and they all stink!
A friend emailed me and asked my about my experience with crowd-sourcing the new logo design for http://refynr.com, and here's my reply:
"CrowdSpring.com was a mixed bag:
Pros:- pretty easy to set up
- cheap
- you get lots of entries (151 in my case)
- If you're very specific and descriptive, you can end up with something you like
Cons:
- decision paralysis: With so many choices, I couldn't really decide myself. That's why I put it up for a vote online, which only helped in a bass-akwards sort of way. The best logos bubbled up to the top, but the top 3 were not actually a good choice for a versatile web logo (which needs to look good large, small, and very small as a favicon; not to mention maybe I want to use in print or on t-shirts some day). How did I know that? Because a nice twitter follower named Dina emailed me and described from a *real* designer's point of view what I should be looking for. So, I went with the 4th choice, and had the designer on CrowdSpring simplify and tweak it to exactly what I wanted.
- It helps if you know what you want. I didn't, so spent a lot of time asking online, and asking my relatives (not the greatest idea!). What's the saying? "Opinions are like a-holes, everyone has them and they all stink!"
- I probably would have saved a lot of time, but not money, by using a real designer in the first place.
- there were a ton of really bad entries. Only about 15% were above average, imo
I don't have anything to compare with because I've never used a real designer previously or another crowd sourced site either, but those are my thoughts."
