NO SPEC! is the battlecry from creatives who are dismayed by the encroaching threat of ridiculously low fees on Fiverr, eLance, oDesk and crowdsourcing sites like 99designs (who now has many offices around the globe just to show you where that is going). Many creatives are wary of companies idea phishing and scream out loud about such injustices towards professionals in our industry. Then they turn around and unwittingly give away millions of dollars in design consultation to huge corporations.
How Did You Give Your Work Away?
Think About It
There’s been a huge amount of corporate logo changes in the past two years. Each and every time a new rebranding was announced, and the logo unveiled, it would be followed up with dozens of articles critiquing the design decisions, and sometimes a mention of the seven-figure payday for some lucky design firm. Of course, there are hundreds of comments/critiques on those articles, endless Facebook posts, and a trillion tweets, all ripping apart the design and offering opinions for design improvements.
This is an interesting reaction, and one of the corporations has been smart enough to notice all of this design advice flooding the net. eBay, for example, really caught hell for their redesigned logo, as well as their explanation of their “new brand.” Designers were not kind.
The Olive Garden, an American answer to a step-up from fast food by serving fast food in a restaurant setting, announced that sales were down, so their slap-in-the-face to the original designer(s) and all creatives, as long as we’re already there, was to blame for the logo and had it changed. The food stayed the same.
Wendy’s followed but used it’s redesign smartly. There is nothing special about their new logo but somehow, somewhere, a designer commented on how the word “MOM” appears subtly in the neckline of the new logo, and Wendy’s took it to the bank!
As any advertising or public relations person will tell you, Wendy’s wouldn’t be able to afford the press they received with that little tidbit spraying all over the internet. Thanks for the million dollar idea!
Someone Else Who Got It
When it was announced that Yahoo! was redesigning their logo, they ran 30 days of different logos. So did certain design sites, getting in on the action… and throwing hopeful, free ideas at Yahoo! (or, as 99 designs posted: “Yahoo! picked a winning design in their logo design contest—For just $429, they received 4,634 designs from 962 designers“).
Eventually, Yahoo! revealed that their CEO, Marissa Mayer had “helped” the Yahoo! in-house designers, obviously not hired for their talents as 30 attempts from them at redesign and the 4,634 designs from 99designs designers just wasn’t good enough for her. As she reported that they “spent a weekend” redesigning the logo under her watchful eye. Mayers qualified herself by saying:
“On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator. I think it’s one of the most incredible software packages ever made. I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous.”
As reported by Benjie Moss, in his article “Yahoo!‘s branding disaster,” Mayer knew there would be “tweaking” on the logo even after it was released.
“You’d think that if you were going to apply kerning inconsistently you’d get it right somewhere, just by chance, but they haven’t. Take a look at the ‘YA’, ‘AH’, ‘HO’ and ‘OO’ as pairs. Mayer has suggested that there’ll be some small refinements made in the future.”
Those “refinements” were eagerly given away by professional designers and handed to Ms. Mayers on a silver digital platter. No one who supplied great tweaks the logo needed received a million dollars, or even $429!
What’s more, those who argued that no one could rightfully comment without having been present for the process, actually there to hear the client’s comments and ideas, limitations and changes, were just airing points that were moot—but they weren’t really. Every comment was free research for Yahoo!. Every comment on their odd kerning has been addressed… or purposely not, in the refined logo. Yahoo! thanks you!
SHUT UP!
Is this the shadowy start of a new type of crowdsourcing? “Complaintsourcing”? Throw out a crayon drawing of your new corporate logo and wait for millions of dollars in consulting to fly through the digital cloud and rain into the hands of the corporate pigs? I may be paranoid and a conspiracy theorist where this is concerned, and lots of things, according to a therapist that’s stalking me, but I know when moon landings are Photoshopped and then sent back in time to 1969! I also know how corporations work outside of the public eye, because I was on the inside for most of my career.
Aside from airing opinions that are moot, as mentioned in the previous section of this article—ranted about some might say—libelous slander from a lunatic might read a subpoena, but what else are you going to accomplish by sharing your design tips about what’s wrong with a new corporate logo? Do other designer’s care what you think? Don’t they have their opinions, too? What makes YOU so right?
- Who died and made you the one voice of the design universe? Ten designers will have 10 different opinions, all in different directions!
- If someone handed you over $1 million to design a logo and then told you exactly what to do and the final product was less than thrilling, would you give back the money or is it too sweaty to give back because you’ve been rolling around on the pile of cash… naked?
- If you were actually in the same room with the client and they started making suggestions, would you enjoy critiquing their demands when not hiding behind a screen name, or would you soil yourself?
- If you have sparkling glitter unicorns on your own website, you shouldn’t speak about design. EVER!
- Do you realize you’re giving away free advice? SUCKER!
Image credit: Bigstockphoto
Conclusion
Instead of spending precious time writing a novella about the wrong design choices that may or may not have been made and what you would change about a logo, not knowing how much the client will squeeze your testicles during the project, work on finding the next client who will let you design their logo with complete freedom. Hopefully it will be a seven-figure project, but you can look forward to lots and lots of comments about how you have no talent as a designer and what tens of thousands of other designers would do.
