The Underscore Archives

On 5 Jun 2007, at 13:45, Simon Speight wrote:

>> I just don't understand why this wasn't a public competition.  I
>> can't see it costing much more to run, and it would've been great
>> publicity.  They certainly couldn't have ended up with a worse  
>> choice.
>
> The BBC already discovered why not: public competition = goatse!

Eh, worse than that is the fact that it devalues the work and is,  
frankly, insulting.

Doing a good brand or logo (NOT the same thing *at all*) is /hard/.  
Paul Rand, Saul Bass et al are famous for a reason — they had  
tremendous talent, combined with very hard work. Running a  
competition is effectively asking designers to work for free and  
then, if they win a popularity contest, they'll get some (usually  
nominal) compensation.

Should they have a competition to develop the official website? Not  
the design, just the DB, CMS, business logic, etc. and then let the  
public vote on that? I sure as hell don't think so, but then maybe I  
place too much value on my time.

And there are a couple of distinctions between a logo or brand and  
software. Chief among them being that the software can be licensed  
and then reused, while a logo or brand is (or should be) uniquely  
suited to an institution or event and not applicable to another. Oh,  
one might be able to repurpose some aspects of the concept, even  
parts of the visuals, but on the whole a well-developed brand or logo  
is a single-use thing, unlike software which is much easier to reuse.

I can see perhaps paying a small number of firms to work up rough  
concepts and then taking public feedback on which is best, but just  
an open competition smacks of 'we're too cheap to pay someone to do  
it right' (not that paying good money is any guarantee of quality,  
obviously, but that's true in any field).


ck