Winner Of The Free Professional Logo Competition
Written by Jacob Cass on Wednesday, June 4, 2008 – 8:00 am
Well the time has come to announce the winner of the free professional logo design competition. After reading through 53 entries I have finally narrowed it down to just one and let me tell you, it was no easy task.
Surprise Bonus!
Before I announce the winner of the free logo design I want to let you know that there is also a surprise bonus to everyone that commented on the original post…
For those who did comment I am offering you a professional logo design for only AUD$300. This is an extremely generous price because of what is involved in my Logo Design Process. For $300 I will include 2 logo design concepts and 2 revisions, along with all files and copyright. If interested, please fill out this logo design questionnaire (PDF) and send it back to me.
I thought that a huge drop in price like this may finally get some of those people needing a logo, to finally invest in one. I hope you take advantage of this opportunity!
Congratulations!
And the moment you have been waiting for… the winner of the free professional logo design goes to…
Janette Toral from Influential Blogger who wrote:
“I’m joining! I want a free logo (or badge) that the top 10 emerging influential blogs 2008 winners can post in their site.
Cheers to your blog success!” - Janette Toral
This short and simple sentence really got me intrigued because the logo could be used by many bloggers rather than just one individual. Now even more can share the logo design love.
Congratulations Janette and also the top 10 emerging bloggers of 2008 (to be announced July 26th) who will be able to grace the badge on their own blog in the short future.
Thank you everyone else for your entries - it was not easy to choose just one!
PS. Want to know how to create a PDF form like the one I mentioned above? David Airey wrote a great post on how to create a pdf form.
Why logo design does not cost $5.00
Written by Jacob Cass on Thursday, May 22, 2008 – 2:05 pm
Logo design in today’s world is totally under rated. People do not understand how important a good logo is and how valuable it is to their business and this is why I am going to outline some very important facts telling you exactly why logo design should not cost $5 and why your logo is not something you should take lightly.
In broad terms, I will do this by comparing “cheap logo design” to “professional logo design” and I will outline the reasons why professional logo designers do not charge such low fees and why you should invest in a professional logo design.
What Is A Logo?
To understand what a logo is meant to do, we first must know what a logo is. Wikipedia explains that “a logo’s design is for immediate recognition, inspiring trust, admiration, loyalty and an implied superiority. The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand, or economic entity, and its shapes, colours, fonts, and images usually are different from others in a similar market. Logos are also used to identify organisations and other non-commercial entities.”
It makes me wonder why people have no logo or why they would even bother with a cheap logo design if a logo is meant to do all of these things?
Spec Work & Logo Design Contests
Before I get onto comparing cheap VS professional logo design I want to talk to you a bit about SPEC work. “Spec” has become the short form for any work done on a speculative basis. ie. You design this for me, and I will pay you if I like it.
To clarify, let’s create a scenario in another industry where SPEC work does NOT exist.
“I went for a dental check-up yesterday. After the dentist inspected my teeth, she suggested some work to prevent further tooth decay. I told her to go ahead, and if the dental work was satisfactory, I’d be more than happy to pay. She responded that she wouldn’t be able to do that, because she normally provides a service when a fee is agreed upon up-front. I said I’d let her know after I checked in with other local dentists.”
This scenario happens in the design industry every day and is seen as very unethical as it is ruining the design industry. A designer should not have to invest time and resources with no guarantee of payment much alike a dentist or any other professional.
I do not want to go into this any further as much has been written about it but I would like to say please avoid design contests at all costs - these are the true epitome of SPEC work. Logo Design Contests are bad for your business. Period.
For further reading on the damage of spec work I suggest these articles below.
- Spec Work can damage your business
- Spec Work in the internet age
- The Dark Side of Designing on Spec
- 99Designs: Bullshit 2.0
- 99 Designs Stoops To A New Low
There have even been comics made about the damage of Spec Work.
$5.00 (Cheap Logo Design)
Now that we have taken a look at the damage of Spec Work, let us now take a look at what quality you can expect from a logo in between the $5 to $200 bracket. The particular case I am looking at today is from a $35 logo design contest that was held on Digital Point Forums.
The “brief” for the logo design project was
“Make a logo for the site ‘Spela Piano’. The meaning of that is Play Piano. This is a site where our members can learn to play piano online.”
Below you can see the responses from the contest, which one do you think won?
You will notice that nearly all of the logos above use free fonts and don’t assign to the rules of what makes a good logo. Ie. describable, memorable, effective without colour and scalable.
Ask yourself these questions in regards to the logos above:
- How many of the logos can you describe or remember?
- Are these logos effective without colour?
- Are they scalable?
- Do they gain immediate recognition?
- Convey the company’s personality, character or attitude?
- Relate to your clients by conveying a feeling of familiarity and credibility?
- Have association with quality and satisfaction?
I will leave these questions for you to decide.
Professional Logo Design
Now compare these professionally designed logos and answer the same questions as above….
See the difference?
Why are they so different? As outlined in the logo design process of top graphic designers, professional logo designers have an actual design process that involves research, sketching, conceptualising, and reflection and this is why they do not charge $5.00.
The design process of a professional logo designer usually consists of:
- The Design Brief: They conduct a questionnaire or interview with the client to get the design brief.
- Research: They conduct research focused on the industry itself, on its history, and on its competitors.
- Reference: They conduct research into logo designs that have been successful and current styles and trends that are related to the design brief.
- Sketching & Conceptualising: They develop the logo design concept(s) around the brief and research. They use creativity and know how to design a logo.
- Reflection: They take breaks throughout their design process. This lets their ideas mature and lets them get renewed enthusiasm and receive feedback.
- Presentation: They then choose whether to present only a select few logos to the client or a whole collection.
- Celebration: They then drink beer or eat chocolate or sleep or start on next logo design. Or a combination.
Do you believe doing all of that costs $5.00?
On that note, did you know that the software to make the logo is USD$600 in itself… Let alone the computer that it has to be installed onto.
Here are some more responses from other designers on reasons why logo design does not cost $5.00.
Tara from Graphic Design Blog outlines in her 6 reasons why a logo should cost more than your lunch that
- A logo is the very first impression people get of your company
- A logo needs longevity
- A logo needs to be original
- A logo should look professional
- A logo should reflect the time and thought gone in to designing it
- A logo is the starting point of your whole corporate image
Now look back at those $5.00 logo designs or your even own logo to see if adheres to the above points.
Isn’t it about time you invested in a professional logo design?
Do you agree? Does logo design cost more than $5.00? What have you paid for a logo design?
Discover RSS: May 1st is RSS Awareness Day + The Official Logo I Designed For It
Written by Jacob Cass on Sunday, April 27, 2008 – 8:10 pm
On May 1st it is the first RSS Awareness Day. The objective of RSS Awareness Day is to get as many people as possible talking about RSS and its benefits and for them to educate the not-so-tech public about the benefits of RSS.
- Have you heard about RSS? If not, check out What Is RSS?
- If you already know about RSS, spread the word, write a blog post about it and try telling a friend or family member about RSS too. At least digg the official rss day page.
Logo Design
Below you can see the official logo I designed for RSS Day. You will notice the original RSS logo plus the number 1 to remind users of May 1st. You can check out more of my logo designs in my just updated portfolio. You can even read my new testimonials page. This is what Daniel (the man behind RSS Day) had to say about the logo.
Jacob did outstanding work with the logo for our RSS Day initiative. Not only was it beautiful, but it was also meaningful for the project.
Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated.
Logo Design Process for Just Creative Design’s Award Winning Logo
Written by Jacob Cass on Thursday, April 24, 2008 – 7:29 pm
In this article I will talk about how I came to the name for my freelancing business ‘Just Creative Design’ and also the logo design process that I used to design the award winning logo that you see above.
The process I used was somewhat disjointed and a very long one at that… mainly because I was designing for myself and I had no idea what ‘brand’ I was after but this is it. Enjoy.
Do you need to brush up on your logo design skills? You may want to know how to design a logo or you may want to know the logo design process of top graphic designers. You can find even more logo design resources here.
What will be my business name?
Believe it or not but this was one of the hardest parts of the process. Before I had JCD I was freelancing under the name of ‘JackCass Productions’ - this was when I was 15. This was a clever pun of my name Jacob and Cass. I get called ‘Jack’ and ‘Jake’ quite a bit for my nickname instead of Jacob and when you combine the nickname Jack and my last name Cass… well you get JackCass or jackass if you will.
I actually got about very mixed feelings about this name JackCass Productions. About 70% of people loved it, and were actually quite envious of the name and then about 30% of people would say why would you want to be called that in a professional business? There were pros and cons for both however in the end I chose not to continue using this name for the long term and I think I made the right choice… But in saying that I still have the domain jackcass.com which I use for a personal side blog - that never gets updated.
Ok, so now I had the problem of choosing whether to brand myself as my name ‘Jacob Cass’ or another name. Obviously I went with the latter however I still bought my domain name jacobcass.com. But now what to choose for my business name? I decided I wanted something unique, I wanted the word design in the title but I also wanted it to include my initials in the name - ego I know.
I had a million ideas, as you do… Jucy, Jaycii, JayZee, JayCee, Jaci, Jaysee, JayCee, JaySee, JaiSee, Juju, Juca, Joco, Jluc, Jaco, JC, JLBC and I won’t bore you with the hundred more that I had.
Sketches
I couldn’t come down to a name I liked so I just played around with my initials to make a logo and you can see the sketches below of trying to get J and C to work together. There were six A3 pages so I had to take a photo of it… it is 2mb if you want to look at it full size. And I am no Picasso so shhh.
From these sketches I had the idea of trying to make the initials JCD into a pencil and after a bit of experimenting I got it to work. Need to know how to be creative?
Throughout the whole process I was up in air about the name of the business so I played with the names JackCass, Jacob Cass and Just Creative Design.
Illustrator
After getting the initial idea I had some fun playing around in Illustrator with different typefaces, sizes, porportions etc which you can see in the picture to see what typefaces worked, what line widths and combinations worked best together and just some other design ideas.
More play with the pencil idea…
The Final Two Concepts
I then finally came down to two styles, one which was the led pencil style and one which is below.
At this time I received feedback from peers and from forums and many people told me that there was so many logos that incorporated the Fibonnaci Squirl. After a little research I found this was true and this meant that my logo would not be unique. So I went with the led pencil idea that I thought was working quite well so I continued with that. It was here that I tried to get the best size for the pencil to show off the JCD initials as well as making sure it looked like a pencil.
Font Change
I ended up choosing the third size down from the top however something was not quite sitting with me and I narrowed it down to the font. I changed it to the font I used in the other example which was the free font Delicious and that solved all my problems - I was happy with the JCD initial, pencil and the font. It was a great black and white logo.
Colour
This was where I played a lot with colour however I narrowed it down to the blue or the pink that I originally had in mind and then I chose out of these four colour combinations. I felt pink had more energy and was not so corporate and this was the decision I made. Pink black and white were my colours and my brand.
Award Winning Final Logo
Above you can see the finished logo and I couldn’t be happier with the feedback I have received from everyone on this logo. At least once a week I get someone complimenting it which gives me a warm giddy feeling inside. Oh and the fact that it incorporates my initials into it 
In fact I entered this logo into the Logo Design Love Awards and it won the readers appreciation award (as voted by you so thank you!) and then on top of that we came 15th out of 100+ blogs in the overall Blog Logo Design Competition.
Adrian Hanft , co-founder of Be A Design Group had this to say about my logo when it won the award.
So often logos fall into cliché. This is usually a danger to avoid, but if you can put a new spin on an overused idea then you actually benefit from people’s awareness of the idea. You can turn a negative reaction into a positive one, and that has impact. The idea of using a pencil and sketching to represent creativity could be cliché, but this logo overcomes it. The JCD are just imperceptible enough to let the viewer feel rewarded for finding them. Same with the pencil. The typography is understated and it matches the humble positioning of “just creative.” They aren’t trying to be too clever, too flashy, or too self-important. They’re just creative.
Final Logo with Evil Comics Sans MS
And just for kicks, what if my logo used Comic Sans? Evil, Evil, Evil.
Well there we have it boys and girls, the logo design process I used to create the logo in my blog header. I hope you enjoyed it. Comments are always appreciated.
A Comparative Study of Logo Design between the 70s and 90s.
Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, April 18, 2008 – 6:24 pm
This was an essay I wrote one year ago for a University class. I do recommend printing it as it is 2000 words long. Click here for a printable version. Read more »
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