The Underscore Archives

On 05/06/07, Chris Kaminski <chris at setmajer.com> wrote:
>
> 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

And yet John Hicks design for Firefox is perhaps one of the best software logos?
Which he did for free and also put his design skills in front of millions.

I'm not saying a competition would have been right, but that examples of people
giving free time to create a design for other reasons apart from
profit can be found and also can be successful for all parties.

My 2p.

Dan


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-- 
Dan Hilton
============================
DanHilton.co.uk
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