As a former visual/graphic designer, now a stay-at-home father, I have to chime in on this. I've done branding and identity work for some very large companies (e.g. The Coca-Cola Company) so I can tell you that the logo is a very important part of any business strategy.
First, I'm surprised how little respect design gets in the tech industry and from programmers. Good design can sell a poor product or inform consumers about a superior product. It can drastically reduce support costs (UI design) or encourage consumers to pay a little more for a product (i.e. The Apple "Tax"). Design is important to the overall success of most business ventures and should be budgeted for and planned for accordingly.
These logo (I'll be nice here) marketplaces are better than design-it-yourself or no design at all in most cases. But you get what you pay for. Many of the designs will come from students that have little to no experience and an incomplete grasp of the principles of design. Most of the rest will come from international locales far away with different cultural identities and little understanding of yours. After all, a logo is not just something attractive, it communicates a message visually.
What you will get in abundance is poorly thought-out concepts, logos stolen or similar to others and rushed work with a total disregard to overall quality. Does your logo need to be legible from far away or at small sizes? They probably didn't account for that. Some of these logos will land you in court (trademark/copyright violations) and I guarantee the guy that "designed" it for you on these website will disappear.
Bottom line: These logos are great for a placeholder until you can afford a designer, until your product grows or launches or for presentations to investors, etc.
I'm a designer (sorta) and have done a mess of small biz design consulting in my day, and I will tell you that you decidedly do NOT get what you pay for.
I've seen $50k logos that were pretty ineffective. We've all seen HUGE branding campaigns fall face first. We've also seen cheap/free logos turn into icons (Google, Yahoo, Nike).
The difference in VALUE between a $99 logo here (or designed by a student designer abroad) and a $30,000 logo designed by a seasoned pro is NOT $29,000 for 99.9% of companies.
Interestingly enough-- this is true for a lot of coding tasks, too. Most web apps are simple CRUD apps that will never need to scale and don't really merit "rockstar" talent.
I don't think you need to sell anyone here on the value of good UX design and "good enough" graphic design. But GREAT graphic design clearly isn't a major factor in winning on the web. Don't believe me? Judged entirely on composition alone (i.e. ignoring their fame and success) how many of these sites would you be proud to have in your graphic design portfolio?
http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US
Coca Cola overspends and has custom everything. There are industry verticals that absolutely require couture design, including print, large-scale retail, and mass market food products. But most companies aren't in those verticals.
A 200 person asset management firm doesn't need couture design. They need competant bespoke tailoring. Same goes for a chain of dental offices, a regional law firm, an HVAC company, and most enterprise software companies.
Most businesses shouldn't be spending the kind of money Coke spends on a one-off project. Not for their entire company.
Your concerns about stolen logos are valid (like I said earlier, saw that happen). But those same concerns exist at the lower end of the custom "consultatative" design market as well. And the fact is, most of the logos on the 99designs logo market aren't stolen. They're just derivative and boring. Which is fine.
If you sell a million bottle of cola a day with your logo on it, how much extra per logo impression are you paying between a 50$ and 50K$ logo?
I agree with your later points, but saying overspends here "Coca Cola overspends and has custom everything." is wrong and inconsitent with what you sya later.
Is 99designs yours? Do you own or work for a similar company? You seem to be defending these practices beyond that of a disinterested observer.
Yes, Coca-Cola spends a lot of money. I've seen plenty of projects where they've wasted it. That's not the point and this isn't about that particular company.
I'm not sure where this "couture" stuff comes from, nobody speaks that way outside the fashion industry. Those of us in the design industry make a point to design a logo that is appropriate to the client.
Which brings me to another point: communication. It doesn't exist in any realistic form in 99designs or any of their competition. A one-on-one relationship with a designer can steer the client away from trends and copy-cat design and towards something long-lasting, professional, appropriate and even affordable (how many of your can afford full 4-color offset for everything you produce including large-scale signage?). Professional design has little to do with being snotty or "couture." You wouldn't build your building without an architect and you shouldn't build your brand without a designer. A 1-person company (I've owned a few) can benefit greatly from a designer consulting on the identity.
When you think of design: think function. Don't focus on the form. Yes, a tremendous part of our education and experience is in creating something beautiful, efficient and visually engaging. But just as much is put in to something function correctly. I've saved clients thousands of dollars by designing materials to be more efficient.
If cost is a concern, go directly to the designer. Here's a little secret: creative directors don't really do shit. Designers come up with the ideas, create the iterations and execute them. Many design agencies pay their designers around $30/hour with few benefits while they charge $200+/hour. Find a designer you like (portfolios and references) and see if they can fit your budget.
Finally: If you can't afford a few hundred for a logo then you don't really have a business do you? It takes money to make money. If that kind of investment in your business isn't possible then you're either not serious or you're not going to make it anyway.
The "couture"/"bespoke" thing is a just a metaphor I introduced on this thread. I'm trying to communicate about the middle ground that exists between "consultative" design (where I meet with you for several hours, tell you about my spirit animal and the colors most associated with my industry segment, and then previous several stages of rough comps before OK'ing a final design) and off-the-shelf competant samey design.
Let's agree on one thing: nobody wants total crap. Nobody wants a beveled logotype set in Arial with a lens flare behind it. That quality of design exists and it is bad and most companies cannot get away with it: it makes them look unprofessional.
But then let me suggest --- controversially, I know --- that most companies don't want high-end design either. They aren't particularly well-served by poise and restraint. They don't need to communicate a feeling or mood outside of "we are the established, trustworthy financial services in this office park".
What they need to do is take one of a couple proven, shopworn concepts off the rack and have it tailored to their business. They don't need to think about it. They don't need to waste weeks of time looking at roughs and having internal contests to pick a winner. They can get away with looking at a book for 5 minutes, saying "that one!", and getting on with their lives.
(The rest of it: not only do I not own 99designs or a competing spec work firm, but I actually don't use spec designers at all; we contract with local designers, and we do the whole consultative design dance --- we're geeky that way, and this is a luxury we give ourselves. But we don't kid ourselves about the business value of that luxury.)
I find the whole "spirit animals" B.S. a little passive-aggressive and quite offensive. That has nothing to do with the effect of design on business goals. And if you have a problem with your designer dragging things on then find somebody else.
I have nothing else to say to you. I've made the value of design, real design, quite clear. If you don't understand that value, it's a personal problem.
Design is valuable, but that value is of significantly different importance depending on the businesses. For some business, it's a key part of what they do. For others, it's just a checklist item. For a few, professional design would probably be harmful. (Example: The Drudge Report)
Can we agree that it's possible for a start-up to buy more office space than it needs, and that would be a waste of money? Is it also possible to buy more logo than you need? Wouldn't that be a waste of money too?
Larger companies can (and should) shell out for design, but a smaller company should be spending a much smaller amount. They don't need a 150 page branding and style guide, they just need a logo for the top of the newsletter so they can present an image that's proportional to the size of their business.
Yeah. I did web development before I went to school for design so I've seen both sides. I even took a CompTIA A+ course at one point and run Ubuntu on my Mac.
Developers and designers both have the same anal-retentive tendencies, this need for organization and perfection that we should get along so much better. And quite often we have to work together.
I'm guessing a lot of the hate comes from developers having to work with "those" designers: the ones that should have just become an artist/painter instead of designer. That's a whole different story.
Maybe, and that's a good point, but there's also something to be said about working with "brand designers" instead of good graphic designers. Some of the inefficiency probably does come from working with frustrated artists, but some of it is also classic consulting rustproofing.
You've noticed I've been especially loud on this thread. You're right. The thing that gets me going about designers, apart from the fact that I geek out on it, is that I help run a consulting company and I'm pretty attuned to the consulting business model. I think a lot of "brand design"-types oversell services that many or even most companies don't need.
All you're arguments are absolutely valid and true, but I don't think anyone isn't aware of them. Everyone knows design sells products, it's not about that.
I've done a bunch of designwork, including logos, for very small-scale projects like day-care centers, local sports organizations and so forth, and I can tell you they would be soo much better off just buying something they like from this place.
The marketplace isn't intended for Apple or Coca-Cola and any company understands the differences. No day-care center, no matter how stupid you think they are, pretend like they're getting the same for 99 bucks as they are with a professional design-firm. They don't want a professional design, they want something to stick on their letterhead for the annual newsletter.
These kinds of sites aren't competition to real designers, they offload crap-designers like me who would rather code.
Do you see a trend of logos becoming less important to a company's success in the past decade, as focus turns online and brand becomes more of a conversation? Consider the logos of Google, Facebook, eBay. Look at that completely generic Y up in the left corner. Is the TechCrunch logo lighting your world on fire? Ustream's? YouTube? I dare you to tell me that YouTube logo is a shining example of design success. They can hardly even make a favicon of it.
I'm not saying that a logo has no importance, but as the lipstick and makeup of brands becomes more transparent and users are intent on knowing companies on a deeper level, I do see the traditional sense of brand styleguides diminishing, and while sites like CraigsList and reddit and TripAdvisor and OpenTable are finding phenomenal success despite amateur logos, I begin to question their importance more and more.
Eh, actually, I think that most of the logos you cite are fairly unique, and even their amateurish style added something. I would argue that a memorable, unique and ugly logo is worth quite a bit more than a perfect, beautiful and forgettably generic logo.
I had this discussion with chris a while back... he came up with a rather nice web 2.0 pastel logo for prgmr.com. I stuck with figlet. His argument was that a generic logo made people more comfortable, while I thought that the 'rounded corners' made me look like a knockoff. I'm pretty invested in my brand; like me or hate me, I want you to remember me.
First, I'm surprised how little respect design gets in the tech industry and from programmers. Good design can sell a poor product or inform consumers about a superior product. It can drastically reduce support costs (UI design) or encourage consumers to pay a little more for a product (i.e. The Apple "Tax"). Design is important to the overall success of most business ventures and should be budgeted for and planned for accordingly.
These logo (I'll be nice here) marketplaces are better than design-it-yourself or no design at all in most cases. But you get what you pay for. Many of the designs will come from students that have little to no experience and an incomplete grasp of the principles of design. Most of the rest will come from international locales far away with different cultural identities and little understanding of yours. After all, a logo is not just something attractive, it communicates a message visually.
What you will get in abundance is poorly thought-out concepts, logos stolen or similar to others and rushed work with a total disregard to overall quality. Does your logo need to be legible from far away or at small sizes? They probably didn't account for that. Some of these logos will land you in court (trademark/copyright violations) and I guarantee the guy that "designed" it for you on these website will disappear.
Bottom line: These logos are great for a placeholder until you can afford a designer, until your product grows or launches or for presentations to investors, etc.