Recently I re-discovered LogoTournament to be a very innovative use of the web’s global reach – and of online social communities.

If you are not familiar with LogoTournament the site provides business owners with on-demand communication and branding services in the form of a logo design contest from a community of graphic designers from all over the world. If you are shopping for a logo design on a budget, this might be a site for you.

Worldwide Talent Pool

As a communications professional I have consulted with many clients that wanted custom corporate identity work. I’ve led design teams and worked with highly qualified designers over weeks just to get the right logo for some clients and often to tune of thousands of dollars in concept development and refinement. Logos are a very important and highly visible corporate communications project (no pun intended) that requires a specific skill set in a designer. Recently, I was working on my own social media business model called EasyPeezy that needed a nice logo. But in this case, I decided to tap into a design community beyond that of Toronto:  I thought why not try LogoTournament?

The competition brings talent to your business opportunity from all of over the globe. I viewed several of the designers online portfolios and was quite surprised at some stunning design work. The portfolios and artists are ranked in a community of about 9,000. As the logo competition progresses, the business owner ranks the submissions using a nicely developed drag-and-drop interface, that allows for lots of last minute, top-of-mind decisions in placing the various work in just the right order to select a winning design.

Quantity VS Quality

LogoTournament is a Canadian-owned site with a straight forward process that requires the business owner to set a contest prize and time frame for the competition (minimum of $250 and up to 7 days.) This includes a fee to LogoTournament of $50. You can elect to have a public or private competition (an additional $50) just in case you are working on a top secret project. With the contest parameters established you must then submit a brief to describe your business including your look and feel requirements. The site provides a concise questionnaire to give the artists the basic information necessary to submit fully realized design concepts. Should the contest not work out and you don’t get 30 unique designs, you can withdraw with a refund.

You can drag and drop the entries to rank them in priority.

And the Winner Is…

The question you probably want to know is “did I get the quality of design – with a 155+ entries – for the money and effort? “The answer is a qualified yes. Here’s why: I got to tap into a global talent pool and give an design opportunity to individuals I would never normally have had access to. Sure I could have sourced a designer locally, but why not open up the opportunity? In the end I conversed with many different designers from Italy, USA, Canada, South East Asia and Latin America and many were very accommodating, professional and talented.

I realize this concept (not to mention pricing and volume delivery) will certainly aggravate designers out there. But there a very interesting and viable option for graphic design here. If you are a looking for a logo design I would always suggest finding a qualified designer that you can work one-on-one with that brings experience and skill for the budget you have. However, if you have some design development knowledge and perhaps a limited budget you might want to consider this option. If you like the idea of a dozen different graphic viewpoints of your business identity, then you will love this service.

Logo Tournament – The Key Points

• Try to place ranked entries evenly – positioning the designers evenly makes for a better and more motivating competition
• Check all the portfolios to get some insight into the style of the contestant designers
• Consider the file format you will need – and make sure you specify this
  
• Some designers are in far-flung time zones; they need to be advised in time for the contest deadline
• It’s a bit like e-Bay – you will get last minute design submissions (often that copy the best attributes of the highest ranked work)

By coincidence I ended up selecting a Canadian designer called Michael Snooks (www.snooksdesign.com) from the east coast as the contest winner. The winning design had to look friendly and professional and work for a WordPress blog, Twitter and Facebook formats. He managed to capture a friendly, semi-retro vibe and did not resort to the cool “techy” trends that most social media sites designs seem to default to.

Ranked 1st place, second and third submissions.