Logo design contests are gaining popularity among business owners and designers alike. While contests are a great source of unique logo design ideas for businesses, the umpteen number of design entries can overwhelm business owners, making it difficult for them to choose the perfect logo for their brand. Today, instead of working as regular employees, many designers prefer to work as freelancers and enter logo design contests, providing businesses with a range of options to choose the right logo.
What is a Logo Design Contest?
Are you pondering what a logo design contest is all about? Well, a logo design contest is a competition that a business owner launches on a creative marketplace where dozens of freelance designers participate with their unique design ideas. With a well-drafted design brief, defined budget, and other essential details, a business launches a design contest hoping to receive multiple design concepts as per their needs. After reviewing the entries, the business picks the one that aligns best with its brand vision and mission. The business then announces the winning designer and requests further modifications until the logo perfectly represents the brand.
The winner of the contest is then awarded the prize money. So, the contest
Logo Design Contests vs. Freelancing
While logo design contests provide businesses with access to multiple design concepts, freelancing offers a setup that allows companies to collaborate with designers on a one-to-one basis, resulting in more customized and high-quality designs.
Freelancing is more of an individualistic approach. It is between the company or individual and the designer. That means freelancing lets you access a more customized, high-quality logo design.
How to Review Logo Design Submissions
A logo design contest yields lots of design submissions from dozens of designers. Many designers are skillful professionals, while others are still learning and want to build a portfolio. Therefore, as the contest owner, you get unique and impressive logos. However, there are submissions with logos that are unsuitable for your brand.
That makes reviewing logo design submissions an essential task to choose the right logo that reflects your brand’s personality and message.
Here is how you should proceed to review logo design submissions:
Consider the design brief
First, keep your design brief in mind. When reviewing different logos, determine if a logo design effectively projects your business goals. Ensure the logo design aligns with your design brief to effectively convey your brand values, message, and personality.
Evaluate its overall impression
Take a closer look at the color palette, typography, imagery, and composition of the logo. Ensure that the visual elements align with your brand’s personality.
Think of the overall impression of the logo by evaluating its uniqueness, relevance, scalability, and memorability.
Give feedback
When reviewing logo design submissions, you should specifically provide the designers with grounds for improvement. Suggest the changes you would like, such as those related to colours, font sizes, and imagery. Share some logos that you like so that the designers know exactly what you expect from them.
It’s essential to maintain a positive, encouraging, and professional tone while providing feedback. Also, when making revision requests, consider the designer’s budget and time.
Collaborate to refine
Ensure that the feedback is in a clear and concise manner so that you do not overwhelm the designer with too many details.
Let the designer take time to incorporate your suggestions into the logo design. Therefore, you need to collaborate closely with the designer. Engage the designer in a meaningful dialogue to get the best final results.
Criteria for Selecting the Perfect Logo Design
Your logo design contest gives you access to dozens of logo designs from as many designers. But you might face the problem of plenty. Choosing the right logo can sometimes become challenging when there are many stunning logo idea submissions. Therefore, you must first establish a criterion to select the best logo for your brand from among many. Here is what you should consider in a logo:
Simplicity
Consider picking a simple logo that everyone can recognize as your brand identity. Choose a logo that powerfully conveys your brand message with a few elements.
Memorability
Choose a memorable design. It should be a unique logo that people and the target audience can recall quickly.
Originality
Is the logo an original design? Ask this question and settle for the one that you have not seen before in terms of design ideas and use of colors, fonts, etc.
Relevance
Pick a logo that you think is relevant to your business type and industry. It should also convey your brand personality and values.
Scalability and Versatility
Make sure that the logo design you choose is scalable and versatile. That means the logo should still look great, even when scaled up or scaled down. The logo should also look impressive in black and white.
Timelessness
Check if the logo is a timeless design that will remain relevant for many decades to come. It’s better to avoid selecting a trendy design and opt for a classic one.
Color choice
Ensure that the logo you selected has the right combination of colors. Its color scheme should align well with your brand’s identity.
Typography
Check the use of fonts in the logo design. The fonts should be legible so that people can get the brand message.
Collaborating with Designers Post-Contest
Once your logo design contest duration is over, you should still collaborate with the contest-winning designer. You can ask the designer to refine the logo further by giving new suggestions. Many revisions might be involved in turning the logo into an impressive design.
Here is how collaborating with designers works post-contest:
Refining the winning design
Collaborating with a talented, winning designer helps further improve the logo design. You can provide suggestions for refining the logo based on its appearance in mockups, such as websites and other marketing materials.
Taking the project further
A client can use the contest to involve designers in a design project. Such a project may include making the logo design adaptable to various platforms and creating variations.
Building a long-term relationship
A client can build a long-term relationship with talented designers found during the design contest. Such a relationship with a bunch of talented designers goes a long way in creating design projects in the future.
Refine the design based on feedback
Close interaction with a designer helps refine and customize a logo design as per a brand’s personality and message. The collaboration approach helps businesses shape a powerful and lasting brand identity.
Analyzing the Results of a Logo Design Contest
Ensure you carefully analyze the results of your logo design contest. Have a closer look at the kind of logo designs you received from the designers. Check the submitted logos for their visual appeal and their brand relevance, scalability, and versatility.
Here is how to proceed with analyzing the logo design contest results:
Consider your set criteria
If you have set some parameters to judge the quality of a logo design, then apply those while analyzing the contest results. But you can also follow some standard guidelines, such as the originality of the logo idea, its brand relevance, and visual appeal. Other criteria to follow are scalability, versatility, and readability of the text in a logo design:
Find out if your logo design contest gave you logos in line with your design brief and criteria.
Compare individual designs
Compare logo design entries to identify key strengths and weaknesses. You should compare individual designs to determine which one best meets your brand requirements. Consider seeking feedback on the logos from experts or friends to help you choose the best one.
Spot the winning design
When analyzing the contest results, consider identifying a logo that effectively expresses your brand. Therefore, settle for the logo that best aligns with your design goals. Select a logo that best aligns with your business goals. Compare several logo ideas from the contest minutely.
Logo Design Trends to Consider in Contests
A logo design that aligns with the current design trends is more appealing to the new set of younger target audiences. Gain insight into the current design trends.
Here are the professional logo design trends you should be aware of when going through the design submissions:
Minimalist logos
A minimalist design conveys a brand message using a few colors, fonts, or just one symbol or image. This helps create a clean, uncluttered logo with ample whitespace.
Bold typography
Many designers today incorporate bold typography into mainstream design. They use expressive, playful, and bold fonts to convey brand dominance.
Geometric Shapes
The designers are also exploring geometric shapes to create unique logos with different patterns.
3D gradients
3D gradients are also being increasingly used in designing a wide range of logos to give depth and effects to the design. To build visual interest and make the logo memorable, designers overlap different elements as well.
Bold and bright colors
Another trend to consider in designing logos is the use of red, blue, and other bright and bold colors to draw attention.
Use of symbols
The designers are also incorporating symbols as part of logo design to convey a brand message and add another layer of meaning to the design.
So, these are the key considerations to take into account when choosing the right logo from many submissions during a logo design contest. Pay attention to each point mentioned above to pick the best logo that reflects your brand’s message and personality. Moreover, consider the pros and cons of a logo design contest before launching your own.
Designhill is a leading creative marketplace where you can confidently launch your logo design contest and get hundreds of submissions from as many designers. You can also receive feedback from design experts and followers on this site when choosing the right logo.
Wrapping Up
A logo design contest lets you access dozens of unique logo designs in response to your design brief. Compare those logos extensively and select a clean, uncluttered, and timeless design that reflects your brand. Review those logos for their use of colors, typography, symbols, and other design elements.
