After you’ve decided to start your blog, and you’ve bought your domain and hosting, the next thing you want to jump right into is to create a logo for your newly minted site. I was exactly the same when I started Going Awesome Places and Travel Blog Breakthrough. I had ideas for what it wanted to look like but I had no idea how to build it.
It’s a serious problem right? Because not all of us can be graphic designers and while you can try to hack something together on Photoshop (or even worse Paint), creating the face of your blog really should be left to a professional.
Launching a contest on 99 Designs
So where do you find such professionals? You could comb through your network of friends to see if anyone’s a designer and willing to help you out. Personally, I’d bypass that and go to a tried and true way of creating a logo by using a platform like 99 Designs.
What is 99 Designs?
99 Designs is basically what’s called a “reverse auction” platform. A normal auction is like eBay where you place bids on something you want. Flip it around and that’s how 99 Designs works.
What happens is that you put a request for a logo and lay a bounty/prize on the table. Graphic designers will then “bid” for the prize and give you their interpretation of your blog’s logo. At the end of this auction, you pick the “winner”. The designer gets paid the bounty and you get your spankin’ new logo!
How setting up a contest works
Step 1) Create a brief
This is a super simple form that you first fill out with the details of what you want built. Answer questions like:
- Name
- What your blog is about and its intended audience
- Logo types (There are 6 general styles to choose from to help narrow things down)
- Colors
- Upload a sample logo from somewhere else
- Other details you’d like to communicate
Step 2) Pick a design package
There are 4 levels to choose from. For travel bloggers, I’d recommend the bronze package but have a look at the differences.
99 Designs’ design packages
Step 3) Launch
Yep it’s that simple. More than 982,000 designers that are looking for work will be able to see your contest and each one will have the opportunity to submit their logo designs.
The contest will be live for 7 days and during that time you can give feedback, comment, and send private messages.
By the end of the contest you pick the winner. The winner gets the prize money and you get to download the full design and use it on your website. You will also have 5 days from contest’s end to make further requests and revisions.
TIP: I would ensure that you get ALL the design files for the logo and not just the high resolution JPG. What I’m referring to is the vector file used to create the logo. This is typically created in Adobe Illustrator which has a .ai extension. The output file from Illustrator is usually a .EPS so make sure you get that too. The reason I mention this is that in the future you might want to make tweaks or changes to the logo and you want to make sure you have all the assets if you hand to another designer. Designers hate working with JPG files.
So for anyone wanting to create a logo, I highly recommend using 99 Designs. They worked great for me and I know you’ll be in good hands if you use them too!
Here’s a little video to wrap things up if you’re not convinced yet. It’s sooooo so easy.
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Your logo defines your blog’s brand. You just cannot go with anything. The logo should be unique and should represent you and only you.
*retweet* 🙂
Are there any sort of copyright issues that could ever come up with something like this? Never really understood how the purchasing of someone else’s design works.
Hey Cory,
When a graphic artist agrees to the terms of the contract, they are expressly giving you full rights to the work so there’s no way for them to go after you for copyright. No issues to report at all!
It is important for contest holders to be incredibly clear with what they are after. All too often they select designs to work with that hold no relevance to their brief. There should also be zero tolerance on designers who used generators to come up with an image. It should all be a standard jpeg upload no filters/mockups/templates etc used. Finally – if a contest holder decides to mess everyone around then cancel at the last minute designers should be compensated for this. Clear these issues up and it will make a huge difference!
Very good tips!! Thanks for contributing Ra 🙂