The Bullshit Design Stops Here.

(Our featured image is from Camille, a cool talented designer in Brisbane who is capturing lettering lady Aurelie)

How do I know if I should go to crowdsourcing to get my design job done?

Note:
I am so proud and honoured to work with the clients we have. They respect our knowledge and our history.
Writing this has made me realise how lucky we are to have such awesome working relationships with our clients. Clap Clap!

If crowdsourcing produced awesome design, I would be the first person running to the roof tops to shout about it. Because I LOVE great design.
But crowdsourcing is producing some real filth, I’m disturbed.

So this post will have snippets of bad design and why it’s bad. As well as a sprinkling and a dash of my thoughts on it.

Here is a nice scary logo to get us started Yes, it was the chosen – le winner!
Aside from how visually unappealing it is, there are technical problems with it as well…

• The blue part has a gradient running through it. All well and good, but how is this going to translate to printing 1,000 CD cases using an offset process? Shocking. 
• The box angle is actually bung
• The “d” feels really awkward. Too high to be a normal “d” – so your eye keeps thinking “something isn’t right here”
• Did I mention that it looks really ugh?
• And how about when we make it into a brand mark on a t-shirt? That embroidery OR that screen print is going to fail with the glow in the box
• What is the niche? Is it a magician’s brand? Because that is the only thing I could forgive. I guess a magician needs a business card too…

I just need you to answer me a few questions. 

How valuable do you think your time is?

Some things to think about;

When you have a meeting, do you give it a rough timing in your head, or could you sit there for hours and yarn?

Do you work after hours and finish “when the work finishes” OR do you aim to wrap up your work within as few hours as possible?

In short, are you a busy person? Or do you have time to fix someone elses work? Where is your time best spent?

How valuable is your business?

Think about it.

Where do you position your business?

What sort of a profit are you making?

How do clients find out about you?

How much are you losing with branding that is failing your efforts?

Below is a scary option which you can buy for about $280.
Whats wrong with it Kish?

• they’ve used stereotypical gender colours (sexist alert)
• her hand could be on his bum cheek
• his posture is awful
• logos often have to be used really small (imagine it on a website, or a sponsorship page) — this one won’t work because it’s really tall and you’ll loose all the detail – from far away, those heels of hers won’t even look like heels
• the colours aren’t in harmony
• what is it saying about your brand? does it even say fashion? Or is it really saying “awkward romance where a guy really doesn’t want to hold his girlfriend’s hand”. Cause that is what I’m hearing.

Would you trust a designer with your accounts?

I’ll be honest. I don’t know what happens to my receipts. I have a book keeper (Phill) and he takes care of them. I ask him for my P&L every month, but if I had to make a P&L, I wouldn’t have a clue.

Would I trust Roe or Aggs or myself with our accounts? Hell no!

They’re integral to the success of our business and I want someone in the know.

How do I know my book keeper is a good one?

I checked his records. I found out who else hired him. I got my main man (Vivek, Double Masters in Finance) to check into his work.

Did you know….

Sans serif fonts are best used for heavy duty reading on the internet?

Hipster logos can be created in a 4 step formula

A GIF is more ideal for vector graphics than a jpeg

An educated designer will never use Arial over Helvetica

If you crop images from the lip down, they’re more popular on Pinterest because they don’t use the whole face

Negatively geared images make the mind subconsciously react negatively

Today’s super youth generation are already beyond Facebook and prefer Instagram because it didn’t have an age limit for entry

It can take about 30 minutes to capture the right image for a food product with the right styling

Great design pays for itself. Why? Brand image first, rationalization later. Factually speaking, that is how people buy.

(Thats not even the tip of the ice berg on design :))

So what am I trying to tell you?

Don’t use 99Designs? Don’t use Elance? Don’t crowdsource?

Course not. I’m not that simple.

I’m saying -
If you are just starting off, or if you have next to no cash – then by all means “knock yourself out”.
I know that feeling when you are just starting off and you need to make every penny work for you, even if it means you tire yourself out,

I’m saying -
If you have excellent taste and you know what a successful brand looks like - then by all means “knock yourself out”.
Often in life, we will have either time OR we will have money. If you have more time than you have money, then this is the solution for you. Because you will happily perfect something and spend the time that it needs.

But just be aware;
They may call themselves designers, but that doesn’t mean that there are trained designers in the back end.
Did you check their records?
Did you find out who else had hired them?
Do you know anything about design that will help you judge their output?

If you know nothing about design, that is ok.
But that doesn’t mean you can play the fool.
Your marketing will really fall apart. Truly.

I have two things to tell you;

1. You can’t have a committee judge the design. It’s not a popularity contest. Numbers don’t mean quality.

2. If you don’t know about design, you can’t be the one to judge it and make the final call

3. When a Marketing Executive wastes his time fixing the mistakes in the final design submission – then I’m wondering if your time was better spent connecting to that CEO who wanted a meeting with you, but you were busy fiddling pixels with a designer who knows very little about typography and perfecting the colour palette.

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Why do I care?

Aside from the fact that bad design hurts – you’re still throwing your money away on a product that won’t work for you.
Bad branding and bad design are harmful to your business.

I care about your business, if there was a way to help you save, I’d always suggest it.
But if you’re going to walk into the pitfire of crowdsourcing and terrible design, then I can’t hold you back.
I can only give you the best caution with genuine kindness.

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Want to know our design costs?

Send me an email about your requirements and I can put together a quote for you.
If you’re a small business, then we’ve got a package for you that I can immediately send your way to get you started.

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I surely (truly, madly, deeply) hope this was beneficial to you.
Take from it what resounds with you and leave the stuff that doesn’t.

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We are Kish+Co and we do a whole lot of stuff.
If it involves conversations around growing your company and designing to these conversations, then we’re on board.

Kish works with companies to help them get more >> whatever that more may be.