you have moved forward with the logo that was accepted through the contest or if the contest was only a mechanism to play out your theories. If was a model to test out your thoughts. I think it would be a great exercise and case study to share the logos submitted and your process and rationale as to choosing and moving forward.

I agree very much with parts of argument about crowdsourcing design but it is also very shallow in other parts as I bet you would agree.

It is such an interesting dialogue I would love to hear your guys continued thoughts on this process as you moved forward with the work you had done. Because you paint a rather rational picture for why BBH and their ilk are irrelevant.

Interesting.

The future top airplane pilots and doctors are out there willing to work for less too. Why wouldn’t we trust them to fly us or operate on us? Lack of experience.

Professionals can fail, but with amateurs, the risk increases.
For someone who has real responsibility for a projects success who needs to commissionin subjective creative work, an either-or proposition (either super expensive or free,) may not be best. There’s a third way. (And as steve points out, a clear brief is key.)

If we wanted value but really care about results too, our best bet would be to find a freelancer who has worked at the pricey firms on fortune 100 accounts, done grad school, won major industry awards and been in business on their own a few years.

Why would a person like this be cheaper? Well, freelancers (like me) have less overhead thats reflected in our prices. No massive offices, BMW, annual trip to Cannes, eames chairs, blackberry/iphone or large staff. Just me, my gear and my wife in our small apartment.

Big agencies need to feed themselves and so can at times, accept big projects with shaky strategic underpinnings. Like Budweiser’s $50million failed TV network Seth Godin writes about.
I heard Kraft is trying to make their own facebook. Will anyone care? Doubt it. Will their agency turn down the work? Don’t think so.

One of my clients was low on cash but has a solid business that’s growing. He needed a logo. So we negotiated some cash and some shares in his company for my payment. So I share the risk too.
Worked out well.

All the best, bbh. respect.

Pay for expensive design with the money our startup doesn’t have?

I want you to know that I’ve submitted your crowdsourced YOUINTERN logo to one of a number of design message boards. And i will probably be looking at submitting it to some non-design boards as well.

When I get enough comments, I’ll let you know the consensus as to whether your logo is good for you.

-roli

I used Crowdspring to source the new YouIntern logo and we found it to be an overwhelming success. The designers were eager to tackle our brief, willing to consider our feedback despite knowing their design may not be chosen, and the website interface was very simple and clean.

I recommend it highly for small businesses looking for a variety of design submissions with a small budget.

The objections of those in the design community to “working on spec” ought to be heard, but I question whether their cries need to be heeded. I understand the integrity of their work, but design is intangible, impossible to quantify, and evaluation lacks standards.

As such, each party wants the other to take on the majority share of risk. Designers want their clients to pay retainer fees or higher prices because they don’t want to work on spec, on principal.

Businesses would prefer crowdsourcing their work because it enables them to keep costs low.

Base as it may seem, I think that the party cutting the check deserves to rule this debate. It’s their money, and they can spend it as they want. Ad agencies have been forced to adapt or die, as have newspapers. Designers might be next in line.

We need look no further than this winter’s Tropicana/Arnell debacle to see that paying professional designers can lead to disaster and a flattened wallet.