A picture is worth a thousand words. A logo could be worth thousands of extra dollars in monthly profit, but its value is priceless to a new start-up or entrepreneur. Every business needs to develop a strong brand in order to become truly successful, and part of that involves coming up with an attractive and recognizable logo to accompany the business name.
Unfortunately, not every ambitious soul out there is a creative genius, so most will have to hire a graphics designer to produce a professional logo. Freelance logo design is a popular way to go, but going with a single freelancer could be a huge mistake if he or she doesn’t deliver.
Crowdsourcing: The Best Way to Find Your Ideal Logo
By hiring a single freelancer to design your logo, you’d be putting all your eggs in one basket – and that’s an easy way to have them all break. Can the individual translate your ideas into a successful concept? Does the freelancer have the skills to do the work to your standards? Can he or she offer you suggestions when you need them? Does the designer charge a hefty fee? You might not want to hear the answers to some of these questions if you’ve already committed to the services of one person. Crowdsourcing logo design is a much wiser option; Hutch Carpenter from bhc3.com puts it like this:
“Time and again, crowdsourcing has been used successfully to solve challenges. But…why does it work? What’s the magic? What gives it an advantage over talking with your pals at work, or doing some brainstorming on your own? In a word: diversity. Cognitive diversity.”
Many Options to Choose From
Coming up with a unique logo can be a very difficult process. Instead of relying on the vision and skills of just one designer, why not challenge hundreds of freelancers all around the globe to conceptualize a logo based on your requirements? Even with a highly experienced professional at your disposal, you might not get the end result that you imagined.
When you pass on your ideas to many different minds, you’ll receive a wide variety of logo designs because each freelancer interprets what you want differently. By crowdsourcing, you end up with a ton of options to choose from instead of just one that might not even come close to what you had in mind. Jamie Pride from goodbyemachiavelli.com had a logo designed via the crowd, and says:
“In the course of a few days I had over 105 different logos to choose from, coming from many different designers. In the end I chose a design I liked, awarded the fee, and had the original design files and copyright transferred to me.”
image source: goodbyemachiavelli.com
Pride goes on to say:
“It was a great process – with one huge benefit – I got to draw upon the ideas of many many designers from all over the world. I was not locked in to one designer, and I got to see and evaluate the ideas.”
For entrepreneurs who aren’t exactly sure about how they want their logos to look, crowdsourcing is vastly superior to hiring one designer.
Faster Turnaround Time
When you have tens, hundreds, or even thousands of freelance designers working on your logo project, you’re bound to receive some of the creations sooner than others. Each freelancer works at a unique pace. Experienced individuals who are highly creative and familiar with all kinds of graphics software will likely send you their logos very promptly. If one of those particular designs is what you’re looking for, you’ve just nabbed a great logo in very little time. Mike from AtoZ Solar Consulting had a tight deadline to get the logo to the printers, and he had this to say:
“The process went much smoother than expected and I received almost 300 designs in less than two days. That was critical as I had a short deadline to get this logo to the printers.”
image source: designcrowd.com
Employing a single designer to bring your ideas to life could be more time-consuming as he or she will probably ask a lot of questions and perform many revisions to ensure that the end product meets your specifications. If you’re on a time crunch, delegate the work to a team rather than an individual.
Pay Only for What You Want
Professional graphics designers can demand pretty stiff rates for their work if they have a lot of experience under their belts. Since most start-ups and small businesses work with a limited budget, you’ll want to save money whenever possible. With crowdsourcing, you set a relatively low fixed rate for a design, and whoever wins the bid gets to take the money. You won’t ever have to worry about paying a small fortune for every hour of work.
Images: ”Logo words on yellow card holding by business man, closeup image. / Shutterstock.com“
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