I recently had to organise a new company logo and trademark for a high tech start up and was greatly heartened that I did not have to suffer the anguish, frustration and cost of acquiring this via the old and worn out method. The full details of how to achieve this are below as well as my initial reflections on what is bringing about such a transformation of the creative design fraternity.
Back in the very old days where the advertising executive was king I witnessed the dramatic discrepancy between what was paid to the humble external artist, what was paid by the client and most surprising how much commission was paid to the "creative account manager".
Their job was to convince the client that one of the design options created by the external artist was indeed the only one for them, the either/or sales technique, I was informed.
Here is an early example of a screen saver for advertising giants O&M for their client Guinness, which was a runaway success yet the designers got a meager five thousand pounds for taking the existing material and creating the complete screen saver. Being the internet specialist who conceived of the idea and orchestrated the outcome I watched with great interest how the production was repackaged and sold as a very costly campaign.
Of course it's all too easy to savage the obvious flaw in this cosy coexistence between corporate executives with more money than time, but the root problem appeared to me to be that those with the responsibility for the brand reputation and its core message being delivered did not know how to leverage the value from artists themselves.
However in today's highly scrutinised and budget oriented environment the meek may inherit the world after all, well the interconnected world at least, because the humble individual artist has had its collective capability aggregated on a global scale.
The result of this is a remarkable community of common interest consisting of over 230,000 designers who will, without any commitment or money, create dozens of designs for you to review and comment upon for change. All this before you have to even commit to a small fraction of the cost paid to an advertising agency.
How could this be, we clients of the old system system ask? Well firstly because $500 for a design of say a logo is good money for an artist (especially when the customers come to you) but the value to a client is outstanding especially as it's a zero risk encounter.
However, the real driver was a phrase attributed to Sir Winston Churchill ‘Gentlemen, We Have Run Out Of Money; Now We Have to Think’. Both public and private sectors are now driven by their bean counters via a mantra of more for less.
So enter the rather strange and contradictory emerging synergy between the company (or government) accountant and this coherent and extremely talented creative community. Only this time the broker is not a high profit margin oriented advertising executive but an Australian scallywag in the form of an online honest broker 99designs who are obviously intent on changing not only the cost model but almost everything to do with the way creative design is carried out on a day to day basis.
On a final general note if you work in a government Treasury or corporate finance department or one of the emerging Shared Service groups that are being set up to aggregate the demand of service provision then you should look very hard at 99Designs to assess its ability to achieve cost cuts whilst reducing the risk of a bad design. It's easy to see how the robust procedures involved in the procuring of designs could be used by a shared service broker role to leverage the entire capability of the community to deliver more for less.
My experience of working with the 99Designs community
I have been involved in 4 projects with 99designs and have learned how to leverage the most value from the very willing and able designers by filling out a clear and meaningful brief via the template.
We actually needed the impossible: "A brand that generated confidence within the government and corporate sectors that a state of trust could be achieved within an internet cloud solution, for risk based transactions. But at the same time to distance the logo from the normal western institutions that would normally govern compliance who are themselves under a cloud of suspicion today."
I made my offer of how much I might pay should the competition get to the point where I guarantee a payment to the winner and off I set for a week of reviews, feedback and scratching of heads as the 150 entries came flooding in.
One of the entrants was a designer who had previously won the design for the logo of two other competitions so I was expecting something original but a family commitment came up and she had to pull out. I nearly lost my nerve but decided to keep the competition going and one of the designers, deftArt , started to lead the pack by moving away from the corporate looking cloud that Apple has established.
The result was brilliant in its interpretation of the brief and the young artist's ability to sense my shifting perspective and re-submit designs that finally led to me awarding the $500.00 - which, considering he is still studying in Java, would I'm am sure have been a welcome boost to his income.
Here was the winning artwork provided in a range of file formats along with a very tight and professional sign off process that awarded us with all the copyright.
I had to convey to the designers that the start up company has brought a team together to provide cloud based solutions for industry and government leaders who hold the responsibility & the liability when things go wrong or when something is challenged.
So the target clients are the conservative organizations they serve who are starting to undertake many varied types of internet based transactions that carry an inherent risk
In addition to this they are also subject to complex interdependent governance rules between multiple parties in order to deliver services & achieve strategic outcomes, where the applications and services they depend upon requires an electronic compliance environment similar to a stock exchange where a state of non-repudiation exists.
I had to convey to the designers that the start up company has brought a team together to provide cloud based solutions for industry and government leaders who hold the responsibility & the liability when things go wrong or when something is challenged.
So the target clients are the conservative organizations they serve who are starting to undertake many varied types of internet based transactions that carry an inherent risk
In addition to this they are also subject to complex interdependent governance rules between multiple parties in order to deliver services & achieve strategic outcomes, where the applications and services they depend upon requires an electronic compliance environment similar to a stock exchange where a state of non-repudiation exists.
We were then in a position to play with the layout. This one is for business cards.
Some members of our group started working with my company Annexus (connecting connections) in 2006 where we started conceiving, designing and then building a cloud based solution to automate the entire welfare concessions system for the South Australian government. After a very arduous and challenging experience of defining the governance model for every party involved, which included three State & federal government agencies, most leading energy suppliers, water supplier and all the councils in SA, we were well versed in the art of collaboration, discovery and negotiation of the governance rules.
I interviewed Andy Grove, the head of Intel, who at the time was was fending off competition through the use of a slogan. He told me that Intel had decided to bypass their own clients and influence the consumer directly. This was successfully achieved by creating the "Intel Inside" logo that computer manufacturers could use to denote assurity and quality.
In our logo we have used a slogan to offer a cloud owner the same type of assurance.
In our logo we have used a slogan to offer a cloud owner the same type of assurance.
I use this in colour or B&W as a watermark in a Doc or Excel doc.
Working with Kathryn Alexander on her two 99Design competitions.
Creating a brief for a personal logo proved difficult for Kathryn because you have to be totally objective and impartial to convey all the attributes of your very own personality in order for the artist to convey an accurate impression.
Eventually I had to step in and overcome her modesty to bring out her remarkable integrity, diligence, transparency and her generosity in sharing her knowledge of what works.
This enabled the very talented janisart to create an impressive logo that expressed the attributes of the brief in a very original way. Interestingly janisart won two competitions (the other, my own logo) and now Kathryn has established a one to one relationship that 99Designs enabled.
This Logo was created as a trademark
Kathryn's second brief for the Smart Patient was to ensure sufficient originality for the whole design for trademark. It is now very simple and cost effective in Australia for you to register online a logo as a trademark and we needed to be confident that the logo was not a copy in order to comply with the requirements.
Then finally my own personal logo used on this blog was also created by janisart which was a very complex and difficult brief to interpret as it had to be truly international, non-corporate and illustrate the notion of connecting connections.
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