The 50 Dollar Logo Experiment
February 17, 2009 • 5:51 pm • POSTED BY Jim Walls
A couple of weeks back, Forbes ran a little article deeming graphic design “a snooty business,” before profiling a site called CrowdSpring where clients go to throw spec logo projects to a pool of 13,000 Photoshop jockeys. The winning design gets about $200 or so, the rest go back to their day jobs. For some, apparently, the day job unfortunately involves designing more free logos for other contest sites—a career that likely ranks second in salary behind “Hopelessly Addicted Scratch-Off Lottery Ticket Entuhsiast.”
Of course, the design community went apoplectic in response to the article. “Ethics!” some lamented in the comments. I’m sure a few of them even dashed off another design manifesto or two or fifty.
Here’s the truth, though, and why all the good designers need to relax: the vast majority of the self-described designers on sites like CrowdSpring aren’t really designers. Sure, they may have a (likely pirated) version of Adobe CS4 and spent an hour or so on a few online tutorials. But owning a copy of Pet Sounds doesn’t make you Brian Freaking Wilson. And from the looks of things, most submitters are doing nothing more than manipulating a few drop-down menus to add type over top of some clip art and calling it a logo.
I think I’m pretty good with the computers and the Facebook, and I can do that clip art stuff too, but I’m not a designer by any stretch. I’ve worked alongside enough mind-blowingly great people to know the difference. The truly talented should never, ever have to work for free. And there will always be good clients who recognize the value of what they’re getting when they pay experts. Likewise, there will always be the pizza shop owners and recent MBA grads launching their next Basecamp rip-off who get what they pay for when they go for the lowest common denominator.
Oh, I saw this trend coming though. So, in the spirit of participation, I launched an experiment that lasted throughout much of 2008. Among my many online ventures lies CheesesOfNazareth.info, a URL purchased on my behalf by one of our aforementioned talented designers as a Secret Santa gift in 2007. From what I understand, all hangers-on in the agency business are ceremoniously slaughtered by interns on the day before their 40th birthday, which is why I’m making plans to have my online cheese and cheese product empire up, running, and thriving well before that day comes. But the first step was to get a logo for the cover of my business plan.
I turned to the cleverly named 50DollarLogo.com, a site based in Sri Lanka or somewhere promising six logo designs, unlimited revisions, and a 1-3 day turnaround. Who needs messy things like research, insight, or even a modicum of information about my business, when I can have unlimited revisions? I quickly gave them my information, credit card number, social security number, and bank account routing number, and we were off to the races.
Excerpted below is the actual yearlong conversation that followed between a hapless client (me) and a helpful Internet robot named “Abina.” I’ll leave it to you to decide whether the outcome was worth my 50 bones. I’ll let you know when my first round of VC funding rolls in.
—-
Me:
Dear 50dollarlogo.com—Help! I’m looking to launch my online cheese and cheese-food product distribution and fulfillment company, but I need a logo that can explain to buyers right away that I mean business! (And hopefully lots of it ha ha!) The name is cheesesofnazareth.info, so it should probably involve cheese(s) in some significant way. Also needs to have energy, speed, and pizzazz, which judging by your porfolio, you have in spades! The other direction I should give you is that it shouldn’t be something like Nike or Target, but more like a Web 2.0 company—think Flickr or eHarmony.com. Look forward to seeing the six designs your creative minds and hands come up with!
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Jim Walls,
Thank You For your order.
Please ensure you have or about to make payment. We require the payment for the order before we can start working on you designs.
Note, you are entitled to a 100 percent money back guarantee on your order. Further, you are entitled to un limited and free revisions to your logo designs until you are fully satisfied.
Thank You Kindly,
Abina,
Customer Services
50dollarlogo.com
—
Me: [four days later]
Any update on my order?
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for the email.
We are very sorry for the delay.
We will send you the sample as soon as possible.
Thank You,
Abina
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your order.
Having studied your requirements we now provide you the low resolution samples of your logo in jpeg format meant for evaluation purpose. You will receive a high resolution format after you are fully satisfied with your final logo. Font files used in the corresponding logo will also be sent along with the source file so that the logo will be 100% resizable and editable.
You now have the opportunity to request unlimited revisions (free of charge) to one of the samples given here. This will allow you to fine-tune the sample so that you are fully happy. Note, many logo firms would only allow one round of revision.
Its practically impossible for any logo company to meet a customer’s imagination without some revisions. Thus, we are now open to your requests for revisions. This can be done by replying to this email and stating:
1. The sample you most prefer (we can also blend the design between more than one order sample if you desire).
2. The revisions you wish to be applied to this logo sample. i.e any alteration on colors, fonts, size of text, images or anything generally you wish to have altered.
If you do not desire any revisions then please simply state the logo sample you require. We will then send the files appropriate for high resolution and editing which will be helpful for you in the long term.
As soon as we here from you, we aim to meet your design requests within 2 business days.
Ultimately, we are here to receive your feedback so that we can strive to provide the exact logo you have in mind.
Thank you kindly,
Abina
—
Me:
So many good things about these logos! But I’m afraid they’re not quite there yet. 
Can you finesse them?
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for the email.
We have informed our designers about your request. We aim to send you the improved logos within 2 working days.
We are happy to provide you as many numbers of revisions as you want. We strive to make our customer fully satisfied.
Thank you,
Abina
—
Me:
HELP! It’s been two weeks since I last heard from you.
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Sir,
Please receive the improved logo samples of your company enclosed herewith.
We have made improvements as asked by you. Hope they are like the one you have asked for. Please do let us know your view so that we can proceed further.
We are happy to provide you as many numbers of revisions as you want. We strive to make our customer fully satisfied.
Thank you, Abina
—
Me:
Abina—SOOOOOO creative. Where do get your ideas? From an idea well? Must be bottomless!
One major problem that my wife pointed out, however. The company name is CHEESES, not CHEESE. Can you please revise? Also, can you combine the cheese man with the woodcut styling of #4 from your original round?
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for the email.
We have informed our designers about your request. We aim to send you the improved logos within 2 working days.
We are happy to provide you as many numbers of revisions as you want. We strive to make our customer fully satisfied.
Thank you,
Abina
—
—
Me:
This version is definitely adorable, but my sales team is concerned that the smiling, gesturing Swiss cheese suggests we only sell Swiss—which is certainly not the case!!? Can you include a variety of anthropomorphic cheeses in the logo alongside the Swiss? Some of our biggest sellers include:
Cheddar
Mozzarella
Brie (doesn’t ship well)
Gouda
Philadelphia Brand(r) Cream Cheese
Havarti
Taco
Feta
We also carry a limited but delicious selection of gourmet dates.
Also, my warehouse is yellow (with large “holes” painted on it), so these logos will blend in too much. Consider other colors, like Target.
—
[several months pass]
—
Me:
Abina-
Upon further consideration, I feel that you guys have really missed the religious connotation in my company’s name, and we really want to play this up. Is there a way to emphasize this connection? Specifically, when you redesign the various cheeses, is there a way to approximate DaVinci’s “Last Supper”? I do think the Swiss cheese could be positioned roughly where Jesus is located, since Swiss is a very prominent cheese.
Thanks for your continued hard work. We’re close!
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Jim,
Thank you for the email.
We have informed our designers about your request. We aim to send you the improved logos within 2 working days.
We are happy to provide you as many numbers of revisions as you want. We strive to make our customer fully satisfied.
Thank you,
Abina
—
Me:
How are the redesigns coming along? It’s been nearly three months since my last request!
—
50DollarLogo:
Dear Jim,
Thank you for the email.
We are very sorry for the delay.
We will send you the improved logo within 24 hours.
We apologies for the delay.
Thank You,
Abina
—
Me:
[still waiting]
Well Done !! I have always wondered what these pronta-logo companies actually produce. I run a design consultancy and in a previous life was a design lecturer so as you can imagine these people/businesses really cheese me off (had to get that in sorry). The worrying thing is that there must be people out there willing to pay for this crap, how can you possibly create any design or marketing collateral for a business you know absolutely nothing about, it amazes me! Don’t get me wrong I’m all for encouraging creativity and we all like a bit of competition but $50 logo, what’s next free websites, free business cards, free design software?……oh yeah, they already exist don’t they. At the end of the day if a business is happy to pay $50 dollars for a faceless ‘design’ team to crack open their big box of fonts and clipart library then who am I to question them.
Truly hilarious. The design samples shown here can be “designed” by a Photoshop amateur.
From one experimenter to another, awesome job!
[...] on over to 160over90 to read the blog. Great [...]
[...] work by 160 over 90 in Philadelphia. If you’ve got time, read through their hilarious ‘50 Dollar Logo Experiment’! Thanks to Sung Park for the link. addthis_pub = ‘kubox’; addthis_logo = ”; [...]
[...] maybe sad experiment he started. When you read it you never would believe this was a true story. Please enjoy this great read, and Jim, thanks for sharing [...]
You get what you give.
Money never lies.
[...] Read the Article here. [...]
[...] entertaining story over at 160over90’s blog about using an online logo-design service that charges a flat fee of $50 for unlimited revisions on [...]
Cute. Their logos were not only boring but completely ignored the tongue in cheek relationship of your domain with the historic icon it referenced.
I guess having a designer that speaks the SAME LANGUAGE as you allows for inside jokes and euphemisms to be portrayed in design.
50dollarlogo sure have some talented designers working for them..! Funny story, looking forward to seeing the final logo!
Even you, Von Glitschka, didn’t find it the least bit offensive that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ was dragged through the mud for a bit of cheap entertainment? Sad!
[...] wonder what the results from those churn and burn logo sites look like. Jim from 160 over 90 held a little experiment and posted it for the world to see. Visual vomit folks. « [...]
uh oh.. that site now has some sort of virus?
i like the 3rd one…of the first set.. you passed on a gem!
Brilliant article – funny and meaningful – I laughed out loud about the ‘ideas well’!
Keep us posted on what happens next.
Steve
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Brilliant post.
[...] The 50 Dollar Logo Experiment by Jim Walls, creative director at 160over90 [...]
Why bother doing this?
Ok its not great the service they offer but its cheap and maybe not everyone can afford a professional designer.
You strike me as tho you have your head up your arse.
And if you want to get critical your website is a load of shite.
You could probably get someone to make it look better for $50 somewhere.
You might consider throwing in an additional c note, check http://thelogocompany.net/
Somehow it seems to be possible to have a custom logo made for just 149 dollars. Don’t ask me how. It would not even cover the overhead of briefing and communication from and with your client.
This stuff looks pretty okay. It’s not Paul Rand quality. But for a startup other than NeXt not bad.
Just wondering if the squiggly lines emanating from the cheese(s) were meant to indicate heat? or stench?
Either way, f#cking BRILLIANT!
Stop feeling sorry for this website. They said unlimited revisions. I don’t know a single designer that hasn’t taken a shitty job just to make a few bucks and try and build a portfolio. Those logos are terrible, though. You can see that each one probably took no more than 5 mins and are SOO overloaded with clip art, the only place they belong is on a strip mall sign. And even then, I’d be ashamed. I did find it interesting that the co-founder of crowdSPRING replied.
To you, Ross Kimbarovsky: You’re a joke. As long as you’re ok making graphic design an illegitimate art form, congrats.
A couple years ago the guys from VolumeSF did a similar test- But they had them redesign the AIGA logo and presented it at the national conference. It was equally as hilarious! Thanks.
I do a bit of my own design, but not many logos. Mostly website elements and artistic stuff. I can’t even begin to imagine doing anything like that. When I do help someone out, I usually get it the other way around. Where they don’t know what they want, even after I put together a few samples. And they take their sweet time in getting back and then all of a sudden want me to rush.
But with all those auto-response (delayed, better yet) emails they surely don’t seem to care about professional relationships or looking good.
This is so funny.
It stinks that businesses don’t choose to spend decent money on something as important as their identity, a logo means so much more than just a cute picture with a little text – it needs to be cleverly thought out. But, you get what you pay for, and $50 is such a tiny amount for something so important.
If you make cheese you should have the Shroud of Turin image burned into the rinds on the wheels.
what an asshole thing to do.
[...] http://www.160over90.com/blog/2009/02/17/the-50-dollar-logo-experiment/ Tags:hacks, low cost design, outsourcing marketing to India [...]
Great post! Sad but true… did you get your money back? or, at least your favorite logo on high resolution?
[...] The 50 Dollar Logo Experiment is beyond funny in part because the resulting logos are [...]
So what is wrong with the designs?
I tell you what…
BEST WAY TO SPEND $50 IF YOU WANT A BIT OF FUN
HILARIOUS!!
Seriously though I can’t stop laughing.
Please do keep us posted on what happens next
There’s a market for everyone, and everything. Not every bizness can pay top $ for ego-istic designers. Some just want to settle for a simple logo. This experiment with the mindless and endless requests from the Experimenter, is weil, mindless, and mean.
No 50dollar logo company will take away the market of the high up there designers- its a diff market. So, just see it for what it is, and leave it.
Your next experiment should be to see what one of these places would do if you asked them to design a logo for Forbes magazine.
Here’s an interesting bit from them as well:
http://www.forbes.com/2004/04/08/0408findsvp5.html
[...] of any merit really have nothing to feat. Check out this great article over at 160 over 90 called The 50 Dollar Logo Experiement. Here’s the setup: I turned to the cleverly named 50DollarLogo.com, a site based in Sri [...]
[...] at it) going on about why logo factories could be damaging to the professional design industry. And this little experiment by 160/90 illustrates the point brilliantly. (Plus it’s also [...]
Hahahaha, this is amazing.
BRILLIANT!
[...] http://www.160over90.com/blog/2009/02/17/the-50-dollar-logo-experiment/ [...]
This is hilarious.
I thought that cheesy (pun intended) clip art looked too familiar. It is direct out of Microsoft Office’s awful clipart collection. Just go into Word and search for “cheese”. The little smiley guy comes right up.
Wouldn’t Micro$oft have some sort of policy about these people passing off Microsoft’s “artwork” as their own and accepting payment for it?
Exactly how happy would _you_ have been if someone had taken the piss with a service that you were providing. No-one in their right mind would expect to get the Mona Lisa for $50. The fact that your emails were not answered by an auto-responder is a pleasant surprise, but some poor bugger has probably just lost his bonus for this month because of you.
[...] Fifty Dollar Logos This is a very entertaining little piece about dealing with those crappy logo websites that promise cheap logos with unlimited revisions. Here. [...]
[...] he used 50dollarlogo.com to design a logo for his fake company (you can read the whole article here). For $50 dollars can you guess what his results were? This has me wondering about other sites [...]
Actually, when you look at the portfolio at 50dollarlogo.com, there are actually 2 or 3 design’s that are pretty good. But what they offer for cheeses of nazareth is terrible: 50 dollar for typing in the letters in a special font, and adding an ugly clipart to it…
Good thing though that they offer endless revisions. So you can make sure they DO have to work for those 50 bucks.
This reminds me of a bill a hosting company has sended to me once: creating sub-domain, 200 euro’s (thats over 250 dollars). That’s like 2 minutes of work!!!
Hilarious! And I totally agree about paying talented people. Our company recently hired a designer to create some logos for our new product. We haggled hard, but in the end I assure you that he was paid far more than $50. The result was a fairly simplistic set of logos, but they were exactly what was needed. Sure, they were only a few spheres and polygons, but they also incorporated the corporate logo in what I thought was a very clever way… And it’s the ability to see the design that’s worth the money, not the ability to click a few tools in Photoshop/Illustrator/Whatnot.
No company I ever work for will suffer a $50 logo.
That is a brilliant experiment. I hope people who want great logo designs for $50 have a chance to read this. Looking forward to what happens next.
Wish I would have read this BEFORE I decided to go with this company. It has now been a week since I got my “You will get your logo in 2 days” e-mail. I will never go with this company again. Thanks for the report.
Oh my god !!
That was so funny!!
It made me just lough and lough.
This is hilarious…and sad! Please keep us updated on the next phase.
[...] this, Cheeses of Nazareth commissioned the $50 logo and post their accounts of the story are here: http://www.160over90.com/blog/2009/02/17/the-50-dollar-logo-experiment/ Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Recompute: a closer look at the sustainable, [...]