Do Holidays Bring Paydays… For Freelancers?

Freelances constantly face the realization that work is not easy to come by. Many live paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by, while others soar to new heights as their own boss. With the holidays right around the corner, are freelancers wishing they had an office job?

The Christmas bonus (or ‘Holiday bonus’ for all of the politically correct people out there) is something freelancers very rarely find in their mailboxes every holiday season. A thank you from clients here and there, maybe even a few free samples of a product, but not that ever-desired bonus check.

Is it worth it?

Freelancers, do you sometimes wish that you had that office job, even if it’s for the mere fact that you may receive a bonus check?

I find it hard to be objective as I am relatively new to the freelance community, meanwhile working at a small agency throughout my completion of school. My situation gives me the best of both worlds. Not to say I’m going to get a huge bonus check for Christmas, but I do get find some great perks arise that I would not see if I was my own boss.

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?

I’m still relatively new to the freelance design industry so I have not dealt with an abundance of clients yet, but have had my fair share of clients ranging from both ends of the spectrum.

I wish to give a thank you, on behalf of all designers, for allowing us the opportunity to work with you. A good client is the reason we keep designing, and can completely erase a “bad” client from our recent memories. I put “bad” in quotes as it is an ambiguous term. I have a few thoughts on writing a post about some of the potential things that make a client “bad,” but more on that later.

From a simple thank you card to a great testimonial, we as freelancers could not be more grateful, so again, thank you for being great.