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Spec Work and UK Logo Design

Logo Design Company London — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 17:04:58 +0000

If you have been looking into UK logo design, you have probably noticed that there are many websites offering spec work. At first glance, this seems like a good idea simply because of the bottom line. Spec work websites promise a logo at a bargain price, and as a bonus you get to approve the design before you pay. However, some deals aren’t as good as they might initially seem.

What Is Spec Work?

In short, spec work is exactly what it sounds like: work done on a speculative basis. In most modern cases, this is done through websites. Logo designers submit a logo to the business owner’s specifications, and the owner then chooses and pays for the one that they like the best. Many websites use this model but call it by another name, such as ‘crowdsourcing’ or ‘logo design contests’.

Is Spec Work Bad for Designers?

That depends on how you define ‘bad’. Logo designers that produce spec work must complete a large amount of logos in order to get paid for just one. This means that they must adopt cost effective and time effective practices. A designer who does mainly spec work might produce one hundred logos every day. This means that they will not put a lot of attention into any one design. They may use generic clip-art, borrow from other designers to the point of plagiarism, or even shamelessly copy. If you do the math, there is no way to make spec work into a career, no matter how talented you are.

This might be an acceptable deal for someone who has not invested time or money in their logo design career—that is, someone with no education or experience in graphic design. It might be especially attractive to people in the third world where exchange rates can make a small sum in the UK comparatively large. However, there is no way for a UK logo designer to make a living this way. Not only is spec work bad for designers, it is bad for the industry as a whole.

Is Spec Work Bad for Business Owners?

At first, spec work may seem like a good deal for UK business owners. Why pay for a logo until you see for yourself that it is right for you? However, logo design is about creating custom identities that will appeal to your unique community and customer base. The only way to accomplish this is to have a professional graphic designer work on your logo design—and to pay them a fair price for their time.

A professional logo designer won’t just draw a picture and call it a day. You will get a unique logo that will belong to you and no one else. It will include a colour palette and a font that will be an integral part of your brand. Most logo design companies also offer web design and stationery design services that can help you get a professional and well rounded brand rivalling those of the huge corporations you are competing against.

If you are planning for a successful future, it’s important to arm yourself with all of the right tools. A professional logo design and a carefully crafted brand identity are two of the tools that you need for success. When you choose anything less than an experienced UK professional, you are selling yourself and your small business short.

Crowdsourcing: Is It Right for Your Logo?

Logo Design Company London — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:13:18 +0000

With more and more crowdsourcing or logo design contest websites on the internet, many business people in the UK are wondering if this is the right way to get the logo design that they need. After all, it sounds like a win-win situation: you get logos from a variety of designers and pay for the one that is best for you. There are certainly pros and cons to crowdsourcing. Here are just a few:

Crowdsourcing gives unknown and less experienced designers a chance to hone their skills and ‘break in’ to professional design work.
Business owners can choose from a variety of designs.
Less time is involved.
Upfront costs often seem lower.

However, many logo designers would disagree about whether these advantages are as substantial as they might seem at first. While crowdsourcing definitely attracts less experienced designers without the education and/or experience to get a legitimate design job, it’s hard to see how this is an advantage for business owners. Further, while you certainly can choose from a variety of designs, many of these designs are sub-par and none of them were developed through the more brand-oriented process that a legitimate logo design agency will go through.

This brings us to the time consideration. Having a logo designed will certainly take some time, as you will have to explain what you need and what aspects of your company should be represented in your logo design. However, most logo design agencies have streamlined this process and now can determine your needs in a few short questions. While some crowdsourcing sites cost less, many actually cost more after listing fees and other costs are added in. Plus, you often will not be receiving the same calibre of logo. Which brings us to the drawbacks of crowdsourcing and logo design contests:

Less experienced and less professional designers.
In many cases, blatant plagiarism and unoriginal work.
Designers must work with no guarantee of pay.
Not much cheaper than cheaper than professional logo design.

If you want a logo design from someone without the training and experience needed to do the job professionally, you can probably find a friend to do it for free. The plagiarism found in crowdsourcing has proven to be a real issue, as many businesses end up having to start all over in the logo design process after their crowdsourced logo turns out to be copyrighted by someone else. All this trouble comes at very little savings, as most crowdsourcing sites cost almost as much or even more than a design from a professional design house.

Is a crowdsourced logo design right for your business? For the most part, the designs that come from these contests simply aren’t equal to those from a traditional design business. If you are looking for more than just a pretty picture, but instead a design that will represent your business, attract your target market, and increase sales, you should turn to a professional designer.

A Logo for Everything?

Logo Design Company London — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:44:53 +0000

Just when you thought there was a logo for everything… you find out that even school toilets will soon have one as well. The Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors Association (CPHVA) is supporting the concept of a new award to be given to schools that maintain clean and sanitary toilet facilities. This award, of course, will come with a logo mark that can be displayed to show parents, students, and the community the school’s dedication to cleanliness.

School loos are notoriously bad, with 160 of the schools in a recent study admitting to having unsanitary bathrooms. Other research seems to support this; forty per cent of students in secondary school believe their bathrooms are too dirty to use. Thirty eight per cent of girls of all ages will not use their school toilets because of cleanliness issues. If school toilets are really that bad, it could pose a public health issue for the millions of children all over the UK that use them almost every day.

Most people acknowledge the need for change in school toilet cleanliness, but few organizations have taken the time to demand better conditions—until now. The CPHVA aims to change this, partnering with British Toilet Association and the Schools Council UK. Together, these organizations are holding a campaign to improve school facilities known as the Bog Standard Campaign.

What’s in it for schools who want to participate? In addition to being able to use the logo of the campaign, signifying that they have acceptably tidy and well stocked toilets, schools that meet minimum standards will receive an award and a certificate of recognition. The standards are minimal, requiring that toilets be clean and in working order with adequate amounts of necessary supplies such as toilet tissue. We can only hope that schools all over the UK clean up their act enough to reach these most basic criteria.

If you think your local school meets these standards, it can go to the bog standards website and apply for the award. The logo design in question is rather simple, in an inclusive circular shape enclosing the well recognized icons of men’s and women’s toilets in the centre. The icons are pink and blue to further suggest the two genders. The white background is clean, which is definitely appropriate considering what the logo signifies, and the colours of the British flag are used as secondary colors in the writing. The text is rounded but maintains a serious feeling that befits the subject. In short, while this logo design is not exactly the most creative one we have seen, it clearly expresses what it represents without being crude or comical.

Whatever your business or organization, it has never been so important to have a logo design that is appropriate and completely unique. A logo works overtime when it comes to representing your company, telling everyone who views it exactly what you are all about. Even British school toilets are getting their own logo design—don’t be the last business left without one!

The Cost of a UK Logo Design?

Logo Design Company London — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:12:36 +0000

Many people think that professional logo design services are too expensive for the average small business, and we may have found the reason. The government in the UK has recently been publically criticised for overspending on logos, including a 60^th anniversary NHS logo modification that came to around £6,000 a digit.

IN this most famous example, adding the number sixty to the existing NHS medical logo cost £12,000, which covered the services of two designers for ten days total. If this seems excessive, you should know that this seems to be the going rate for government logos. An investigation by The Times found that paying exorbitant sums is actually quite average within government agencies. For instance, the HomeBuy programme underwent a £21,090 to change the colouring of their logo, just months before going defunct. HomeBuy isn’t alone; FERA, a government agency that regulates plants and bees, paid £153,522 for branding and logo design services. The cost of logo design and branding for just the three government departments surveyed came to more than one million pounds, although the government has departments in-house dedicated to these exact tasks that are trained to perform the same duties for a few hundred quid. The cost is even higher when you consider signage, stationary, and other rebranding costs.

When asked, most government agencies do not feel that the costs of branding and logo design are expensive. For instance, the NHS has stated that their anniversary logo was cost efficient because it prevented having each individual NHA office from create its own anniversary design.

If these numbers are scaring you away from logo design and branding, you can rest assured that these rates are not typical. Logo design and branding are certainly essential to a company’s success—or that of a government agency—but they don’t have to cost a fortune. In fact, we recently wrote a blog article comparing the costs of certain well-known logos, and cost didn’t seem to be a factor.

The real question is: how do government logos cost so much? In many cases, duplication is the real problem. A lack of planning sometimes means that the same logo design gets designed multiple times, which is not helpful to the overall brand. The Department for Communities and Local Government, founded in 2006, originally paid a well known design firm a very reasonable £3,830 for programme branding, which included a logo design. A few months later, it decided the brand was not developed enough and paid a second firm £24,765 for further branding services, which included a new logo design.

Chancellor Alistair Darling is promising higher efficiency and less waste in our government. If he plans to follow through, there are a few obvious places to start. It is not difficult to find talented logo design and branding professionals who can create highly attractive and effective brands and logos for companies like yours at a fraction of what the government seems to find a reasonable price. If you think these services may be right for your company, contact a logo designer today.

The Butchers Block Logo Design

Logo Design Company London — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:33:38 +0000

Today I wanted to analyze a logo design project that we worked on the whole of past month called the The Butchers Block logo design. The Butchers Block is a butchers company based in London serving meat to individual restaurants and small trendy bistro type pub chains. Competing against the likes of William Rose, Nigel Fredricks, Select, Rare, also located in and around London, The Butchers Block wanted a simple and smart logo with maybe a trendy cupcake company type feel.

Unfortunately, because of a printing mistake and some delays by our printer, the client canceled the whole project and requested a refund. So we retain copyrights to all the designs we came up and also registered the copyrights.

The client, to start with, did not want any traditional butcher stripey designs or cartoon characters. They were keen to see at least one design of a black outline of half a cow, pig and lamb with each animal divided up with white chalk like lines and writing naming the cuts of meat.

The London based Logo Design team set to work on this project and after an in-depth research into the butchers market segment and the target audience being the local restaurants and London bistros, we came up with a whole bunch of logo design concepts that ranging from the simple text based logo design to the more illustrative logo designs.

The clients felt that the top design is the closest but to what they had in mind wanted to have a black background with a outline of just a cow with the parts named as above. They also wanted the outline to be as though it is chalked on a blackboard and the font as if it was hand written with the name “The Butchers Block” then sitting under the design. The logo designers then went back to the drawing board and came back with a fresh set of logo design concepts as seen below.

The client was extremely happy with these new concepts and wrote: “Thank you for the lastest logos – we love number 3, its fab, thank you, just as we had pictured. …Thank you very much for all your hard work on this logo.” The client also wanted to see a version with the name “The Butchers Block” above the cow and with the parts be named in the font ‘radiohead’ or similar. We then provided the client with the first revision round as seen below.

Following from the above revision, we provided the client with 10 more revision rounds tweaking the design as the client saw fit and making sure all parts were anatomically correct and labelled properly. On the 11th revision round the client finalized the design as seen below.

Finally we went ahead and created the stationery design including business card, letterhead and envelope design as seen below.

Brand Facelifts: Do They Work?

Logo Design Company London — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:01:03 +0000

All over the UK, companies are giving their stores ‘facelifts’, changing the appearance of their locations and even product packaging without making other, more substantial changes to the brand and logo design. This trend has to make small business owners ask themselves whether this strategy can be right for them. How effective are these modifications? Do they pay off enough to make a significant difference in the future of a company?

Many British businesses seem to think that the answer is affirmative. Fast food giant Wimpy’s is spending a significant amount of their branding budget to remodel stores to resemble classic American diners, a move that they hope will make the entire dining experience more pleasant and memorable for patrons. Even US chains, such as McDonald’s, seem to be jumping on the bandwagon. This fast food restaurant business has spent an astounding £200 million in redoing store decor just over the space of a few years. All UK branches will be completely refurbished by 2011.

Why is store decoration and appearance such a vital part of marketing? With customers more and more identifying with brands rather than individual companies, traditional marketing methods no longer work with the same efficacy. Traditional advertising gets mixed up in the millions of marketing messages that flood life all over the UK. Designing a brand by creating a store that is a brick and mortar representation of it seems more authentic and improves the customer experience immensely. Just as important, these overhauls generate buzz and give communities something to talk about.

Sometimes this facelift is part of a whole new branding strategy. As the coffee giant loses business to smaller, local shops with ambience, Starbucks is leading the pack in using stores to present a new, modified brand. London’s ‘heritage’ store has been so successful that the coffee store plans to remodel all UK locations. In this case, the philosophy seems to be ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. In other words, if customers prefer the feeling of a small, local coffee shop, that is exactly the experience that Starbucks will give them.

One key drawback to this strategy is that it requires an immense input of time and energy. Few small businesses have the multi-million pound budgets that it would take to refurbish several locations. Even larger brands with the resources to support these changes find that it takes several years for the changes to become a major part of the public’s brand perception. However, if the cosmetic changes are accompanied by changes in other aspects of the brand, they may create significant momentum for the business in question.

The past has shown that cosmetic changes are most effective when they align more closely with brand values, or when the brand itself is modified to reflect the changes. While the physical appearance of your locations is certainly important to the perception of your brand, it should never be the only consideration. Other aspects, such as your service, the quality of your products and your logo design, weigh just as heavily in customers’ minds and hearts. Unlike beauty, branding is never skin deep.

British Pork Logos

Logo Design Company London — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:02:12 +0000

While much has been written about British Food Logos and British Restaurant Logos, very little has been written about three very important logos to recognize when purchasing British pork products. Because the UK has higher standards for animal care than most of the European Union, local meats tend to be more expensive but also of generally higher quality. In this case, logo design is performing a very powerful social purpose: helping people to identify more humanely and safely raised British meat by looking for one of the following three logos.

1. Red Tractor Logo Design

When you see this logo on a food, you will know that the animal in question was an Assured British Pig. The Red Tractor is an organisation that regularly inspects farms to ensure that the animals are being treated according to high standards of care and welfare. Be sure to look for the Union Jack in the logo; otherwise, the stamp could represent a farm that is not British but meets the same standards.

2. Quality Pork Standard Mark Logo Design

When you see this logo, you can rest assured that the pork in question meets UK standards for health and safety and that the animals were humanely treated. As with Red Tractor, the farms are inspected to ensure compliance. Again, look for the Union Jack to ensure that the pork indeed is of British origin. These icons, though a little weak on the impact side, are good enough to provide a distinguishing marks.

3. Freedom Food Logo Design

This logo is different from the others in that it lacks the classic British flag as an indicator of farm’s location. This is because the stamp logo design refers not to the animals place of origin, but to the fact that the animal was raised in a facility that has been inspected and approved by the RSPCA. This stamp assures quality and the wellbeing of the animal, but you will have to look harder to find exactly where the pork is from.

How important is buying British pork? Well known and respected chef Jamie Oliver has recently became an advocate of buying only British pork as a way of assuring that your pork is humanely and safely raised, something that is virtually guaranteed of British pork but lacking in many other countries. Looking for a logo design indicating the place of origin makes this an easy decision. Not only will you be making a decision that is better for the pig involved, you will be doing something great for UK farming communities as well.

While many people think of logo design as something frivolous, there is nothing frivolous about knowing important information about the brands you support. People increasingly look to logos as assurance of quality and other important values. Whether you are a business owner trying to communicate important information about your products or a consumer deciding which brand of bacon to buy, logo design is an important tool when making choices in a world that seems to contain an infinite number or them. Think of it as a language, one that is very important for success in London and all over the UK.

Cosmetic Logos Get Exposure through Tutorials

Logo Design Company London — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:55:51 +0000

Nothing is as important to a beauty brand as public image. Because the business is basically selling a certain look, all visual parts of the brand must be en pointe. However, traditional marketing techniques are not always successful with this fickle, image conscious market. This means that beauty brands in London and the UK must find new and exciting ways to get their brand and their beauty logo design in the public eye.

Popular cosmetic brands Stila and Dior have found success using video sharing giant Youtube as a marketing venue. The brand offers tutorials on how to apply different products to achieve specific looks. This gives consumers better results from the brand’s products, making them more likely to become repeat customers. Moreover, a customer who accesses a video to find out how to use a particular product will be introduced to new and exciting makeup lines that complete the look, increasing the number of items sold. Youtube is such a hot platform that many of its more popular posters can become overnight celebrities, showing the possibilities that the website offers.

A welcome side effect of offering tutorials to market makeup is that it makes the brand appear to be an expert in the field. They are not just a company offering products, but teachers and mentors in the use of the products. People viewing the tutorials will view the brand as a professional choice that gets professional quality results. If the video tutorial in question is sensibly branded, the brand and the logo design will be getting exposure with every single view. This differentiates the brand in question from the many others on the UK market.

Makeup giant Stila decided to take this tutorial based marketing scheme to another level with the Makeup Player. Users can dock their iPhone in this makeup kit and immediately access tutorials and exciting new options for using the makeup in the kit. Because the kit includes the products needed for the basic tutorials, customers are able to get a very satisfying result while also being encouraged to try new Stila Products. This is very complimentary to the ultra-modern, savvy Stila brand and logo design.

Creating and offering these types of experiences can be expensive for newer companies with smaller marketing and development budgets, but there are certainly lower priced options. Offering tutorials through Youtube, as discussed above, is completely free and can offer a lot of exposure for the amount of time investment.

All makeup buyers want to achieve a certain look, so giving them the knowledge and tools needed to achieve that look will build brand loyalty while encouraging customers to make more purchases. This option is so low cost that companies can introduce new looks on a regular basis, gaining a following in these social media sites while offering their brand more exposure and more relevant exposure than any other option. If you are looking for new ways to market your brand and get more exposure for your logo design, social media and other free options offer a lower cost and more relevant way to market your makeup brand.

Logo Design Basics

Logo Design Company London — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:39:44 +0000

Having a logo designed for your business can feel like a confusing and overly complicated issue. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Going through the logo design process can be simple if you keep the following factors in mind.

What are you trying to say? When someone sees your logo, they should be able to identify exactly what you are trying to say. Whether this is information about your company or an appeal to emotion, your logo can say anything when it is designed by a professional who understands the language of graphic design. Your customers will feel drawn in by a logo that speaks to them and turned off by one that gives the wrong message. The simpler your message, the more successful it is likely to be, so try to condense all of your ideas into a few words. It is crucial that you know what you are trying to say before entering the next stages of the logo design process.

What colours, ideas, and themes relate best to my message? While your logo designer will definitely have ideas about this, no one understands your brand as well as you do. If a certain image or a particular colour truly speak to you, it is highly possible that your designer can make them part of your logo design.

A flexible logo is the most successful. This is sometimes the hardest thing for new business owners to understand about logo design. You spend a great deal of time choosing colours only to be reminded that the logo will often be seen in black and white, and therefore should be designed to maintain its power without colour. Similarly, the logo should also be scalable—that is, it should look equally attractive when blown up very large and shrunk down to a small size. This will allow you to use the logo design in the wide variety of situations that come up when managing a business in the UK.

Trust your designer. Business owners always have an idea of how their logo design should look, and this should absolutely be shared with your logo designer. However, your designer understands the basic principles of logo design and has the responsibility of making sure your logo ultimately works. Share your preferences, but be open to new ideas and allow your designer to follow their own instincts. You have nothing to lose from giving new ideas a chance, but a lot can be lost if your logo design isn’t as good as it possibly can be.

Live up to your promise. Your logo design ultimately will be making a promise to the consumer, of a certain type of product, service, and price range. If a customer feels that you do not live up to your promises, they will not be likely to return. If, on the other hand, their shopping experience is congruent with your brand, they will be likely to return and even to talk about your company to others. In London and the UK, word of mouth buzz is the best advertising available.

Another Olympic Logo—For Better or Worse

Logo Design Company London — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:27:13 +0000

Russia has at last unveiled the logo for the 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in Sochi. After the controversy over the London 2012 Olympics logo, many were watching to see if bad sports logo design was becoming a worldwide trend. The logo is the first Olympic logo to feature a web address, an obvious appeal to the younger, digital generation.

The logo can hardly be called unprofessional. It was designed with a branding consultant as well as an entire brand council appointed by the Sochi 2014 organizers. While the logo appears very plain, it actually has several aspects designed to create a brand for the 2014 Olympic Games.

First, the word Sochi is mirrored by the numbers 2014, which represents Sochi’s reputation as the place where the mountains meet the sea. If you look at the ‘hi’ that ends the word Sochi and the 14, they are drawn to almost perfectly reflect each other. This adds yet more visual interest. The ‘.ru’ and the Olympic rings are secondary to this, placed on the right side so as not to detract from the image. While many object to this marginalisation of the classic Olympic image, it nonetheless is highly visible as the only splash of non-blue colour in the logo.

While the letters seem plain, they are reminiscent of Russian constructivism, a movement that continues to influence the nation’s aesthetic sense. The letters are also rounded, which together with the all lower case lettering creates an informal, inclusive image that will invite people to visit the country. The blue is similar to the blues used in the Russian flag as well as the Olympic rings, tying the event into both its host company and the tradition behind the Games. This blue is calming while being reminiscent of both the mountains and the sea, the two images that the designers are trying to invoke.

Many people feel that this is yet another ugly and inappropriate Olympic logo design following the dismal reception of ours, but as you can see the Sochi 2014 image actually ties into modern Russia in several ways. This is not just a beautiful setting for the 2014 Winter Olympics, but a chance for modern Russia to showcase its strengths in a very global setting.

In the end, the way to judge an Olympic logo’s resonance is the sales of branded products. In this case, sales have only just begun, so we will have no way of seeing how young people feel about the attractiveness of this logo. On the other hand, the London Olympic logo has been selling at a steady pace despite its lack of public favour. Perhaps this is no longer an appropriate barometer; nonetheless, Russia is likely hoping that their economy is bolstered by hordes of tourists buying bag upon bag of branded souvenirs.

What do you think about the Sochi 2014 Olympic logo? Is it better or worse than the London one? Will you be buying a Sochi 2014 t-shirt with the new logo?