Vote on my new DesignCrowd.com Spider Graphic here http://www.designcrowd.com/vote/spiderlogo-poll

 

Branding

A little branding can go a long way.  The above graphic with the exception of the Spider will most likely become my new graphic. This graphic will be used on my SpiderWayne.com site, Facebook, Twitter, t-shirts, caps and more!

Getting Started

However, once I got started I found it wasn’t as easy to do as I thought it would be.  Sure, if all I wanted was some text I would have caps and shirts printed already. But oh no, I always want more and what I wanted was to incorporate a spider into my logo.  I opened up photoshop and slapped some text together.  Next I started playing around with graphics. I tried to create my own and quickly discovered I have very little skill in creating a graphic from scratch, so I began looking into stock images.  I found a stock image that I liked on the Adobe Stock Photo site and bought it. When you buy a stock image from Adobe Stock Photos it means you are buying a standard license with it but more on that later.

Snag

Next I put all of this together and uploaded it to Custom Ink.  Custom Ink is a site where you can custom design t-shirts and caps and some other things.  Finally my cap design was done and I uploaded and saved the design but before I would complete my order I still had a few questions for Custom Ink.  Once they wrote back the question came up, where the spider in my logo come from and if it was original or not.  Remember that when you purchase a stock photo from Adobe Stock Photo it also comes with a standard license?  Well, I went back to Adobe Photo Stock and reread their standard license.  I noticed it said that I have the right to use it but not as part of my logo… CRAP!  Custom Ink also told me that they could create a logo that I could use to immediately use to print my t-shirts and caps.  I sat back and thought about this and formed my next question which would be, can I also use the logo anywhere I want. For example could I use it on my website, Youtube banner, Facebook banner, Twitter banner and anywhere else for t-shirts and caps?  There answer was… no.  I could only use their logo to print out products on their site.  This would not do for me.

New Spider Graphic & DesignCrowd.com

Now the search was on to find a graphic artist.  I searched the web and found a few.  I wrote to each and got only two responses back and one was from VistaPrint.com. Vista Print said that they work with a crowd sourcing site called DesignCrowd.com and that they would be able to help me with a custom graphic.  Design Crowd has a video on their site that walks you through their process but I had to be sure about the licensing this time so I wrote to Design Crowd and asked this question “Your video says once the design is done I can return to Vista Print to have it printed… Does this mean I can only used my new logo with you or can I go anywhere?” and their answer was “You can download the industry standard files (JPG, EPS/PDF) and use them anywhere.  Yes full ownership for use anywhere.”  I should also mention that after your image contest is over if you are not happy with any of the graphics you can get your money back for the budget you set so there is very little risk.

Making Progress

Design Crowd is looking very promising so at this point I start an account with them, create a project and started receiving graphics.  Within two hours I had 3 graphics ready for my review.  The quality was “meh”.  I waited for more and by the next morning I must of had about 10 more to look at.  How was the quality of these new graphics?  Some were really good and some were really bad but thats too be expected so I waited for more.  I had set my project to allow for new graphics for 5 days and during this time I was in contact with a few of the artists that had created in my eyes potential winners.  I had made requests for changes and most of them made these changes for me making the whole experience better and better.  On day five of my Design Crowd image contest I was sent an email saying that now I had 13 days to pick a winner.

Voting Has Begun

At the time of me writing this I now have twelve days to pick a winner or reject all the graphics. Fortunately for me, from all of the graphics I have received so far I can safely say that I really like at least 3 of them but need help picking the winning graphic.  The Design Crowd system also helps you create a free poll so you can share the graphics with friends, family or whomever you like.  This allows you to see which graphic is the most popular.

 

Help me decide on the winning graphic please go here and cast your vote: http://www.designcrowd.com/vote/spiderlogo-poll

 

Thank you,
SpiderWayne