Crowdsourcing
Today is the day every creative hopes to never face, like every other person in the world, I am passionate about what I do for a living! Yeah 'kay, but when I DO get excited about a project it is easy to spend every minute of my day nurturing it, putting all other deadlines on the back burner and going too far down that rabbit-hole of possibilities. There aren’t too many professions where you get to make things that you really love, and I am particularly fond of branding. As a creative, I always hope for enthusiastic reactions from my clients, which can leave some room for disappointment. But, hearing that my client has turned to crowdsourcing is an entirely different level of dissatisfaction that I am hoping to cope with.
Months ago, my agency presented 12 initial logo sketches to three decision makers - I led the creative presentations, always justifying my positioning and taking note of client feedback along the way. Collectively, we quickly narrowed to three options, and eventually the winner became obvious. Too good to be true, they decided upon my favorite logo option without any Frankenstein requests?
One thing that I've learned since undergrad, is that the word final is up for interpretation when clients are referencing design.
In so many words, defined by my client. (2015)
In this case, my clients decided to show the rest of their company their final logo. Our agency never got an opportunity to show our initial sketches, and the reviewing board members refused to hear positioning statements. The result was that the board members "didn't understand it". Without any warning, the client posted the logo on 99designs for crowdsourcing.
I truly hoped that upon seeing the purchased logo, I would feel okay with it. Out of 100 logos, it seemed that there could be a respectable option! Disappointment has set in, and the hilarity of the situation is that now I have been tasked with "cleaning-up" the logo that they purchased. They think it's too sharp, it's not quite symmetrical and the color just isn't right. I also get to extend their branding on all of their print collateral and redesign their website. The client was so excited about their new purchase that they even had temporary tatoos printed (before my clean-up), and were delighted to share their photo album with me after celebrating their brand launch! I am going to chalk this up to a big fat win, because: yoga.