Ask HN: How to get a Logo/ Corporate Designs in 2021?

29 points by watrami 5 years ago | 42 comments

I know this has been asked plenty times before but most of these threads seem to be quite old. So hear me out.

I am the founder of a cyber security startup in Germany and we are at a point where our website is getting more and more traffic and customers start to ask for business cards to refer our services to other businesses. Soon our web app with new services will launch and it just doesn't have any proper design guidelines yet. Currently the logo is just the name in Roboto font and all presentations and documents are just plain text without any proper corporate design.

I have been doing some research and it seems like there is three main contenders for crowd sourced logo designs:

- fiverr - 99designs - designcrowd

But HN seems to have a bad opinion about each of these platforms. Regarding the covid situation I'd also much rather pay a creative person directly without intermediaries taking a 20% cut. But the problem stands on where to find them.

So here's my question: Where do you people get your Logo and Corporate Designs these days?

artembugara 5 years ago |

I am in a similar situation as you are. Our logo is also just a name written in Roboto font [1]

It’s enough. We also don’t have any illustrations on our website. Just text that explains our value proposition.

How many logos do you know? Apple, Google, Uber. Logos a damn hard.

How many companies do I know which I do not remember a logo? Stripe, Segment, etc. billion dollars companies which I know without a logo even though I might use them every day.

So, to just sum it up. You don’t need a logo, or design guidelines until you’re big enough that you can easily spend $10-50k to shape your brand — because that’s how much it usually cost for a good branding. Everything else will most likely be a waste of money, and more importantly waste of your time.

[1] https://newscatcherapi.com/

omalamo 5 years ago | |

I agree with you, but not fully: if there is no need or budget, then yes, a brand may not be a 1st priority. But in my experience as a designer, an effective brand will be a necessary ingredient to grow, as this is an expectation for a lot of people.

Regarding your brand: You cannot not communicate. What I saw in [1] example it's called a "no-brand" aesthetics: it's very minimalist and very neutral. And to be fair, I like it.

rojcyk 5 years ago | |

Looking at your website, I think the logo is perfectly fine for your target customer. I would just slightly adjusted the kerning and maybe used the same casing you have in the page title but other than it is def good enough!

But I don't think you need to spend as much for the branding as you suggest. I did a couple of branding projects for around $5K each, and that consisted of a logo, palette and typography. That is mostly enough for startups with a little bit of cash flow just getting out of the side-project phase.

denysvitali 5 years ago | |

It's also true that focusing solely on the logo and forgetting about what matter the most (the services offered by the company) is probably wrong. I like your approach - start simple and the update the logo afterwards, if you really point towards marketing.

This obviously depends on which area you're targeting, but I would say that for most of the business this is true :)

In any case, a logo isn't really written in stone, and they get refreshed after a couple of years.

machinelabo 5 years ago | |

Logomark and Logotype are two aspects of Logos. Some companies decide to do both, some only one.

Regardless, the purpose of a logo is to discern and identify amongst thousands of other similar looking logos. I lean towards Logomarks (Nike, Apple, Starbucks) and less towards (Stripe, CocaCola, Kellogs).

I recommend getting a logomark + logotype designed by a professional graphics designer.

omalamo 5 years ago |

5-year designer (1st) and front-end developer (2nd) here.

Those platforms are ok, but they won't do the work needed for a good brand that will project the company business values to its customers.

I just started a small studio in my hometown because I was tired of working for someone that only sees design for its face value. And it turns out that often the people needed a something new for a 1-year brand. This reminds me of "A poor's man pay twice".

People mistake the water for the river. In this analogy, design is the river: it's _how_ it works (perception, psychology, pragmatism), more than _what_ it is (images, colors, typography). Words only have sense because of their character arrangement, otherwise they have little meaning. Same with the design.

And to be fair, sometimes that may not be needed. To sum up, I would advise you to contact a couple of proper design studios and discuss your needs and budget. You'll be better served.

Paul_S 5 years ago |

You can ask my wife, she's a children's book illustrator but she's done quite a few of them yulei.co.uk and she's now looking for work in corporate and has time for commissions.

Obviously I can vouch for her and she's done a couple for the corpo I work for, not sure they're on her website but I'm sure she can show you them on request.

Edit: She's telling me that she keeps her behance.net/mozyl more up to date.

tumidpandora 5 years ago | |

Thanks, that looks great. Curious, what tools does she use to create the illustrations for Children's books, if you don't mind sharing?

denysvitali 5 years ago | |

I really like those illustrations on Behance! Send my compliments to her!

asyncscrum 5 years ago |

I just used https://www.logology.co/ the other day for a side project. Holy smokes, I completed a really unique survey about my site, think 'if your company we're a movie which of these would it be.'

After this survey I got maybe 50 logo variants that were all good. Various legit 2-color combos provided. Packages ranged from $39 for a PNG logo to like $79+ for vectors and complete brand guidelines. I'm rarely impressed nowadays but the entire process including onboarding email flow was tight.

songshuu 5 years ago |

You could use fiverr and a generational model.

generation 1 : write a brief 5 designers @ $5 select your favorite design (be sure to get some outside human perspectives)

generation 2 : modify brief based on what you learned in generation 1. what you liked and didn't like. include the winning design from generation 1 as an inspiration and say you'd like to improve it 5 designers @ $5

for $50 you get 10 designs and have iterated twice

you can repeat this process until you're satisfied.

nbzso 5 years ago |

As a long time designer my advice is to focus on your company core business. The value of professional corporate identity design is immense and expensive. To shape a brand the designer must do deep research and come with a concept of uniqueness that will serve your company longterm. This cannot be accomplished only with graphical representation that is "cool", "trendy" or "something that we like". It must have meaning beyond the "current trends". So when you have enough ROI, you can find someone with proven record and invest in your brand. Corporate design is most difficult thing when done correctly.

gh2058 5 years ago | |

The problem is, beyond investing a Fiverr-sized amount, there is almost never enough ROI in enhancing identity design vs creating functional product or UI communication improvements. And when there's no effective ROI for most tech companies, it's a vain and user-hostile to spend extra time or money on corporate identity, beyond a reasonable minimum.

Similarly, most businesses do fine with basic Wordpress templates... some just find that out after a research and development period that wastes immense resources. Logos are kind of the same deal. You don't need a special one unless you're micro-optimizing and can directly drive revenue with it, just a functional and professional one. Very few companies need immense research on their logotypes, unless they're undertaking something like Amazon's "smile" corporate identity shift, where revenue can truly be at risk.

nbzso 5 years ago | | |

Logo design != Corporate identity. If you have a need to be recognised as a brand, and don't have sufficient funds, focus on brand name and high quality copy for your products.

patrulo 5 years ago |

I run a UX/UI & branding studio focusing on early stage companies. If you're just looking for a simple, aesthetically pleasing word mark (without any strategy / design system work), and are willing to wait until we have a designer benched, I'm happy to help on the house. (ps@tonik.pl)

Alternatively, I'd recommend going through Dribbble, there's a ton of quality designers there, although the price points will be significantly higher compared to designers from fiverr, and 99designs.

I also recommend going through the "Google Branding Sprint" exercise as a first step, and then treating the outcome as a brief for whoever you end up hiring.

mattmanser 5 years ago |

It's not that hard to get a local designer do you a full set of designs, with some basic brand guidelines for €3-5k.

I've not done it myself but several clients have. The brand guidelines I got from them, which I then used to style the app of the client, often included a website mockup, with the option of the client paying more for a full design.

Not always the greatest UX though, that's a bit more specialized I think.

As for finding them, ask your local startup groups. There's usually a bunch of them attending those sort of meetups, or people who would recommend someone.

II2II 5 years ago |

> I am the founder of a cyber security startup in Germany and we are at a point where our website is getting more and more traffic and customers start to ask for business cards to refer our services to other businesses.

This statement leads me to believe that you are primarily handling local business clients, in which case I would suggest looking for a designer in your area who is familiar with the professional standards of your region. The end result needs to reflect your client's expectations so they have confidence in your services rather than establishing a generic brand.

The best approach is to ask people you know who they used. If that fails, contact local print houses and web design firms and ask to look at their portfolio.

ThePhysicist 5 years ago |

Find a good local designer that you trust, pay them enough and iterate with them. Stay away from 99designs or similar services, you'll often get "cookie cutter" designs / logos that the designer copy & pasted from other sites.

If you like I can make an intro to our designer (https://kiprotect.com, page with color version of logo: https://kiprotect.com/solutions/anonymization) based in Berlin, we were quite happy with her work. My contact data is on the website.

uzakov 5 years ago | |

What is wrong, besides legal side of things, with "cookie cutter" designs? Majority of people aren't creating the next unicorn I would think

ThePhysicist 5 years ago | | |

Well it's not great if you discover a few years later that your logo is basically a copy of an existing one that might be trademarked. I had only bad experiences with people from 99designs, UpWork & Co., often designers straight out lie to you about their portfolio and work experience. I had the same experience with most agencies from East Europe, they have great showcases and promise good design but they often deliver low-quality results (in addition of demanding upfront payment). So personally I would never use such services again as I burned too much money through them. We have a saying in Germany that applies quite well to buying design services: If you buy cheap you'll buy twice.

benjaminjosephw 5 years ago |

I used a design contest site (99designs) a little while ago and now really regret it. The design work was great but supporting this model means being complicit in moving the industry towards a terrible set of circumstances for the designers themselves.

How about finding someone's portfolio you like on Dribbble[0] and working with them directly? There's a lot of cool work on display over there and you get to support someone's craft if you go down this route.

[0] - https://dribbble.com/

rojcyk 5 years ago | |

I know we should refrain from comment's like these, but thank you!

I'm fortunate enough to have big enough clientele where word of mouth does most of the marketing for me. But platforms like 99designs do come up often during price negotiation and it makes some of the discussions really difficult.

sixhobbits 5 years ago |

I used the "design" package from Brandmark[0] for my startup Ritza[1]. It auto generates a bunch of concepts and you can choose one and then it gives you various logos, business cards, ppt presentations, etc.

Was expecting to just use it to launch and then get a professional designer once we had revenue but so far I've just kept it and I'm pretty happy.

[0] https://brandmark.io/pricing/

[1] https://ritza.co

machinelabo 5 years ago |

Don't Google and disregard all advice here - find a good graphics designer at your local artist directory, college or club. Here in USA, it is AIGA and a number of colleges. Find competitions or contests for graphcis design where they can display their work. Find people this way and you will have a better time than buying some stupid crap for $5.

benlumen 5 years ago |

I’m not sure why HN would have a bad opinion of Fiverr. It’s not like Fiverr itself is the source of logos - it would depend on who you choose. It’s been a while, but I’ve only ever had good experiences.

rashivkp 5 years ago |

Suggestion : One of my friend is active at behance https://www.behance.net/j3world

denysvitali 5 years ago | |

Simple yet very effectives logos! I like them!

ageitgey 5 years ago |

If you have limited design needs and a small but actual budget, you can hire a designer on Upwork at a normal western hourly rate to design your logos and collateral.

You'll need to wade through proposals to find someone good, but this worked really well for us.

I don't recommend fiverr or the like. When you pay almost nothing, it's too likely that you will get plagiarized designs. Pay someone for a day or two of real work. It's worth it for your company.

jayfk 5 years ago |

I’ve been working on security related stuff from Germany, too.

You don’t have any contact info in your bio. Would love to connect, just send me an email at jannis at gebauer.dev.

marshallbananas 5 years ago |

Check out www.designjoy.co. They do all kinds of design (including logo, website, business cards, etc.) and have a very interesting business model that might fit your needs.

I am not affiliated with them in any way but it's the first thing that came to mind because I read a lot about their success as the founder often shares his/hers experience of building a design agency on IndieHackers.

iamlolz 5 years ago |

I ran into this problem yesterday trying to find a frontend dev to implement a magento 2 design. I tried the usual places and even tried to hunt someone on dribbble but none of them brought up anyone with those two filters.

juangacovas 5 years ago |

I have good experiences with Logo Design offers at https://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=56

FabianBeiner 5 years ago |

Why don't you ask your personal network? Graphic designers are not that rare, I'm pretty certain that you'll get some personal recommendations quickly.

j3th9n 5 years ago |

Maybe you like the style of my brother: https://thevectormonkeys.nl

denysvitali 5 years ago | |

It's a great style indeed! I wonder why I don't get to see all of these fancy logo designs that are in this thread more often around me

zebnyc 5 years ago |

If you want a placeholder logo, you could search for a logo maker. Looks like there are many options for even generating a logo from text.

revicon 5 years ago |

I've used 99 designs twice in the past, had good results both times. Curious where it's fallen down for other folks.

johnx123-up 5 years ago |

Around 2 years ago, worked with cssilize for some PSD conversion. They created a logo for free. It was kinda OK for me.

lathiat 5 years ago |

99designs worked great for my non profit. For a relatively affordable price you got quite a few good options.

tristanperry 5 years ago |

Fiverr, order with someone who does 2 or 3 concepts.

Heck, order from two different people - each of whom do 2 or 3 concepts.

Less than $50 for a range of choice.

Simple.

sillycube 5 years ago |

You can also find a designer on dribbble or behance. But it takes time since some of them are not interested or busy. The overall design quality is good for these 2 platforms.

Some bad fiverr designers copy the previous work from other good designers. So it might not be trustworthy. You have to do some reference checks.

I also hired a uk designer on a subreddit for hire. Price and quality are ok. Just not excellent