Is Brandstack a Good Design Tool?
Browse. Buy. Download.
That is Brandstack’s idea of a perfect logo design process. People can go to this popular site to browse logos that are for sale by designers. Many people use this site as a place to put up logos that they have completed for fun or on a whim when an idea came into their heads, while others design for the purpose of selling designs on the site.
Why hire a single freelance logo designer when you can search through thousands of pre-made ones online? Pricing start as low as $250, a very reasonable budget for a new company looking for an image and top out at $210,000. I can only image that people willing to spend that type of money on a logo will be looking elsewhere, but alas, they do exist.
Fellow blogger Selvin Ortiz has compiled a handful of reasons why he cannot stand this logo-sourcing giant in his article, Why I Hate Brandstack. In it, Selvin’s first two arguments are quality control and target market.
Quality Control
Browse through a few pages on Brandstack and you’ll see what Selvin is talking about. Without a doubt there are some fantastic concepts on the site, such as these 20 Great Logos From Brandstack, but there are also a lot that should not have made the cut.
Take the below logos for example:
$29,000
$30,000
Do these prices really justify the design, let alone the thought that went into them?
Crowd-Sourcing
Wes Wilson, founder of Brandstack, has this to say regarding his site’s comparison with other crowd-sourcing websites:
The biggest difference with crowd sourcing models and Brandstack is that all participating designers can benefit from Brandstack’s model. With most crowd sourcing efforts there is one “client” and several “contributors”. That normally leads to one “winner” and several “losers”. With Brandstack there isn’t an open or close date, so your work can be purchased at anytime. If it works as planned, everyone’s designs will sell and everyone will “win”. – via interview at Little Box of Ideas
In theory it is much better, but what about in reality?
Copyright?
Since these logos do not exist as part of a company and most likely have no legal representation behind them, what is stopping these designs and concepts to be ripped off? There have been many horror stories of this happening, leading to a number of former users to withdraw from using the service.
This is not how logo design should be.
Time, research, thought and individuality should all be things considered when creating a new logo. A logo should say something about the company, and how can these logos have anything to say without even knowing its potential buyer?
Look at the logo process of respected designers Jacob Cass or David Airey and you can literally see how much they put into their simple, yet effective logos. Brandstack offers nothing remotely close.
What do you think?
Could this tool be used for good? Should designers continue to use sites like this to sell their work?
Carson Shold is a freelance graphic and web designer born in Victoria, BC and living in London, Ontario. He is a ‘for hire‘ designer that wants to help your business stand out – the right way. You can connect with him and his thoughts on twitter or check out his portfolio at carsonshold.com.
Are you kidding me? $30k for that star logo? Disgusting. But looking at the “20 Greatest Logos”, I thought the Bar Code one was pretty neat.
Thanks for the analysis Carson, glad to see it! You did a nice job looking at the pros and cons of Brandstack and our industry. Regarding some of your points:
- Designers set their own prices, we do not have a say in how they value their work (other than saying it’s worth more than $250.) If a potential buyer finds a logo that is out of their price range, like the $30k star, they can work with the designer to try and reduce the price.
- We try our hardest to only let the best designs into Brandstack, although some slip through. We are constantly working to improve our process to keep our standards high. As you mentioned with the “20 Greatest Logos” post, we have our fair share of award winning designs.
- Copyright infringement is a constant battle, but it’s no different than posting your designs on a crowdsourcing site or a logo gallery/showcase. We document when every logo is posted to Brandstack and have prevented others from stealing ideas in the past. We’ve also worked hard to remove any over inspired designs from Brandstack’s inventory.
I’ve said in the past that working directly with a competent, capable designer is hard to beat. Unfortunately, there are a lot of business owners out there that don’t know how to manage this process and don’t want to attempt it. In the same sense, there are several designers in the industry that don’t understand how to fully accomplish what a business owner needs, let alone wants. In the end (as witnessed by talking to hundreds of designers), the designer hands over a design that might not be the best fit “because the client requested it.” We’re trying to fill the hole that’s left between this scenario and those sites that hurt designers. By changing the buying process for logos, we’re giving you a way to sell some of your unused designs at a price you determine and we’re giving businesses a way to find GREAT designs without all the headache.
The financial benefits of Brandstack are obvious, but I’m unsure of how this model affects the credibility of both the designer and work being made, or the brand for that matter. In this model, the brand forms the company, rather than the company forming the brand. It seems to me there is a vital part of the process being removed – the heart and soul of the brand itself; the research; the client/designer relationship and communication that builds and progresses the brand identity into it’s final product (with the exception of the bargaining process). Is this no longer important to designers? or better yet, our clients?
There are obvious pros and cons to this model.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said Wes, but as Mike points out, “In this model, the brand forms the company, rather than the company forming the brand.”
If this article were to only point out one thing, that would be it.
Think of classic logos like Coke or McDonalds and you’ll see that those logos are only as powerful as they are because of the size and influence of the company itself. Not to say these companies would be as well off without the logos, but they were not the starting point – the business model was.
Thanks for the insightful comments guys.
In this model, the brand forms the company, rather than the company forming the brand.
As a logo designer, I’ve met clients who didn’t know what they want and/or didn’t know how to communicate the visual that’s in their heads to the designer. I think logo design some times is a two way street. When you go buy a house, some times you found the house of your dreams was already built by someone else who happened to dream the same dream/vision. That where Brandstack’s niche is. But sometimes, you just need your dream house to be custom-built to the tee according to your unique visions. That’s when you work exclusively with a logo designer.
I don’t see Brandstack as something bad. In fact, great logos can come from visions/creative dreams of designers, before the clients/companies who are the “mates” of the logos find them. Like paintings, do painters wait until he’s commissioned first by a customers before he paints?
I’m not saying logos are exactly like painting, but it is also a form of art. Just trying to see it from that point.