This is how disruption works. Fiverr are doing to the graphic design industry exactly the sort of disruption that many of the startups we admire have been doing in other sectors for years - vastly reducing the price to the end user by using software to connect them with the lowest cost supplier. Exactly as the taxi industry decries Uber saying UberX isn't as professional or safe or fast, the design people are saying that the user is getting a raw deal as the product they buy is demonstrably inferior, stolen, ill-thought and slow. Just as Google did to advertising, Youtube did for television, Spotify did for music, and AirBNB did for hotels.
The incumbents all said the upstarts offered a worse service while failing to understand that there are huge numbers of people that don't want, or care about, the 'essential' qualities that the incumbents insist on selling. Disruption is made possible where an industry charges for things that represent no value to the customer. In the case of Fiverr, fortunately I think, their customers are people who want a logo that's better than what they can make themselves but without the bells and whistles like rounds of design changes, high quality vector artwork and Pantone reference colours. Designers think they need to charge for those things. They are wrong. Lots of customers are quite happy taking what they're given if the price is low enough.
And one day this will come to the software industry. Someone will make a service that enables businesses to build applications for $5. Apps that work, that scale, and that are 'good enough' not to need a developer any more. We will have to change the way we sell what we do, just as Fiverr is going to make designers have to think about the way they sell their services now.
There is no "bait and switch" here as the author claims.
Nowhere on Fivver's website do they claim you are getting a unique one-of-a-kind hand-designed logo -- you are paying $5 for someone else to tell you what a sensible logo should be and provide a few decent choices for starting out with... and that can be valuable (I know because as an engineer, the creative side of things often escape me).
I see no issue here. For my side project websites and companies, these sorts of logos (and at this price point) is exactly what I would look for.
I think the larger issue is that some of these come from stock photo sites which place restrictions on using them as logos. I'd be more than a little annoyed if I built a brand around a $5 logo and then hit legal trouble because of it.
If you're paying for someone to design you a logo, it's definitely deception to link an existing clipart. Did you miss the part* about the second contender actively lying?
You make it sound like hand-crafting is hard. I can pump out custom bespoke geometric shapes in seconds!
*edit, this part was only in the linked longer version of the first part of the article
>>Nowhere on Fivver's website do they claim you are getting a unique one-of-a-kind hand-designed logo
I'm sorry, but if someone says in their profile headline, "I will design amazing logos for $5" then I expect it to be more than just clipart or color-shaded text.
Well, honestly, most company logo's are not much more than clipart. Apple's logo, an apple... Microsoft's logo, 4 squares, IBM's logo, their name, etc etc.
I think you can't expect to buy a Ferrari at the Hyundai price point. If you want more, you're going to have to pay more.
I think there's crossed wires here. The term clipart was being used to refer to the literal nature of the icons origin - it came from a stock library of pre produced graphics.
And when you say 'most company logo's are not much more than clipart' - you're refering the the simple construction and form of the icon used in a logo. Apple, Microsoft, and IBM obviously didn't pull their logos from a stock library.
Although it's interesting to hear such logo's be described with such flippant regard for their conception.
It's not disruption. It's how the design industry works. Professional designers have long competed against free, whether it's printers who throw in a logo with letterhead printing or the boss' nephew who knows a bit of Photoshop.
The market is big enough for all of this. A smallish company that just wants something to put on a business card is not going to be up for a full branding and identity exercise (though they probably should be) and will be happy with a stock logo. A startup or company with more ambition would look stupid with the same.
It's the job of a designer or agency to educate the client as to why they are worth the fees they charge.
You have a good, well-intentioned point but the article emphasizes that these designers are trying to sell something that's not theirs. That's not disruption.
> Someone will make a service that enables businesses to build applications for $5
Sure, happens all the time. Look at SquareSpace for example. That kind of product you used to need a team of people for. There's examples all over the place. Not sure how you get from there to logo design though. So far computers seem to be at their best when we can clearly describe the rules for them to follow, and design doesn't seem to fall into that category.
I would seriously doubt actual plagiarism is going on here.
Places like istockphoto and 123rf sell royalty free logos - which you can purchase the upgraded license terms which allow you to resell works with that deseign/image.[1]
We don't know whether these people are paying for each image, but at $5 for a "custom" logo, I doubt they can afford to purchase the rights for each image. Yes, if all of their logos were clouds it would work, but that's not very likely.
If we're to accuse someone of plagiarism, we have to present the evidence. Onus is on the accuser. OP has done a disservice to his cause by not providing any evidence.
Automatically assuming plagiarism due to a low price-point is pretty dumb. This is a legitimate website, and plagiarism would be a massive risk for business. If they sell 100 logos a day -- that more than pays for the extended licenses. (They could even be getting bulk deals, going directly to the original creator, special licensing agreements to move more stock, etc).
It is plagiarism. Plagiarism is using the content of others without appropriate attribution. Copyright infringement is using the content of others without the rights to it. Copying can be either, neither, or both.
Whether attribution is needed is situational but in a 'design' context it's important.
> Designers think they need to charge for those things. They are wrong. Lots of customers are quite happy taking what they're given if the price is low enough.
In my experience this is not the case. The projects I've done which have dragged on for longest and been the most trouble are the ones I've done for free or less than the usual amount.
Charge a low price and the client will assume your time and skills are worthless.
I don't see it as a disruption, because it's not a replacement as much as an alternative. People and companies that need unique logos and original designs will continue to seek out the services offered by the author of this article, while fiverr will attract everyone else who wants a logo.
Note that Fiverr (who are the people I was saying are being disruptive) are not committing fraud. Some of the designers who sell through their platform might be, but that's not really any different to people who sell stolen things through eBay, or install pirated Wordpress plugins through eLance. It's definitely wrong for those people to be doing that, but focusing on the plagiarism aspect is a red herring. That's just some small (or large) number of users, not the platform itself. If you could eliminate all the fraud Fiverr would still be a disruptive platform.
You should not be calling something that's based around cheap labour disruptive nonetheless. Or rather, if you were to call Fiverr disruptive, it would not be for the "cheap" aspect but for the fact that their service provides a long list of fast-to-access freelancers (designers or other).
A disruptive business is usually defined to be at least better OR faster than what exists that then capitalizes on market share. It can be cheaper only as an added bonus. If the single business advantage is being cheaper, the business is not disruptive, as it adds nothing that's novel or unique, and can simply be either undercut by some or bettered by other competitors.
I don't understand, how they would be able to offer competitive priced service, if they didn't rely on people either underselling or plagiarising.
I'd understand, if there were some economies of scale that actually enabled the cost reduction, but in this case the nature of the product is always unique: you can seldom sell the same design to several clients, hence the only way to reduce the cost is to lower your margins. And hence it's a race to the bottom.
I can't say I agree with the parallels you draw here on disruption. This isn't disruption comparable to Uber or AirBnB, it isn't disruption at all. The examples you give are all companies which have come along and provided an offering on par with or exceeding what is currently being offered by archaic slow moving industries, often both in price and experience.
Uber works because the service you receive is a commodity service - transport. Uber fixes the price across all car tier's so it doesn't matter wether you get Larry or Jim, you're paying the same, their job is to get you from point A to point B. There's essentially no qualitative differentiation. What they offer isn't cheaper than a cab but the experience they offer is arguably superior and more convenient. This works and is disruptive. What AirBnB offer is a platform to connect people with spare beds, with people who want a place to stay. The qualitative offering differs from host to host, and as a result, AirBnB allow Hosts to set their own price per night, so essentially making AirBnB a platform conecting people, but allowing a free market to operate upon it. The end experience is unique, and mostly cheaper than the equivalent experience at a hotel. This works, this is disruptive.
What Fiverr are doing is offering a highly inferior service at a much lower price. They are taking a service which is not a commodity good, one with a huge spectrum of qualitative differentiation, and fixing it at a very low price. When you do that you just get a bad product bought cheap. That is not new, let alone disruptive.
The differentiator between Fiverr design product and a good quality professional designer, isn't that they don't offer the 'bells and whistles'. A 'professional', reputable designer isn't trying to upsell you on the scotch guard for your sofa to make an extra buck or two - pantone references and vector artwork aren't line items on an invoice in design, that's not what you're paying for. The gap is the quality of the final product. This isn't people offering high quality design and somehow making it a leaner, more compelling offering than traditional channels using some kind of an innovative model - this is just poor quality work pedalled on a platform.
Not everyone is prepared to pay for 'good' design. Some people just want 'something'. And there will always be those people. That both want just something, and those that produce it. That pool of people, and the rest, which need, and understand the value of good design aren't in conflict. They're totally separate groups, and they've co existed for years, and will continue to.
I can confidently say that Fiverr will not make me, or any designers I know 'think about the way we sell our services' in the manner you suggest.
Apparently the work wasn't really stolen- it was a stock design that was (presumably) paid for. I would not call it a rip-off, and would ask "what about fiver makes people think they are going to get completely original designs?" If fiver (or their designers) are indeed somehow misleading customers into thinking their design is completely original, with no stock art involved, that is a problem- but it seems clear to me that for 5 bucks that you would be starting from stock.
I did some quick looking at the stock sites featured in the article:
Dreamstime: http://www.dreamstime.com/terms#unauthorized
Apparently you can use it in a logo, but you cannot trademark it- which resolves the problem of someone trademarking it and suing you- their trademark would be infringing the license.
Yes, this license does forbid use on logos, so that designer apparently did indeed violate the license. The designer should have read the fine print.
Freelancer: I couldn't find terms for stock work, however, the headline in the screenshot is "travel agency logo" so based on that, it appears it is meant to be a stock logo.
So, it appears that 2 out of 3 of the sites do allow us of their artwork in logos. It may not be a good idea, but in these 2 cases, I would not call it stealing. Nor would I expect anything more for 5 bucks.
Right. And there are a lot of rationales for this restriction. Say you decide to use a logo incorporating stock artwork for your open source project or small business. Don't be surprised to get a cease and desist letter down the road from some other business which used the same artwork in their logo and perhaps even trademarked the logo. It doesn't really make sense to use stock art for anything that is supposed to be a unique identity.
I was thinking the same thing, which is that if these folks are going through the web, finding licensable and free content for creating a logo out of, putting it into a logo and then mailing it to you, that is probably 30 - 45 minutes of your time so worth $5 is it not?
I don't know if designers get more angry at people who take logos constructed out of stock parts in this way and use them or at the people who supply those logos. There are lots and lots of them out there.
The only thing I'd add to what you said, is that another common problem with using stock images for a logo, is that sometimes the rights of the stock image that was purchased excludes it from being reused in such things as logos.
Why would you think you could get any sort of creative work at all for 5 dollars?
Even at just above minimum wage, wouldn't the time this person spent communicating with you about your company consume at least $5 of wages, before any actual graphical work began?
At the very least I'd hope $5 worth of thought went into it before $5 worth of actual drawing work commenced.
Reading the description of a company should take no more than 1-2 minutes. I understand that drawing takes time but I could easily do some form of creative blurb writing at $5 a pop and make $50 an hour. Couldn't you?
I haven't done it because nobody is willing to pay $5 for a blurb. But here I'll do you one for free: "JabavuAdams - insight for a modern world" or "JabavuAdams - jack into the future [game link]"
The point is that doing some kind of fast creative work is physically possible. You can even get quality creative work for a few dollars. Go find a street artist.
I'm confused. How is using a stock template a "rip-off"? If you design something with a stock photo, is your entire design a rip-off? If you use a popular library such as Bootstrap, is your site a rip-off? It's lazy, sure. But you honestly weren't expecting anything else.
>There’s nothing wrong with going with a cheaper freelancer instead of hiring an expensive agency, just like there’s nothing wrong with choosing McDonalds over a 3-star restaurant.
Totally, but this is like reviewing an egg mcfuffin and being disappointed they didn't serve you pastured eggs. There's a disclaimer near the beginning of the article about a potential conflict of interest. When I first read it, I blew it off thinking "oh that's not necessary, this is just a bit of fun." In hindsight, the article reads like an ad. I was expecting a little more from the tag line "An epic tale of deception, stolen artwork, and crappy logos."
Whoa, that's one hell of a bullshit disclaimer. Even after reading it (and it's not exactly highlighted), it was unclear that Folyo was his company. Definitely sketchy.
To be fair to the author, in the disclaimer it is stated, "my startup Folyo". So it is pretty clear that an opinion and competing biz model are assumed, which is why their is a disclosure. The conclusions can certainly be disputed though
To add a related experience, but with different results... some months ago I used 99designs to get a cover for my novel. It wasn't $5 but $300, but still, I was amazed by the quality of [some of] the entries - 126 in total! See here: https://99designs.com/book-cover-design/contests/book-cover-... In this case the freelancers were required to disclose the licenses of the assets they used, and even provide the sources so I could verify them.
I understand why some artists complain about sites like these, but for a "consumer" like me it's a fantastic idea - and as another commenter said, "disruption". They do other things, like UI design and so on... check them out. FWIW, I'm in no way affiliated to 99designs, I just had a good experience with them.
We used 99designs and were happy with their work too. Our competition offered something like $700 -- we wanted to ensure that the better designers pitched for our logo while still being affordable to us.
What I noticed and found interesting was that the designers who participate in 99designs would do a lot of "police work" by calling out plagiarism and reuse by the other designers. I'm guessing that it's because more money was at stake than $5.
If you are happy with the end results as a consumer, that's what counts.
I would argue that with a talented artist and a slightly higher budget, you would of gotten a better result.
The real pain point (in my opinion) , is finding the right designer/artist that you can work with on a constant basis, that search alone makes websites like 99designs an optimal choice.
EDIT: 99Designs seems to have changed their model since my last visit. Definitely more sustainable for all parties.
>In this case the freelancers were required to disclose the licenses of the assets they used, and even provide the sources so I could verify them.
My worry would be that they seem to tag all the imagery as "stock imagery; does not require purchase." OTOH, the good part is that you can verify that yourself.
The missing link between the new Pepsi logo and TimeCube!
Saddest thing is I can see a board room eating this up. Remember when Marissa Mayer redesigned the Yahoo logo with a small team over a weekend? "no straight lines in nature" she said. Sounds good, except it is wrong.
I always ask clients if they would go with a $5 plumber, or a $5 bus driver for their kids. Always the response is, "No!" So it's a matter of them not being able to judge quality of tech / design work... not just them being cheap. Any small business is going to want to pinch pennies, but if you know they make irrational decisions you should just walk away.
The cure, I think, is for our industry to develop non-subjective ways of saying, "I'm a level 60 Developer spec'd for RoR," or, "Designer with .333 Batting Average stepping up to the plate." So customers can compare apples to apples when looking at the billable rate.
If you think $5 logos are the only ones who plagiarize; I've seen this from people who charge $150 / hour too. It's still very much the wild wild west and the likelihood of someone getting ripped off doesn't seem to change no matter how much the service provider charges.
>I always ask clients if they would go with a $5 plumber, or a $5 bus driver for their kids. Always the response is, "No!" So it's a matter of them not being able to judge quality of tech / design work...
A $5 plumber might flood your offices. A $5 bus driver might crash the bus your kids are in. A $5 logo designer might... design a logo for you that isn't great?
I got my company's logo on Fiverr and wrote about the experience a couple years ago. Quite happy with the result honestly. It offended a lot of people then (feel free to read the comments), and probably still does today. But I've heard designers at $100+/hr down to Fiverr and they serve different purposes. I've been happy with both and disappointed in both types (and everything in between). I wouldn't hesitate to give it a shot though, it's so cheap you're not really losing much budget if you have to go another direction.
I consider the $100/hr designer and the Fiverr designer in two entirely different markets. At the low-end, you get what you pay for, which is not much. But sometimes you don't need much. You're not really taking business away from higher-paid designers.
That said, as soon as you need any kind of ongoing relationship with someone who can seriously transform the design & aesthetics of your product into something competitive, the value of the high-end designer becomes immediately apparent. $100/hr might even be cheap, depending on your needs. It's just an entirely different market.
> A logo is what identifies you. It's the symbol that takes up space in a customer's mind when they think about your company. There is no symbol that is more connected to your company than a logo.
And then you end up with a logo that is, frankly, awful. Which means now customers will associate that awfulness with your company. Is that what you want?
Some companies aren't lasting brands. Mine happens to fall into that category. Nobody has ever given a shit about my logo except from that post.
The service I provide, if it does its job well, is something you never should need to go back to ever again. Almost all my visitors are one time visitors and there is little/no return value on what I do. So, in this instance, customers never think of my brand. So it really doesn't matter.
And you say it's awful. I don't think it's awful. It's functional. It doesn't distract from everything else, it doesn't add anything special. That's good enough. I don't want people thinking about my logo, I want them getting what they need and leaving.
> It's functional. It doesn't distract from everything else, it doesn't add anything special. That's good enough. I don't want people thinking about my logo, I want them getting what they need and leaving.
This is true of most logos. The opposite of "awful" isn't "shoots out rainbows that dazzle and disorient the viewer".
The logo should look like it was done carefully and with attention to detail. It should be balanced and pleasant to look at. Even subconsciously, people will pick up on those qualities (or their lack) and infer the same about your company.
I don't mean to slag on your logo. I know it's probably not a priority for you. But it does a disservice to others to say, "Look how easy it is to solve your logo problem!" when the end result you got was actually pretty poor.
In particular, the outermost "radio" arc cuts unpleasantly close to the "S". It doesn't match any of the other spacing and makes the "S" look like it has some weird thing attached to it. The other arc is thinner for no clear reason and the spacing between it and the dot over the "i" and the outer arc is inconsistent.
To my eye, the whole set of arcs is too tall and makes the outline of the entire logo look unbalanced.
Also, the kerning around the first "e" is bad.
I understand you think no one cares about your logo, but you took the time to animate it and put it a video. Why not at least drop a bit of cash beforehand and make sure it's worth reusing?
Argh. I hate being negative without being helpful. Here's something like I had in mind: http://imgur.com/bpUqyKd
Neat experiment. Buying design through places like Fiverr is a hard proposition (unlike, say, voice over or something) because faking and fraud is so easy. But let's not pretend this is relegated to things like Fiverr.
I've paid pretty good money for web design work before only to find out later it was recycled or stolen from an open source project, grabbed off ThemeForest and re-colored, or straight copied and pasted off someone else's website. I worked with a startup that hired through a High Class™ marketplace for a lot of dough and they ended up with a logo that the designers eventually admitted was "heavily inspired" by another popular logo.
Just because you pay more doesn't mean you get a more honest vendor.
Author here. Just to address the point that just because these logos are based on stock templates, doesn't mean they are rip-offs:
1. If you read the original article, you'll see that the second designer assured me in writing that their artwork was original (I had my doubts so I asked).
2. Most stock template's terms of use explicitly forbid using them as logos (presumably to avoid legal issues).
3. At no point in the process was any hint given that the logo would not be original artwork. Here's the blurb from the logo designer's page:
> I will design a killer, high-quality, effective and custom-made logo for your website, company or business.
And I may be mistaken, but the word "logo" itself carries connotations of uniqueness to me.
$5? At $50/hr that's about 6 minutes; at $30 an hour that's 10 minutes. Barely enough time to load up a stock file, slap some text on it in Illustrator, make some default gradients, and call it a day. And that's exactly what you get.
Cheap things are cheap because 1) they take very little materials/labor to make, or 2) they cost a lot to make, but there's a lot of it and the cost is spread over many duplicates.
In this case, you're getting the latter, obviously. And you get what you pay for. I'd say, if you're the kind of person who thinks paying for a $5 logo or $300 logo is good enough, you might as well learn Illustrator yourself and whip something easy out, since it will satisfy your two constraints: 1) it's cheap/free, and 2) it looks okay to you but not to anyone else, but that's fine, because the $5 logo would have performed the same role anyways.
This is like asking: "What kind of branding do you get for $5?" "What kind of a PR rep do you get for $5?" Etc, etc.
I'm pretty sure that any attempt by me to learn Illustrator and whip out a logo will be neither cheap (as I value my time) nor look good (even to me). I imagine that's the case for a lot of (most?) non designers.
This reminds me a lot of sound effects in video games. At the high end you can hire a sound designer to do custom foley/SFX. For a small game, maybe $1-5k. Midrange, you can hire a sound designer with extensive knowledge to pick royalty-free sounds for you (maybe $250). On the cheap, you can browse through SFX libraries yourself and pick out what you want and pay per-effect (maybe $20-$50 worth). Ditto for music.
It's kind of a spectrum of "custom-for-you" to "off-the-shelf" AND a separate spectrum of "no-effort" (picking) to "put-in-a-lot-of-time-and-effort" (doing your own shopping).
None of these are "wrong" or "stealing" -- in this analogy Fiverr isn't even the "cheapest" option (the author could put in some time and browse royalty-free templates on their own). It seems like more a sign of a mature market with too much inventory than anything shady.
I have used the first designer's work and he did a pretty good job for the grand sum of $5. I think he's a design student, so it's a pretty good gig for him (especially because he lives in a low-cost country). I sent him a stock image that I liked and he made a similar design. No complaints from me!
The larger issue here is that it's common and expected to have to trademark a logo, so if you're ever going to need to do that a logo made with stock art may be problematic.
Other than that I'm a big believer in asset stores, stock art, etc. Especially for prototyping.
If I spent $20 on Fiverr could I find a designer who could go on 123rf.com or another stock site, get a vector image, adapt it, and make a better logo that would be a less typical design?
How much did he actually pay for that logo? I assume it was quite a lot, given the context.
That logo is a vector circle with 5 characters in it. You are right. Bit ironic to decry unoriginal logo design, i would expect better for 20 into a fiverr account
"Logical Lodge", "Solar PV", and "Pet Friendly Florist" are the only ones that seem to have been built with any attention to modern design principles. "Foresight Strategist" is ambiguous, in that someone could have thought they were making a good logo while producing it.
The remainder would look entirely out of place in anyone's portfolio. I certainly can't say with confidence that $5 is a bad price for those images, but I can say that $500 would be.
The incumbents all said the upstarts offered a worse service while failing to understand that there are huge numbers of people that don't want, or care about, the 'essential' qualities that the incumbents insist on selling. Disruption is made possible where an industry charges for things that represent no value to the customer. In the case of Fiverr, fortunately I think, their customers are people who want a logo that's better than what they can make themselves but without the bells and whistles like rounds of design changes, high quality vector artwork and Pantone reference colours. Designers think they need to charge for those things. They are wrong. Lots of customers are quite happy taking what they're given if the price is low enough.
And one day this will come to the software industry. Someone will make a service that enables businesses to build applications for $5. Apps that work, that scale, and that are 'good enough' not to need a developer any more. We will have to change the way we sell what we do, just as Fiverr is going to make designers have to think about the way they sell their services now.