The problem with design contests
Last year I met a guy through my business networking group who competed in logo design contests. I had heard of these online contests before, but he was the first person I met who participated in them. Let’s call him Linus for the sake of simplicity and privacy. Linus is a real nice guy and a hard worker. For his main profession he uses a lot of vector programs, and in his spare time likes to compete for logo prizes. To my knowledge he has never won a contest.
He bragged to me about how he went about submitting logos. He said that he “threw some stuff up there” and pretty soon the other “designers” were copying him. So he added an element and “threw it up there” and soon, once again, other people were emulating his work.
It was then that I told him logos weren’t meant to be thrown together. It’s a huge fallacy that because effective logos look simple, they are simple. Wrong-o. It’s not about throwing something together. It’s about coming up with a good design that a client will like, and one which will be effective. I’m mulling over and conceptualizing a couple logos as I type this. It’s not an exact science or something that can be rushed.
What happens when you’re working on speculation? It’s a gamble. Why put a lot of time into a design if there’s only a slight chance you’re going to get paid? What results from design contests is minimal effort. And design is not about minimal effort.
Call me a snob, but I think a design should be thought out, simmered, and cooked to perfection, not thrown together and stored under a heating lamp. It’s the difference between a instant cake, and one baked from scratch.
Speculative work, done by “aspiring” designers, or who are underage, have no reason to invest the time into researching who they are designing for, the industry that client is in, or the best way to go about executing the design. They just “throw up” a graphic that they think will win. Just because people have some fancy software, doesn’t make them a designer.
To find a real logo designer, find one who works on logos in their spare time for practice, not for contests, working to better their skills. There are many talented logo designers over at Logo Pond.