OK, you are starting your business and you are short on budget but you need to brand your business through a well-designed logo. So why not do it yourself which is cost-effective as well as creative enough for you business but if you see closely and ponder wisely do-it-yourself has its own advantages as one can’t be skillful in everything just like a doctor can’t fix your car, similarly everyone can’t design

One can get various free downloadable design software or online websites that can help create logos through the usage of clipart present in their library. It helps one become a designer without any training and learning but why is it not highly recommended among the community, well, the answer is its obscurity and redundancy.

Trendy Images But No Timeless Logo Art

These software and website tools do have a list of trendy stock images that can help you design a creative logo but these logos may not turn out to be timeless. To make a unique and enduring logo, you need to ignore the latest design gimmicks and focus on corporate swoosh but these free of charge solutions do not provide you such options and you are stuck with quite a limited but new design trends which are not very applicable and usable for businesses.

No personalization

Logo or corporate identity must be unique for every company so the target audience can identify the business from other competitors and may better connect themselves with the brand. But when you se free online solutions there is a high chance that a similar logo is used by multiple companies within same industries which will make it impossible for companies using logo softwares to establish unique business identities.
Copyright Issues:
While using these softwares, the so-called designer is using clipart images that can result into creating a design similar to others. One can change the color and layout but image remains the same, which can cause a dispute among the companies using the same image, and if not this then it may create confusion for the consumers which is worse.

Lack of professional expertise:

These softwares will fail to give the user any expert advice. They may be developed and run by professional designers but the will certainly be not able to understand your business all by themselves nor can they give you an idea for appropriate design elements suitable for your industry, so designing is heavily relied on your understanding and knowledge.

Business owners must realize that creativity is a process to generate ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems and this can’t be achieved through the usage of free tools available in the market. So it is better if you don’t do it and leave it on designers the same way you leave your dental work to the dentist.

You went to a hair salon for a haircut but now you do not find any reason to pay the barber since you did not like his work. Is this possible…well, the answer is simple, plain NO

So why do people consider it acceptable for the design industry. It is because we, the designers do not question this practice. But where do we find such activities taking place…well there are many online sites holding design contests and crowdsourcing.

We may even invite it by not questioning this attitude or acting against it. But today, I want to focus on something even more ineffective and misguided that is threatening our industry: crowdsourcing.

Hailed as a masterful way to get things done cheaply and easily for businesses, crowdsourcing is effectively digital outsourcing on steroids – a sure-fire method for getting work done on the cheap, while still maintaining control over the end product and project quality. Projects are issued, typically on one of several online marketplaces, and designers put up their spec works in order to compete with each other. The more  the entries you make, the greater are the chances of winning.

But why do the professional designers are so against it. It is because spec work, or speculative work, is the process of doing design work with no contract or any guarantee of getting paid – If the client likes it, he’ll use it and pay you for it which is relatively unfair.

Crowdsourcing has become the hype in the art world; be it designing or photography but it has raised many controversies among the designers, the clients and the forums.

The yet new but popular outsourcing method has its own downsides:

• In this business, neither the designers give their best nor do the businesses receive some great art pieces.
• Usually the business won’t be able to find expert designers as they try their utmost to avoid these forums. Therefore, the business stuck with amateur designers who may not be successful in providing creative solutions.
• The professional designers do not take part in such forums as designing becomes merely a decoration piece rather than a problem solving or branding object.
• There is limited role that merit plays at this marketplace and the winner is selected based on personal appeal rather than on fulfilling the design criteria.
• Wastage of time-as businesses have to spend days to pick up a suitable design from the piles of available options.
• Clients risk compromised quality. Little time, energy and thought can go into speculative work, which precludes the most important element of most design projects-the research, thoughtful consideration of alternatives, and development and testing of prototype designs.
• Not personalized/customized work as there won’t be a background research. They won’t look up at your business plan, your company mission, your background, your way of dealing with people, and many other aspects your brand.
• 30%-35% participants withdraw so the forum or crowdsourcing platform fails to deliver what it had promised
• Since there are many amateur designers on these websites so there is probability that these designer might copy ideas from somewhere else so you may end up with identical designs.
• Lastly, the business will fail to find the same designer when posting new projects so it will be difficult to get the collaterals designed that our consistent with the previous project.

Even after several pitfalls, the business model has succeeded for its cost-efficiency and variety of options. Cherished and loved for accumulating a large number of designers who will contest to get best designs in the shortest time and that also at the lowest prices. But even then do you think is saving money through crowdsourcing worth the experience? Should a business invest large amount of time and energy to get a usually mediocre design for his brand?

Where is my logo, dude? I haven’t seen any designs from you in quite some time….I’m not pleased with it let’s start over again….I want my logo NOW, NOW, NOW….aren’t these few of the verbal rant that we as designers go through just after a few days of receiving the creative brief.

Invariably we, the designers, are approached by impatient clients who keep bugging us for their logo as if they have ordered a pizza in a restaurant. They think concept building and designing is as easy as a pie and it can be done instantly once you sit with a paper and pencil.

But what these impatient clients need to understand is, it takes time to produce a logo that they can use for the next 20 years. While I understand their impatience could be because either they had a bad experience with a previous designer who ditched them on the last moment or maybe, for them all that matters is to get their logo designed as quickly as possible and quality doesn’t stand a point.

The logo is the introduction of the company, so it must be well designed to say your core message without literally speaking. A picture says a thousand words but it does take time to find that perfect angle, the perfect shot and so does designing a logo, as you have to focus on the little delicate intricacies.

Well, things are a little different when you hire a professional designer. Logo design is creative and conceptual vocation that needs a lot of time. It needs rigorous thinking and massive research.  Therefore, it is stupidity to think that you can get a customized logo design with a snap of fingers.

Seriously, when I come across something like “Get your logo design in just 24 hours”, I totally doubt the service provider’s sanity. It is true that the logo needs to be simple but it has to be effective enough to encapsulate the message of your company as well as grab the attention of the audience.

Being done with every minute details of designing in just a day is not humanly possible until and unless you have found out a run on the mill logo designer who has nothing to do with creativity and/or customization of designs.

Does it take a week or a month to come up with a brilliant logo or it’s just that you need epiphany…it is a big question mark as there are so many factors affecting that it’s literally impossible to say something definite. A logo can take anywhere from a few hours to several months to be fully developed depending on the number of areas that you need to work.

At times, the client is very precise and clear about the logo design; the color, the image and the font. He gives you all the background knowledge and design idea that he wants the designer to work on but there are clients who would just push you in the woods and let you find the way out.

The process slows down even more when the designer has to deal with a committee/team rather than a person. It takes a lot of convincing and let everybody like your design at the same time. The frequency of revision and tweaking doubles and the client’s satisfaction becomes a nightmare.

Then there are clients who get boggled when seeing quite a number of logo design concepts. So make things easier for yourself and give a limited number of options….say only three. The more ideas you give, the more difficult it becomes for them to choose and decide.

If you need a corporate identity that is timeless and can be used for next 20 years, you can or should afford to wait for at least 3 weeks.

I’ve decided to dedicate this post to actually investigate how much time we should spare on the logo design process. I would love to have your educated opinions as well.