Logo Design Required - Generous Compensation

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Shakespeare Distillery is a small craft distillery, based in Stratford-Upon-Avon, focusing on producing artisan gin that is inspired by Tudor Garden botanicals. We are looking to evolve the branding of our growing product line. The competition will centre around the creation of a label for our new Quince and Elderflower flavoured gin, which we intend to launch this summer. The winner of this competition will receive a year's supply of gin and £250 in cash. This is an opportunity to refresh and develop our product branding, therefore we are not looking for you to replicate our previous label designs but develop fresh new ideas.

Please see the criteria for designers, full T&Cs and details of submission at the link below:

Link removed by Levi (moderator)

We look forward to receiving your submissions.
 
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This is essentially crowdsourcing your branding.... this forum doesn't like crowdsourcing, as it's insulting to those of us who do this job for a living and need to pay the bills, so I'm removing the link.

Please feel free to replace your generous compensation (it's not in all honesty that generous) competition with a brief which people can bid on.

You'd expect to be paid for the work you put in making the gin, why is it you expect designers to work 'for free' on the off chance they might win a competition... and looking at the t&c's of the contest it might not even stop after the contest because you may want the designer to be involved in publicity events (part 7.4).

The designer basically signs away all rights of their design while the the 'promoter' can come back and basically ask us to 'change things'.... seriously this is just really bad for the designer.
 
This is essentially crowdsourcing your branding.... this forum doesn't like crowdsourcing, as it's insulting to those of us who do this job for a living and need to pay the bills, so I'm removing the link.

Please feel free to replace your generous compensation competition with a brief which people can bid on.

You'd expect to be paid for the work you put in making the gin, why is it you expect designers to work 'for free' on the off chance they might win a competition... and looking at the t&c's of the contest it might not even stop after the contest because you may want the designer to be involved in publicity events (part 7.4).

The designer basically signs away all rights of their design while the the 'promoter' can come back and basically ask us to 'change things'.... seriously this is just really bad for the designer.

It's posted in the competition forum which is the correct place, albeit a shit prize IMO.
 
To be fair, I'd guess that works out to be £250 cash and the same in gin although 12 bottles is hardly a years supply but then I am from Yorkshire. ;)

That being said, I don't agree with "Design Competions" full stop.
 
Hi guys,

Thanks for your feedback. We have received a lot of similar responses and understand where the community is coming from. On researching this competition we felt the cash prize alone was reasonable, based on some information from your own forums http://www.graphicdesignforums.co.uk/threads/pricing-for-logo-design.1790/. However, we added nearly £400 worth of our gin to do our best to further provide the winner with value for their work. We made sure the terms and conditions were clearly communicated to anyone who read the document through our link, because though many established designers may not be willing to work within this brief, we have also received significant interest in a wide variety of platforms from many individuals who do. We wanted to use your forum to reach anyone who would be willing to help bring fresh ideas to our brand. If anyone on this forum is interested, which looks to be the case, please see the link below:

broken link removed - Levi (moderator)

Best of Luck,

Marketing Team, Shakespeare Distillery.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi guys,

Thanks for your feedback. We have received a lot of similar responses and understand where the community is coming from. On researching this competition we felt the cash prize alone was reasonable, based on some information from your own forums http://www.graphicdesignforums.co.uk/threads/pricing-for-logo-design.1790/. However, we added nearly £400 worth of our gin to do our best to further provide the winner with value for their work. We made sure the terms and conditions were clearly communicated to anyone who read the document through our link, because though many established designers may not be willing to work within this brief, we have also received significant interest in a wide variety of platforms from many individuals who do. We wanted to use your forum to reach anyone who would be willing to help bring fresh ideas to our brand. If anyone on this forum is interested, which looks to be the case, please see the link below:


Best of Luck,

Marketing Team, Shakespeare Distillery.
You've received a lot of similar responses yet you still continue to go ahead with it... if you had 'respect' for designers you'd stop the competition and look to hire someone instead... just my opinion of course.

To put it bluntly, your forum isn't likely made up of professional designers like this one and your gin doesn't pay the bills so it's value isn't actually relevent when it comes to adding 'value' for many of us..... not to mention gin is only a 'prize' if someone actually likes gin (I don't for example).

Your new link also doesn't work.... so I've removed it to save confusion.
 
Hi guys,

Thanks for your feedback. We have received a lot of similar responses and understand where the community is coming from. On researching this competition we felt the cash prize alone was reasonable, based on some information from your own forums http://www.graphicdesignforums.co.uk/threads/pricing-for-logo-design.1790/. However, we added nearly £400 worth of our gin to do our best to further provide the winner with value for their work. We made sure the terms and conditions were clearly communicated to anyone who read the document through our link, because though many established designers may not be willing to work within this brief, we have also received significant interest in a wide variety of platforms from many individuals who do. We wanted to use your forum to reach anyone who would be willing to help bring fresh ideas to our brand. If anyone on this forum is interested, which looks to be the case, please see the link below:

https://bit.ly/2XvAJVa

Best of Luck,

Marketing Team, Shakespeare Distillery.

I've not seen your T&C's as the link was removed and the new link takes me to some log-in/register window.

To be honest, your prize isn't half bad (if you like gin). ;)

Just to explain the reservations people may have.

Within the design industry, "competitions" are quite a common thing for some reason and something that doesn't seem to be shared in other trades.
I'm sure you're familiar with a lot of these crowd sourcing sites where Designers pitch and compete for the job?
They are seen as very damaging and devalue the industry we work in so hence the scepticism.

If you consider that you may get say 25 Designers entering the competition and each of them could spend up to a week working on the design and only one gets the gig/prize?
I guess it's like you blending a new batch of gin which you label and bottle for a competition and if you don't win the entire batch gets poured down the toilet and the same goes for all the other Distillers that didn't win.
That's a lot of time, junipers and money going down the pot.

Don't get me wrong here.
I'm sure you're intentions are very well meant and the prize is what many would consider a fair payment but it's the competition thing that stirs peoples mistrust as we've all seen it before many times and it can touch a raw nerve.
If this was a competition aimed at the general public then there'd be no issue but as it's targeting professionals who do this for a living so you will get friction.

This site explains it quite well:
 
not to mention it's only of value if someone actually likes gin (I don't for example).

I quite like gin although it occasionally makes me somewhat tearful which is why I prefer TEQUILA! ;)

........It makes me happy! :D

 
I've not seen your T&C's as the link was removed and the new link takes me to some log-in/register window.

To be honest, your prize isn't half bad (if you like gin). ;)

Just to explain the reservations people may have.

Within the design industry, "competitions" are quite a common thing for some reason and something that doesn't seem to be shared in other trades.
I'm sure you're familiar with a lot of these crowd sourcing sites where Designers pitch and compete for the job?
They are seen as very damaging and devalue the industry we work in so hence the scepticism.

If you consider that you may get say 25 Designers entering the competition and each of them could spend up to a week working on the design and only one gets the gig/prize?
I guess it's like you blending a new batch of gin which you label and bottle for a competition and if you don't win the entire batch gets poured down the toilet and the same goes for all the other Distillers that didn't win.
That's a lot of time, junipers and money going down the pot.

Don't get me wrong here.
I'm sure you're intentions are very well meant and the prize is what many would consider a fair payment but it's the competition thing that stirs peoples mistrust as we've all seen it before many times and it can touch a raw nerve.
If this was a competition aimed at the general public then there'd be no issue but as it's targeting professionals who do this for a living so you will get friction.

This site explains it quite well:
Apologies, here is a working link

 
If you value your brand I'd really recommend not trying to crowdsource this and instead just seek out a professional brand designer you can work directly with. £250 and 12 bottles of gin likely won't be enough incentive for a professional to give up their time, unless they're desparate or just really like gin. Instead just combine the £400 gin value with the £250 cash prize, and you've got a budget of £650, a very decent price for the sort of work you're looking to get done.
 
At the end of the day it's a label for a bottle of Gin. There are more and more Gin bottles appearing on shelves each week from different brands. I just did a google image search for Gin Labels - and all from creative to just Text on them, and none of the designs entices me to buy a bottle of Gin. What entices me is the price. And even the cheap ones have very fancy labels, and some of the expensive ones have very plain labels.

Crowdsourcing will probably end in tears for everyone involved. Mostly because the chosen design will most likely be ripped off another design. And when you go to put the new label shiny bottle of Gin on the shelf - you'll realise you are putting it beside another bottle of Gin/Vodka/Whisky/Beer with almost identical branding and you'll kick yourselves in the foot.

You don't have pay a lot of a label design - Nike paid Carolyn Davidson $75 for the swoosh design, which was picked from a dozen designs presented last-minute - albeit, I think Carolyn was deeply fixed up financially for the creation of the logo later down the road.

Google designed its logo the night before the launch - last minute.

Then again Paul Rand charged Steve Jobs $100,000 for the NeXT logo:

After so many decades of work, Rand had developed very clear “conclusions” on how the relationship between the designer and the client should be conducted. Jobs recalls:
I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, “No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution! If you want options, go talk to other people! But I will solve your problem for you the best way I know how, and you use it or not, that’s up to you, you are the client. But you pay me.”

And that's the basic story of the NeXT logo.



I think the advice here is sound - hire a really good label designer - there are companies out there that specialise in this sort of thing.
 
I agree with the above.

Crowdsourcing tends to equate to poor quality or ripped designs.

Hiring a good designer is the safest route if you want quality but also communicate with them so that they can understand your brand and what you want.

And that's the basic story of the NeXT logo.

Reminds me of that story where the old ship mechanic fixes an engine in 30 seconds.
"You're not paying me for the 30 seconds it took me to fix it. You're paying me for the 30 years it took me to learn how to fix it in 30 seconds."

....or something like that. ;)
 
Whichever way you look at it, it’s spec work. Get multiple designers to work for free, choose which you like best, then pay only that one. Yet another race to the bottom.
 
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