You have alternatives when purchasing a logo for your business.
If you’re comfortable picking from several concept designs, you could work with a local designer or work remotely with a designer like Graham Smith (imjustcreative), an accomplished freelance logo and identity designer based in the United Kingdom.
You could crowdsource your logo design project on crowdSPRING to our community of 66,000+ designers and writers, work with several dozen designers at one time during your project, and choose your favorite logo design from an average of more than 110 concepts.
You could buy a logo template for a few dollars and add your business name. Or you could buy a “ready-made” logo for $99 (or cheaper) at an online “logo store” and have them add your business name.
Here’s why you should RUN from $99 logo stores: generic ready-made logos sold by logo stores are purchased by multiple other businesses (this is also one reason your should avoid buying logo designs with generic design elements).
Why should you care?
Here’s why: Generic $99 ready-made logos bought by multiple buyers expose you to legal and business risks and are ultimately, worthless.
Trademark law prevents businesses from operating under names – or using logos – that are likely to be mistaken for the name or logo of an existing competitor. For example, here’s how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines a trademark:
any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.
A service mark is similar to a trademark – but it’s used to distinguish the services of one provider from services provided by others (and to indicate the source of the services).
Some people assume that if a logo is protected by copyright law, it is also protected under trademark law. This is untrue. A logo might be protected by copyright law, but is not protected by trademark law unless it is actually used in commerce. This is because trademark rights arise only through use of the logo in interstate or international commerce (such as when you offer items for sale and incorporate the logo in your marketing materials or on your products). For a brief primer on copyright law, I recommend you read Small Business Legal Issues: Copyright Basics.
A few days ago, crowdSPRING co-founder Mike Samson sat down with Bob Garfield, host of NPR’s On the Media show (and columnist for Advertising Age), to talk about crowdSPRING, our community, and our marketplace – for small businesses, entrepreneurs and startups – offering crowdsourced logo design and other custom graphic design, web design, industrial design and writing services.
Bob Garfield was introduced to crowdSPRING when he crowdsourced the cover for his recently published book about the media industry – The Chaos Scenario.
The audio of the interview – which has aired on NPR over the past few days – follows and a text transcript is below. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment to this post.
The original transcript of the interview is available at this link and is also republished below:
BOB GARFIELD: When I wrote my most recent book about the chaos created by the digital revolution, I, of course, needed a cover. In the spirit of my subject matter, I crowdsourced the project through an online site called crowdSPRING.com. More than a hundred designers from around the world took on the project, and the winner got 500 dollars, plus the glory of illustrating The Chaos Scenario.
Everybody was happy – everybody, that is, but the hundred-some freelance designers who labored on spec, working for nothing, and the established designers who never got to bid on the job at any price.
In my book, I expressed qualms about participating in this corner of the digital economy. Was I putting people out of work and exploiting labor, or was I giving an opportunity to people who had been shut out of the market by an entrenched establishment? I chose to emphasize the positive and to pocket my savings.
But now, crowdSPRING is hitting close to my home, outsourcing writing projects under pretty much the same model. And suddenly the democracy of the Internet doesn’t seem all that attractive.
Michael Samson is the cofounder of crowdSPRING.com, and he joins me now. Hey, Mike, welcome to the show.
Finding a great logo design for your business is an important part of creating your brand identity. You want to have a logo design that is simple, memorable, and a good representation of what you do. Many people, in an effort to appear modern, choose a current design trend for their logo. One risk when following trends is that your logo could quickly get lost in a sea of similar logos out there on the web and in print. Trendy logos can also quickly become outdated.
We created this guide to help buyers recognize design elements that are overused in logo design. From swooshy people, to “green” icons, to geometric shapes – there are many graphics that are seen in one form or another everywhere you look. The challenge is to get a great logo that will help your company stand out from the crowd rather than getting lost in the crowd. The key to success is knowing your company, and communicating with designers to find just the right look, while avoiding the overdone trends shown below.
Swooshy People
People are drawn to these icons because they promote a feeling of joy, hope, and cooperation. The problem is they have been used so much that their impact is no longer what it was when they first hit the scene a few short years ago.
The swooshy person can be used creatively, but some of the most overused versions are pictured below.
Geometric People
Geometric people start out as geometric shapes in a triangle, circle, or clover. From there, round circles are added to represent the heads. They can appear in any mix of colors, as well as black and white, and with any mix of gradients or 3-D effects. They are often used to convey cooperation or community.
“I’m In Logo Love” is a new series on the crowdSPRING blog. Periodically, we’ll pick a logo we’d like to take home from a bar and tell you why. And if you think it’s a bit strange to have a crush on a cleverly designed logo, get in line – my mom has already lectured me on this topic. Today, we’ll look at the logo for the Big Ten Conference.
The Big Ten is an athletic conference that is currently made up of eleven (used to be 10) colleges located mainly in the Midwestern United States.
Background on the Big Ten:
In 1895, the oldest Division 1 athletic conference was established. They called it the Big 10. For almost 100 years, the Big Ten was comprised of 10 schools. Sometimes the schools would change… but never the number. Until 1990. That year, the council of presidents voted to admit Pennsylvania State University. Here’s the latest bit of news – they are about to add one more school. The University of Nebraska was approved to join the conference last month.
The logo shows in a simple, clever way that the Big Ten is actually 11. Its design uses negative space very well. The bold, blocky font has a college feel to it, and the 11 looks like it came right off a sports jersey. The sample posted above is in a circle, (which looks great) but the simplicity of the font-based design makes it flexible enough to work on just about any background. This logo is hot. It’s a shame that it will soon be obsolete.
The big question is – what will the NEW version look like now that they are going to be the Big Ten with 12 schools? The designer of the current logo, Al Grivetti, is hoping to have a hand in the new design as well. Here is an interview with him about the logo.
What do you think? Do you agree this is a clever design? Can you think of how to successfully change the design to reflect 12 schools?
It’s been over a year since I last updated the community on our efforts to build a world-class customer service organization. We are committed to providing great support and doing it in a timely, polite, and efficient manner. Since we launched in May of 2008 we have provided customer service via our online Help Center, our help desk software via the Contact Us form available anywhere on the site (word to our friends at Zendesk!), through Private Messaging, and more recently over the phone (albeit in a limited fashion). To date we have received over 47,000 requests through the site along with thousands more PMs, emails, and calls! Sometimes the folks are confused, sometimes friendly, occasionally really pissed, but we’re happy to answer their questions, help solve their problems, (hopefully) assuage their anger, and, certainly, play along with their fun!
Small businesses and startups have much to gain by providing great support and building lasting relationships with their customers. Loyalty, word of mouth, and brand value are all increased when a business gives its customers information, attention, and answers. In order to constantly improve our own responsiveness, we review and analyze our own support data quarterly and consider the implications on staffing, tools, features, page design, support channels, and quality of service. We learn a great deal through these exercises and believe that all businesses should perform similar audits periodically on their own data. So, without further ado, here’s a selected analysis of the customer service data we look at with a focus on the “when,” the “what,” the “how we doin?” and the volume of requests (AKA “OMG, can we handle this much?”)
1. When.
We always look at the requests that come in relative to our own work hours and consider how we allocate staffing to make sure that customers are answered in a reasonable amount of time. The charts below show a breakdown by day of the week and the time of day.
2. What.
We also look hard at exactly what people are contacting us about and consider this data when we make decisions on improvements, new features, community engagement, and site policies. In response to this information, last mOnth we introduced a new Contact Us form/feature which makes it easier to get in touch and also serves up additional Help content and answers critical FAQs inline. At the same time, we realized that, by changing up the categories of questions (via the pulldown on the Contact Us form) we could improve our understanding of our user’s issues and deliver better, stronger, and more convenient content to get their questions answered and their problems solved.
Good day crowdSPRING blog readers, today I’m going to let you in on the next big thing sure to hit a conference near you and it’s called Zing!
You’re probably wondering what in the world…? But it’s great! Zing! is an interactive singing fitness show featuring sing-alongs to pop and Broadway hits, paired with dance moves sure to get the blood pumping. In addition to conferences, you’ll find Zing! at fitness and dance centers, offered as a group class targeting strength, endurance, flexibility and balance.
I connected with Pam Peterson, the creator of Zing! and the buyer who posted the Zing! project on the site looking for a logo design. Pam is a professional singer/actress and a personal fitness trainer so she’s highly qualified to pump you into shape at your next conference.
I got a chance to ask her a few questions and this what she has to share with you…
1. How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING?
When I needed graphic designs in the past, I turned to colleagues of colleagues… with mixed results.
2. Why in the world did you decide to use crowdSPRING?!
A fellow NAWBO Chicago member had posted a listserve request for a logo designer. I liked the laid-back, conversational email response from CrowdSpring, and decided to check out your website. Wow! Let’s face it, the concept is phenomenal. Where else could I name my price and attract a global talent pool from which to choose my design?
3. What’s the single best small biz resource that you’ve found (magazine, website, blog, etc.)?
I’m a big fan of two Chicago women’s business organizations: National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) and Women’s Business Development Center (WBDC).
4. If your best friend told you they were going to start a business, what’s the ONE piece of advice you’d give them?
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
Think Different: How To Make Your Tagline Stand Out From The Crowd – http://bit.ly/bLdDPq
Too often, startups risk getting misdirected by the media and customers to add features and functionality to a product or service that turn out to be collateral to the core business. I believe this is happening with Gowalla and Foursquare, among others. Both services have become media darlings, and both are obsessed with adding features to already confusing products.
I’ve tested both services and believe that the feature creep evident in the recent releases from both companies may do more harm than good to their ability to compete with other companies focusing on local advertising (Google, Facebook, and MANY others).
By following the media’s lead (and thirst for more “cool” releases), Gowalla and Foursquare seem to be focused on features collateral to their businesses – not on their core business.
Are Gowalla and Foursquare squandering their opportunities and visibility? I believe they are.
Contrast the feature creep in Foursquare and Gowalla apps with the way our friends at Groupon have managed Groupon’s growth – by staying focused on the company’s core business and adding features (like the recently added rewards program) that support the core business.
Location based marketing is important, but every website and service will soon be able to execute location based marketing strategies. Importantly, location based marketing is expected to take up a 70% share of all U.S. interactive marketing spending as soon as 2014 – $4 billion in 2015 (up from $34 million in 2009). Companies that don’t focus on their core business will cede leadership and market share to those who do.
As I discuss in this video, there’s a danger when you split your focus and forget about your core business.
Do you think that the features added to the Gowalla and Foursquare apps are critical to their location based advertising models? Why?
“I’m In Logo Love” is a new series on the crowdSPRING blog. Periodically, we’ll pick a logo we’d like to take home from a bar and tell you why. And if you think it’s a bit strange to have a crush on a cleverly designed logo, get in line – my mom has already lectured me on this topic. Today’s post was guest written by Marc Köhlbrugge. Marc started out as a freelance designer (some of you might recall that Marc won crowdSPRING’s inaugural web design project). Since 2009, Marc has co-founded two internet start-ups - PressDoc and *openmargin. Today, we’ll look at the logo for FedEx.
FedEx is company operating all over the world, but if by any chance you haven’t heard about them before, here’s the quick run-down from Wikipedia: “FedEx is a logistics services company, based in the US.” Simply said, they make it possible for both businesses and individuals to easily ship packages around the world.
BACKGROUND ON THE NAME ‘FEDEX’:
When the company began operations in 1973 they were initially named Federal Express. However, after a while Federal Express outgrew its name and headed towards a more global approach. Therefore, in 1994 they decided to rebrand the company to ‘FedEx’ (an already commonly used nickname) along with a new logo shown above, designed by Lindon Leader.
I always prefer logos that communicate the essence of the brand, have a unique and thus recognizable look, intrigue the mind and clearly show the name of the company. The FedEx logo achieves all of this and remains very simple.
The overall concept of the logo is very basic, the name of the brand in bold letters and a unique combination of colors. I won’t say it’s the most elegant typeface I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely bold and very recognizable.
To give the logo an extra edge Leader decided to make one minor tweak to the letters which has resulted in one of the most discussed logos out there. If you didn’t see it already: the negative space between the ‘E’ and the ‘x’ forms an arrow symbolizing movement and precision. Which are of course two very important values for a logistics company such as FedEx.
Of course, not everybody will catch this detail immediately, but as soon as you do, you can’t help but notice it every-time you see the logo. Even better, when I’m among other people and the logo comes across there’s a big chance we’ll actually start talking about the logo because it’s such a clever design and it’s great to share the ‘hidden detail’ with others. I can imagine other people feel the same, so it’s not just a nice looking logo, it’s also a great word-of-mouth marketing tool.
If you want to learn more about the designer and the logo, I recommend reading this interview, but first let us know what you think about this design by leaving a comment below!
In high school we are taught that “writing means revising.” When working with teams, it is critical that the revision process be as simple and streamlined as possible. Here’s what Wikipedia says about the process: “In a true collaborative environment, each contributor has an almost equal ability to add, edit, and remove text. The writing process becomes a recursive task, where each change prompts others to make more changes. It is easier to do if the group has a specific end goal in mind, and harder if a goal is absent or vague.”
Tools available today make this process straightforward, and allow teams of people to work together to produce truly collaborative documents with ease. Microsoft Word has powerful tracking and authoring tools, as does Apple’s Pages program, and Cloud applications such as Google Docs allow easy access to documents from anywhere. In fact both Apple and Microsoft have Cloud versions of their software which allow teams to participate in the writing process in ways unimaginable back in the days of typewriters and mimeograph machines.
Back in the age of ink and quill, when our Founding Fathers were drafting the Declaration of Independence they had a problem, which at the time may have seemed minor enough, but from our perspective seems almost insurmountable. It seems that access to Google Docs was limited at the time, their broadband connection was spotty at best, and they were forced to use some rather primitive collaboration tools when working on this most important document. Thomas Jefferson was, of course, the primary author of the Declaration, but a “Committee of Five” was charged with drafting, revising, and presenting the document to the full Congress. Jefferson presented the committee with a rough draft to which they made various revisions and changes for him to re-draft several times. These changes certainly served to strengthen their final work product, as good teams often find. For instance, Benjamin Franklin is said to have changed Jefferson’s original phrase “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
crowdSPRING is the world's #1 marketplace for entrepreneurs, small businesses, nonprofits and agencies who need custom logo design, web design, a new company name or other writing and design services. Over 110,000 designers and writers work on crowdSPRING. We are trusted by more than 27,000 happy clients around the world.
You have alternatives when purchasing a logo for your business.
In high school we are taught that “writing means revising.” When working with teams, it is critical that the revision process be as simple and streamlined as possible. Here’s what 
