While many people speak out against crowd sourcing logos there are even some major corporations that are now turning to crowd sourcing for their logo needs. Logo crowd sourcing can certainly save money as well as give business experts access to a greater amount of logo designs for their advertising budget. With many new crowd sourcing websites cropping up every day for logo design and more, even popular logos today are becoming crowdsourced. Over the last five years crowd sourcing has entered into almost every industry from writing, fundraising, stock photography and now logo design.

As well as being used by some of the world’s biggest corporations, governments, celebrities, artists and more are using crowd sourcing to get the support and creativity that they need to grow. Even back as far as 2012, 100 brands reported using some form of crowd sourcing to improve their marketing effort.

Here are some of the top 6 logos that you simply won’t believe were crowd sourced.

Truly from Coca cola:

The truly campaign started in the year 2012 and Coca-Cola outsource their entire marketing campaign across a mix of different freelance crowd source sites. Coke decided to crowdsource branding ideas for the entire campaign and received 3600 different submissions through crowd sourcing websites. As well as receiving lots of different logo ideas, marketing campaigns and videos Coke had to choose from thousands of submissions for a logo before they ended up selecting this one. The truly logo reflects the past Coke branding with its own classic attitude. This is the type of logo that you might expect a Madison Avenue ad agency to produce but it was simply crowd sourced from an amateur designer website. It just goes to show that there are some talented designers and submissions available on crowd sourcing sites. It also opens up the opportunity for designers to work with major corporations to get their name out there as well.

Obama:

Working on a design for the American public that’s built by the American public seems like a pretty good political move doesn’t it? That’s exactly what Obama did for the 2012 campaign where he crowd sourced a poster design for his campaign. The idea was to create a branded image promoting jobs in America. The and poster design was magnificent but Obama made a fatal flaw when it came to the crowd sourcing contest. Instead of outlining a budget he suggested that the prize would be just having the poster used. This is a mistake that commonly backfires and the Obama campaign didn’t have quite as many submissions as some other major corporations have received from their crowd funding effort. It’s important to offer some type of incentive if you are planning on crowd sourcing a design. Designers need to be paid and rewarded for their work.

Madrid 2020:

Following the London Olympics where the logo had an estimated value of around $600,000 to produce, Madrid decided that it might be a good time to start saving money on the cost of their logo design. Madrid set aside a budget that was just 1% of the 2012 budget for the London Olympics. Looking at the design they didn’t do too badly. The only controversy surrounding the winner is that the logo design kind of makes 2020 look closer to 20020. A lot of thought and process goes into designing any Olympic logo and this will actually be one of the very first crowd sourced designs to make its way onto an Olympic bid which is revolutionary for crowdsourcing as a whole.

Occupy 2012:

The occupy movement was all about putting power back into the hands of the 99% and that’s exactly why it was so poetic that they decided to crowd source their logo design. The occupy Wall Street movement website set a crowd sourcing campaign in the year 2012 and received almost 8000 designs eventually settling on a relatively simple design that was carried through for their entire website. The occupy movement logo still stands to this day and it was produced for an extremely modest fee as well. Crowdsourcing for social movements like this one just makes sense and will most likely be continued into the future.

Designer Awards:

The designer awards is a yearly awards presentation show that showcases graphic designers from around the world. Opening up their logo design process to professionals and amateurs was a controversial decision but it was a great idea because he didn’t showcase favoritism to any one of the particular award winners. There were thousands of entries for the designer awards logo and they eventually settled on a monochromatic, modern design.

Rolling beans:

Rolling beans is a national coffee shop chain that seeks competition with Starbucks and other major coffee shops across the US. When they chose to produce their logo via crowd sourced designs it was a controversial decision. The end product looks great and has made its way onto all of their branding and packaging.

While it can be hard to believe that these designs were crowd sourced rather than produced by professional design firms, this is a trend that will continue to grow for the future.

Check out the most unusual places to find inspiration here! 

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The decision to begin to revamp your company logo is usually a tough one for businesses to make. Logos are the brand identities of companies and changing them implies that you are changing the whole face of the enterprise. Many are the occasions when business attempted to change their logos and got negative feedback from the clients only for them to revert to the initial logo.

This shows that before a business decides to change or revamp their logos, certain factors need to be given a lot of consideration. So how often should you be changing your company logo? Check out the following as a guide to knowing whether or not it is time to change your logo:

Consider the initial design approach

For most businesses, the importance of having a professional logo usually becomes apparent when they realize the need to brand and market their ventures. At the point of start-up, the logo is never in their minds since they are busy with other logistics trying to get the business on its feet.

Hence, they will use just any type of logo without giving it much thought. But when the business begins to grow and start to have a large customer base, branding becomes necessary for the continued growth of the company. If you started a business in this manner, then perhaps you should consider changing your company logo now that you are getting more insights and clarity into where you are headed.

When your logo design becomes outdated

Changing your company logo becomes inevitable if your current logo design becomes obsolete. Remember, the logo is the visual representation of your company to the outside world. Due to changes in operation and passing of time, the graphics or the text on your logo may cease to be relevant, and this may not work for the effective branding of your business.

The solution in such a case is to revamp your logo to be in tandem with the current business operations and also fit the general expectations of the customers as well as the public. In some instances, you may have used the logo for a very long time such that it doesn’t exude any vibrancy for the company. You must thus embark on changing your company logo to inject life into the brand image.

When there is a significant change in your company

It goes without saying that when your company changes significantly, then changing your company logo is inevitable. And this is usually one of the most significant considerations for businesses who want to change their logo. A logo represents the company’s image to the potential clients and customers. It reflects the values as well as the nature of the products and services offered by the business.

When a business, therefore, changes its operations or line of products and services, this must also be reflected on the logo to help create awareness and promote the new look business to the clients and customers. Rarely will you have significant changes in the operations of your business and fail on changing your logo either partially or completely.

When your logo is too complex

A logo should be simple enough yet properly designed to pass across effectively the central marketing message of the business. If your logo is too complex, such that the potential customers are not able to comprehend the meaning out of it, then it no longer serves its marketing and branding purposes and changing your company logo would be the best option.

The current trends have seen major corporate giants shifting from complex logo designs to very simple yet effective designs. There is a great adoption of the “less is more” concept where logos are not crammed with graphics and text but rather, they are designed in a minimalist way, and still manage to communicate effectively.

When your logo is confusing

Apart from starting to revamp your company logo when it is too complex, it is also important to change it when it is confusing. A logo becomes confusing when customers are not in a position to tell explicitly what the logo is all about. Either there is no correlation between the logo and your products or services or the logo is nearly similar to that of another business.

Hence, customers keep on confusing you for the other venture. If, suppose you hand over your business card to clients, and you notice that squinting in confusion, and then know that something is not right, and you should probably think of changing your company logo.

As observed earlier, changing your company logo is usually a tricky affair, and you need to be certain that the change is necessary. Do a lot of research to validate your reasons for changing your company logo, or else, it will be a waste of time and resources if you change it, and your clients reject the change

Check out these recent rebrands for inspiration if you have decided to change your logo!

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