Many of you might be quite familiar with crowdsourcing and its revolutionary impact on the graphic design world. Albeit controversial, it has proved to be an enormous success for both clients and graphic designers who are unable to transact on an individual basis. Crowdsourcing serves as a perfect intermediary between clients and graphic designers who need to transact in a simple and affordable manner.
Lately, Logo Design Guru, one of the leading names in logo design world has radically shifted from the custom-made logo designing to logo design contest. This firmly proves that the crowdsourcing trend is gaining immense popularity over conventional logo designing.

Below are few productive features which will help graphic designers progress with their creativity

1. Hundreds of projects launched:

Most graphic designers complain that most of the famous crowdsourcing websites are crowded with designers and the chance of winning the prize money is microscopic. This doesn’t get them the right exposure, leaving minimum chances of earning. Over at Logo Design Guru, there are more than 120 design projects awaiting talented graphic designers.

2. Earn up to $2500 on a Project:

The biggest prospect for graphic designers is that Logo Design Guru has a low designer:project ratio so there is a guaranteed surety that you can earn between $179 to $2,500. The more contests you participate in will multiply your earnings.

3. Guaranteed Projects:

The most exciting part of crowdsourcing with Logo Design Guru is that it provides guaranteed projects. This secures a graphic designer’s hard work and the client cannot steal a designer’s ideas or designs.

4. The field is wide open:

As I mentioned earlier, there is ample opportunities to vie for at Logo Design Guru. Since there are more projects than designers, your chance of winning is manifold. The field is wide open folks! So go ahead and pounce on this lucrative opportunity to earn yourself a name in the graphic design world.

“If it’s about getting people to use unused spaces, why not grow vegetables in the unused spaces in the logo?”
— GOOD PEOPLE

Nice idea, designed by Good People.

More logos using negative space.

Published on Logo Design Love

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How much to charge clients is every graphic designers concern. You charge excessively, they might not hire you. You bill them under-par, they might consider you as a cheap designer. For this reason, the perfect fee range should be determined beforehand.

There comes in every graphic designer’s mind a question…Are we truly valued and paid? This query ensue a series of questions like ‘How much a graphic designer should be paid?’ and ’On what criteria should he be paid?’ Although I have always advocated that the graphic design field is for the sheer pleasure and obsession of it. But then again, an individual has to make ends meet as well.

Factors that determine a graphic designer’s fee:

1) Experience and Creativity:

2) Size of the Project:

3) Area and location you work in:

4) Fixed or Flexible charges:

5)Miscellaneous expenditures incurred:

The results offer a nice accompaniment to the static brandmarks.

Miskeeto

“I made a rippled pulse with varying degrees of opacity. This was then set as the alpha layer to the text in order to reveal it. The wings were made 3d and rotated on the y axis.”
— DAN JOHNSON

Giacom

“All the pie wedges were parented to a null object. I applied an expression to the rotation that drives the rotation based on the circumference of the circle.”
— DAN JOHNSON

You can see how these animations relate to the static logos here in my portfolio: the Miskeeto portfolio entry, and that for Giacom.

Subscribers may need to visit the LDL site to view the short clips.

Spin My Logo Contest 2010

Dan’s offering a free HD logo animation to nine of you. Here’s the info.

Three logos will be chosen each month for the next three months (on September 30th, October 31st, and November 30th). All you have to do to enter is become a fan of Spin My Logo on Facebook, and upload your logo(s) on the wall.*

There are three winning categories each month:

1. Random Win: Anyone can win, and random means random.
2. Staff Pick: The logo that most inspires us.
3. Popular Vote: The logo with the most “likes.” (Votes have to be on the Spin My Logo Facebook page and not on your personal profile in order to count.)

Full contest rules on the Spin My Logo website.

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GeForce 3D Vision game demo

NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ technology is a combination of Graphics Processor Units (GPU), specialized 3D glasses, graphic design software, and certified displays and projectors that deliver an absorbing 3D experience on the computer. Here is an outclass example of how the GeForce 3D Vision glasses transforms virtual graphics into realism.    

Fascinating Gameplays and Clips of 3D TV Technology:

While browsing YouTube for more videos on 3D technology experience, I found a whole range of high definition games and movies specially converted into 3D Mode courtesy Tru3D. I would like to share some of the most fascinating videos of the lot.

How to View In 3D Mode:

Before you start watching the videos, you might want to learn how to actually “view in 3D mode” with and without the aid of 3D glasses.

• Click on the "3D View Style" menu in the video and select how you’d like to view.
• If you have 3D glasses, Red/Cyan is pretty common but do check what works best for you.
• If you’re using glasses and the image seems to be inside out then use your glasses the other way around.
• If you don’t have glasses, then select "cross eyed" and just cross your eyes slightly to make the 2 videos overlap into 1.
• Remember, Disney’s fancy RealD polarized glasses don’t work on these videos.
• Cross-eyed can be difficult if you don’t have control over your eye muscles. Try sitting away from the screen a bit or just get some practice in and have fun! J
  

Need for Speed NFS Shift 3D

Shrek Forever After 3D

Prince of Persia 3D

3D TV Street Fighter IV 3D

Disneys BOLT 3D

Need for Speed NFS Pro Street 3D

Battlefield 2 3D

3D TV FIFA 3D World Cup 2010

The following article is by Giulietta “Julie” Nardone of Fearless Design.

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I read lots of freelance blog posts about handling difficult clients. They all seem to gloss over the most difficult client of all.

YOU.

The way you feel about yourself and your talent sets the tone for all your client interactions. Think of your clients as mirrors. If you complain they don’t treat you well it’s probably because you’ve taught them not to treat you well. If you complain they don’t pay you on time, it’s probably because you’ve taught them not to pay you on time. If you complain they expect you to do work you didn’t agree to, it’s probably because you’ve taught them give you work you didn’t agree to.

Most of us learn this wimpy behavior early in life and it gets reinforced as we march into adulthood. I was taught to defer to parents, teachers, lovers, bosses and government leaders. Rumor had it that if I stood up for myself something awful would happen – I’d get punished, dumped, fired or thrown in jail. Is it any surprise that I deferred to clients too?

When I toiled in a cubicle for a larger corporation, my submissive behavior appeared to be expected, applauded and rewarded. When I opened my own business, the same submissive behavior had me working like a dog for wages even a dog couldn’t live on.

It took quite a bit of mental strength training, but I finally told my toughest client – the wimpy me – to take a hike. This allowed my greatest client — the powerful me — to advocate on my behalf. Now I set and maintain clear boundaries and decide how I wish to be treated. The result? My clients get a more confident designer, a far better design product, and a partnership grounded in honesty rather than fear.

Some aspects of the working relationship bring out the wimpy you more than others.

Sales conversation

The sales conversation is just that — a compassionate time for you and your potential client to get to know each other. You try to help the client figure out what his or her real problem is and whether you’re the best one to help them solve it. Sometimes you are, sometimes you’re not. Be brave enough to ask all the questions you need in order to make an informed decision.

Don’t be afraid to walk away from a client if you get funny vibes, request for a ludicrous deadline or a balk at your fee. Better to find out now than halfway through the project that the client has a history of being indecisive or controlling. Remember, desperation is only real if you give it life.

Pricing

Don’t sweat the fee. It isn’t up to you to decide how much the client can pay. Nothing worse than undercharging a client who told you a sob story and later discovering they live in a 2 million dollar mansion while you’ve got a leaking shower and no kitchen cabinets.

The bulk of your fee needs to be determined by how you feel about your work and the benefit it provides. If a client wants to haggle price with you, simply tell them you don’t haggle. They can either pay your price or look for someone who doesn’t believe in his or her own work. I actually found it easier to sell more expensive design solutions than bottom-of-the-barrel ones.

Contract

Make sure every client — even if it’s a family member or friend — signs a contract or a memo of understanding. This document outlines what the client will and will not get. If the client asks you to do something beyond the scope of what you’ve agreed to, that’s considered a change order. Tell them it will be extra. They do it in engineering firms. You need to do it in your design business. And beware of phony deadlines and phony decision-makers. Tight deadlines, if you choose to take one on, need to cost extra. Nothing more disheartening than working day and night, weekday and weekend, to find your design stalled for three months because the real person making the decision suddenly stepped out from behind the corporate curtain.

Indecision

Some clients start the design process with a lot of energy. Everything’s going great and then BOOM, they hit the indecision wall and disappear for weeks/months at a time. You call them and don’t get a return call. You email them and don’t get a return email. If this goes on for more than one month, bill them for anything they owe you and be prepared to move on. Make sure you have a progress payments/cancelled projects section written into your contract in the event this happens.

Standing up to your wimpy-client self may be hard at first. The whining, blaming and excuses circulating through your brain may get to you. Remember, that’s just fear yakking in your ear! Stay the scary course. Soon you’ll build enough courage to give your business-defeating behavior the boot.

——

Giulietta “Julie” Nardone, of Fearless Design, offers branding and graphic design services to small/medium-size companies and non-profits. Julie is based in Ashland, Massachusetts, and you can read more encouraging articles through the Fearless Design resources page.

Published on Logo Design Love

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Last year, I did a post on impressive graphic designer portfolios…till now the response has been remarkable with evident keenness of my readers to submit their own portfolios. In response to that and in line with the growing demand of portfolio submissions from graphic designers, GDB decided to launch its very own “Submit Your Portfolio” section. This will provide all graphic designers the opportunity they require to exhibit their creative collections to the graphic design community.

Many of you must ponder…how do I get noticed? How do I get my talent revealed to the world at large? Well, the answer is simple. You need your personal portfolio that exhibits your works and creations to the graphic design community. The ‘Submit Your Portfolio’ section not only allows you to build a platform, but offers you a wide variety of options to present. You can submit your collection of logo design, web designs, business cards and corporate identities. This will surely provide you with the adequate exposure that you need to grow as a graphic designer and get noticed.

So what are you guys waiting for? Submit your portfolio right now. All you have to do is fill the simple “submit a portfolio form” and voila! You are bestowed with a personal graphic design portfolio. Hope you enjoy and benefit from this feature. Any feedbacks and comments regarding the portfolio section are most welcome.

The following article is by Tim Lapetino, a principal at brand design firm Hexanine.

——

For designers, it’s never enough to merely follow the design brief a client gives you. In identity design, we view our projects as opportunities to dig deep, mining the best parts of an organization to get at the heart of what makes each client unique. It’s these nuggets that are essential when attempting to distill a company’s essence into a logo.

Gathering these insights requires a crucial bit of give-and-take — not as easy as it sounds. Like being a good investigative reporter, a great designer is dogged and determined, yet pleasant, empathetic, and challenging. I’ve come to believe that the best creatives are equal parts artist, therapist, and journalist: generating ideas, giving and receiving feedback, and communicating the results well.

The client interview (which is a part of the larger creative brief) is a necessary piece of every successful project. This is especially true when crafting identity systems, as few projects hinge so directly on the ability to listen, ask questions, and process the answers. The info a designer gathers will be boiled-down (hopefully) into a single sentence that guides all design decisions throughout the process.

Whether this interviewing process happens in-person (the most effective), on the phone, or via Skype, getting a client to talk freely and helpfully about their organization is more art than science. So here are a handful of ways to get the best from this mutual exploration with your client.

It’s about listening

As obvious as it sounds, few people are truly great listeners. The words that one person utters may mean something vastly different another. Without realizing it, most of us get distracted, focus on what we’ll say next, or add our own feelings and associations to what we hear.

Use “active listening skills” to avoid such communication breakdown.

Often employed in counseling settings, this is a simple process of rephrasing another person’s words as a clarifying question, in order to develop more accurate understanding. After you rephrase an important point, the client has the opportunity to make corrections or clarifications. An example might look like this:

Client: “We really want our new logo to be bold and attention-grabbing.”

Designer: “So, it sounds like you want this logo to have bright, strong colors to catch the eye. Is that right?”

Client: “Well, not necessarily. I guess what I really meant is that I’d like it to stand out within our industry.”

Ask the right questions

As you listen, be on the lookout for key words and phrases. What are the main goals of the project? Are there points your client keeps repeating? Those are probably important. As you gather data, ask yourself questions about what you’ve heard. What is the narrative thread of the organization? Is there some story or big picture that emerges from everything you’ve gathered? Is there a way to tell this story using metaphors and symbols that could make their way into your designs?

Be sure to get these crucial questions answered. Start by covering the elements of any good design brief (goals, audience, parameters, content needs, etc.) and then venture into the more intangible aspects like feelings, emotions, “personality” of the company, and the like. But remain focused on your goal. Guiding an interviewee isn’t about confirming your own beliefs or agenda, but truly seeking to get at the story of the organization.

“True contentment comes with empathy.”

Finally, any interviewer worth their salt needs to step into the client’s shoes. How do things look from the other side of the table? Seek to see the person as they see themselves — crucial when you’re trying to translate an organization’s essence into something visual. It’s essential to find out what drives your client and their company.

What is their reason for being? How will you take that mission and turn it into a great mark or identity system?

Only by asking and answering these questions will you be able to find out.

——

Tim Lapetino is a principal of the brand design firm Hexanine. A strategist, designer and writer, his work has been featured in LogoLounge books, Logoliscious, and Los Logos. He serves as adjunct faculty at the Chicago Portfolio School and writes regularly on the Hexanine blog, Zeroside. Follow Tim on Twitter.

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We all know giant multinationals and famous brands invest heavily in their brand identity design. But most of the time costs incurred are kept a secret. Bear in mind that a rebranding cost is entirely different from the cost of a logo redesign. A complete rebranding includes changes to the logo design, package design, marketing campaigns and the cost incurred to expose the rebranding into the market.

As graphic designers, we ought to know how much do famous companies and brands spend on their brand identity design. When a company posts an outrageous figure for its corporate rebranding, people tend to become judgmental over the ridiculous price incurred. But branding is not all about designing a logo, there are other aspects of the branding process that need to be fulfilled in order to deliver a revamped identity. In the field of graphic design, there are various tools that complete the branding process.

• The logo and stationary design
• Package and label design
• Website Design
• Designing the marketing campaign (Advertising, Billboards, Flyers, Girt Items)

Following are the branding costs of 8 famous brands that were rebranded at a fairly excessive cost.

Pepsi   Anz

BP Helios   BBC One

Accenture   TranLink

Starz   Posten

Some Exorbitant Logo Prices: Below are some of the prices of only logo designs that are outrageously lofty:

Designer: Wolff Ollins Designer: L.N Agency Designer: L. Associates Designer: Wolff Ollins Logo Price: £400,000 Logo Price: £400,000 Logo Price: $240,000 Logo Price: £1.020.00