Open sourcing your logo
OK, so it's not really open source. But it's all about community, and how a network is better than a single company writing code (or whatever).
The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported [Subscription required] on LogoWorks, a Utah-based company that I've known about for some time, but never got around to blogging. Until now.
LogoWorks employs a network of freelance graphic design artists to competitively bid for and create logos for end users (mostly SME in size). The article gives an example of a job, and why the community approach yields benefits:
The price was low, in part, because the designers were all free-lancers spread across the country working on their own computers, many at home, and didn't require office space or health benefits. They completed their jobs based on [the customer's] written specs, which they received online, never meeting or directly speaking to the client. When the sample logos were done, designers simply uploaded their work for his critique.... [T]he client ... knew only that he got a half-dozen logo options at a fraction of what he'd previously paid.This obviously has close corollaries in the open source world. Yet I wonder why more open source companies haven't deployed a similar payment scheme? Ximian (now Novell) was an early innovator of the bounty system, but it strikes me that bounties may not go far enough in blending a company with its community.
"It democratizes services for small businesses," says Morgan Lynch, LogoWorks' founder and CEO. "If you can get two people to work on a project and then throw one away, why not do it?"
LogoWorks' operational structure illustrates just how dramatically the Internet has eased the entry and lowered the operational costs for many small businesses. With a Java-based software platform that the company spent $2 million developing, LogoWorks now manages some 200 free-lance designers working anywhere in the world at any hour.
Because nearly all business is conducted online and via the telephone, the corporate headquarters can be based in Lindon, Utah, where real-estate prices and the cost of living are lower than in major design metropolises. Those savings enable the company to offer its services to other businesses at a fraction of the cost they might otherwise have paid. Some 90% of its clients are small firms, although the company has done work for bigger firms such as Pfizer, Sears and Toyota.
The article identifies the "secret sauce" in LogoWorks' rewards system: ego.
While there are many incarnations of the online free-lance business model for services such as copywriting and legal work, LogoWorks' secret sauce is an internal-ranking system that requires designers to be critiqued after every job by their peers.That's significant money for a freelance worker. That kind of money motivates. Open source can learn from this.
Here's how it works: customers fill out a creative brief online and pick their price: from $265 (two designers and four to six concepts) to $549 (five designers and 10 to 12 concepts). The job is posted to a private area of the LogoWorks Web site where graphic designers sign up on a first-come, first-served basis.
The pay scale fluctuates. Designers are designated at expert, midlevel, or entry-level rank based on a point scale of 0 to 100. They all start at entry level, and their points and pay go up and down based on how their designs fare both with clients and with their peers. For instance, entry-level designers get paid $25 per project; midlevel, $30; and experts, $40.
Pleasing the customer pays most: The designer whose work gets chosen earns an additional $50 plus 10 points. However, they also get critiqued by their peers after every job in a fashion mimicking the old bell curve -- that is, someone's designs are always deemed best, while someone else's are deemed worst for a particular project.
Points are added or taken away based on these rankings. Fall below 80 points, and you get bumped to the midlevel pay scale. Fall below 30 and you're back at entry level.
Designers acknowledge that in addition to a financial incentive, there's an ego factor when it comes to peer ranking. "It keeps it competitive and forces everyone to do a good job," says Columbus, Ohio, designer Michael Lancaster, a.k.a. "artboy," at LogoWorks. Since 2001, he says, he's taken in $52,000 crafting designs for LogoWorks.
8 comments:
Well in the case of LogoWorks, "Open Source" may very well turn out to be theft, in some cases.
There is a growing controversy surrounding some VERY suspicious logos that LogoWorks is claiming to have sold to clients but were first created by OTHER designers.
I have written about this on my blog, as have many other designers.
http://www.thepreparedmind.com/pm/index.php/2005/08/19/more-logoworks-greatest-rips/
It turns out that people may have open sourced their logos without even knowing it! I have contacted LogoWorks for an official response but have not yet heard back from them.
Chris
Logoworks is under a lot of scrutiny right now for intellectual property theft. More information here.
Check out this this interview with a logoworks employee for more information.
Welcome to the ranks of migsuided people that openly sing the praises of logowurst - despite documented proven instances of THEFT! ot inspiration, or homage - THEFT! of designers work.
I'm predicting that just like this person
http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/
You will be seeing a heck of a lot of postings on this blog pretty soon disagreeing with your choice of Logo Company.
Its not so much the cut-pricing of such Logo Hack companies that ticks me off as the THEFT issue. I guess what you save by using LOGOWURST you can use towards your legal bills when you get sued for copyright infringement.
I could go on and on - but i think my fellow designers will put it far more coherently than me!!!!!
Um, yes they did. I praised the business model of LogoWorks, not the company's business practices. If, as you allege, they turn out to be shifty (I know at least one of the management team, and find this hard to believe, but if...), then the primary argument still stands: the model itself can work.
It sounds like LogoWorks needs to shield itself legally, much as the Apache Foundation, Novell, and others have done. When soliciting outside help, it's wise to require a signed agreement that stipulates that anything the developer contributes is, in fact, their own work and does not infringe others' IP rights. It's a bit more cumbersome than a free-for-all, but much safer. It doesn't prevent IP thieves from contributing others' code (or, in this case, peddling logos) as their own, but it does put the burden of proof on the contributor, not the company/project accepting it.
Again, I hope that LogoWorks turns out to be innocent of this alleged wrongdoing. But, even if not, the model is not indicted simply by possibly shoddy IP safeguards.
Thanks for letting me know.
The distributed business model can work, sure, but giving Logoworks as an example wasn't a particularly good idea - because, as a business model, they fail.
Yes, they are making money, but are now experiencing the beginnings of a backlash against them - with only themselves to blame.
I don't think ther would be anything like this response had they concentrated on supplying bad designs cheaply. The problem is, as I see it, that they have basically gotten greedy and complacent. I think the fact that they are reselling blatantly ripped-off logos is pretty much beyond doubt - there have been several clear examples of this posted already.
They can argue that this is the fault of the designer who supplied the logo, but that doesn't really cut it - it is Logoworks that is selling the design to the client, and as such they are responsible for supplying something that is fit for the purpose it is being sold for.
When the supplied logo infringes on somebody else's copyright, then clearly this isn't the case.
Now, it may seem like I'm going off-topic here, but these facts are linked to the business model. The fact that there are savings to be made by using a network of freelancers is made irrelevent because of these other busines practices used by Logoworks. The client doesn't actually see a saving. Most of their designs are plain bad (and I mean that on a technical level, not just an aesthetic one), some are downright stolen, and many simply aren't unique enough for a successful brand to be built around them.
All that has an effect on the client's bottom line. On this level, it's working for Logoworks, but not for anyone else. Now their unethical business practices are getting more balanced exposure and the issues of copyright theft, plagiarism and so on are recievnig more attention, its starting to look like the model isn't working for Logoworks either..
So yes, the idea of distributed virtual businesses can work, but it seems, only if you play nice.
Which sounds fair to me.
ps: sorry for my comment being longer than your original blog ;P
I too must take issue with the notion that the overall business model of LogoWorks is one that can last beyond the typical short-term burnout.
The idea of a network of freelance designers supplying low-cost designs to small businesses is a good one. However the LogoWorks execution seems to be one that encourages the wholesale theft of logos. Every day since this controversy has exploded, more ripped-off logos have been discovered.
Has this been done with the knowing support of LogoWorks? I don't know. Does the LogoWorks pricing structure -- in which a designer can only make a livable wage if they pump out scores of logos per week -- mean that it's inevitable that ethically-challenged designers will cut corners and steal? Obviously so.
I also disagree that the answer is that LogoWorks "insulate" themselves better, legally. Again, not a good business model. While legal will applaud such a move, the net effect will be that your CUSTOMERS end up taking all the risk and in the case of logo theft, all the legal hits.
Call me crazy but I don't think that leaving your customers in a position to twist in the legal wind is good business.
C
LogoWorks has always had a policy that its freelance logo designers create original work. In fact, each time they upload a design file they must recertify that it was original. It just so happens that after 35,000 customers and hundreds of designers working in the system that a designer submitted work that was not original. Those designers were banned from the system The work in question was never sold to a customer, it was just used in LogoWorks marketing materials. To argue that LogoWork's business model is flawed because of two isolated instances is silly.
I think a few designers are upset because more and more small businesses choose to do business with LogoWorks instead of paying many times more money with a traditional designer. It reminds me of the stockbrokers when ETrade opened up or the travel agents when travelocity started. Either these designers will figure out how to add more value to their customers (like my stock broker and travel agent did) or they will find new jobs in a different profession since they obviously don't want to join the Logoworks network.
"To argue that LogoWork's business model is flawed because of two isolated instances is silly."
Seems it's not a matter of being silly, but more of the fact that you cannot count.
http://www.baddesignkills.com/logoworks/
Do you see more than two there? I sure do.
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