Hopefully this is the first thing you noticed on your daily visit to StandOutBlogger.com today!
I mentioned yesterday, in my very short post, that this blog was finally getting its own unique and brandable logo. Well it is finally here – and already uploaded!
Do you love it as much as I do?
I am very happy with the way my logo contest turned out (Check out some of the other great entries)
Who Said You Have To Pay $$$ For Quality?
The thing I love about competitions is the fact that you don’t just have one designer working for you. You are able to leech creative juices off a multitude of quality designers and get great ideas from all of them. This usually results is a superior end product because you are just having the view of one designer , but many.
You will notice I only paid $20 for this design. I think for the quality of the logo, that if I had to commission a designer, even a freelance designer, I would be looking at a price of $50 – $100 – minimum. But with a contest, you are able to get entries from designers who would usually charge more for their services but as they had some free time, they are usually willing to work for less!
Let’s Take A Closer Look At The Logo!
To get a logo that meets and exceeds your expectations, you need to know what you want, and let your designer(s) know exactly what you want. I had a small but precise criteria for all entrants of my contest, to steer them in the right direction. Here they are to see if you believe they met them.
What I am looking for:
- Must stick with blue theme of blog
- Something Brandable – preferably not just text
- not gimicky or fun – prefer professional
- must have icon that can be brandable on it’s own – ie shoemoney’s shield
Let’s take a look at each of this a bit more indepth!
- Must Stick With The Blue Theme Of The Blog
Obviously you want brand continuity with whatever you are marketing. Keeping colours the same throughout a website makes not only for an aesthetic design, but it helps with branding. People associate things with colours, and if you are sending visitors a conflicting message, then their chances of remembering who you are is minimal. - Something Brandable – Not Just Text
Sure, it works for massive companies that already have a massive following or awareness, but a logo for a new company has to be eye catching. It needs to give visitors something to remember. Something for them to reference you too – kind of like having a face to put a name too. - Not Gimicky Or Fun – Prefer Professional
When you are looking at getting a logo for your company, website or blog, you need to not only look at what your product is, but the type of customers you want to attract. If you are targetting kids, you want fun and colourful. If you want to target teens, your design has to be cutting edge and fresh. For me, and this blog, I wanted a professional logo for a couple of reason.- I want to be seen as a professional that takes his blog seriously
- I want something that will look professional on products that I create as a results of this blog (ie ebooks, training, etc)
While I think the new logo is professional, I love the fact that it is fresh and cutting edge as well. It is not a boring professional logo. this was important as a lot of bloggers are younger people – like myself, and that is what impresses them!
- Must Have An Icon That Can Be Brandable On It’s Own
What do McDonalds, Nike and ShoeMoney have in common? They all have an icon part of their logo that is instantly recognisable to the customers and target market. I think this is integral when you are looking at branding – as branding is about recognition.This was probably my most important requirement, I wanted something for advertisements that would stand out and make people want to visit my blog, but obviously it had to have something to do with the blogs name or what it did.
I love it. the designer did an amazing job of making the icon out of the letters ‘s’ and ‘b’ for ‘Standout Blogger’. He made it very creatively by using the bottom part of the ‘b’ to also be the bottom part of the ‘s’. I think you will agree that it is eye catching, and should be easily brandable on its own right – with a bit of promotion.
You will notice that I got exactly what I asked for – and more. Not only did I get more than just text, but I also got a text that is brandable also.
The text is very unique which would allow people to recognize the logo even without having the icon – although I am not planning on marketing without the icon!
All-in-all I think the whole process was a big success!
I am guess by now you are wondering who my fantastic designer is?
Well his name is IM3D and he has an amazing portfolio which you would be wise to check out!
After being a freelance designer for 5 years now, he is currently working as a freelancer for the following two companies:
- Tometa Software – graphic design team
- The Success Centre – graphic design team
IM3D comes highly qualified, with skills in:
- Coreldraw
- Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Flash
- illustration/sketch
- Dreamweaver
Aside from all of that, he has kindly mentioned to me that he will be more that willing to help any of my readers by offering to develop a quality logo for you also with prices starting from $20!
If you are interested, then you can contact him through this page here.
If you love what you have read here today, then I encourage you to subscribe to rss feed, or get emailed with each new post!
That’s a great looking logo you have. Last week I played around with the ‘C’ of Comlpete Kaizen. Basically I just changed the font and stuck a dot in the middle – no where near this quality.
It’s certainly striking which is important for a brand image, something immediately recognisable. Your tips have also made me think of tweaking my logo, using the free image manipulation program called “Gimp.” It’s equivilent to photoshop but completely free.
Congratulations with the blog sale as well. Do you know if the new owner will be updating soon?
thanks for the kind words andrew!
In regards to IncomeDiary.com – I know the new owner has some nice plans for it. Although I am not sure how long he will take to update. I can email you his details if you like.
Hi Tom
awesome new logo
The logo looks totally cool, it really fits with the title of the site as it definitely stands out. Now just to squeeze it down into a 16×16 format and use it as favicon :P.
Favicon. I always forget them. will be interesting to see what I can come up with :S
That looks really nice. I’m not sure which I like better though, this or the one on your other site :D Anyway, I’m really close to contacting him about doing one for me, but who did the graphics for your other site because I like those too!
by graphics are you talking about the one on ThomasSinfield.com? That one cost me about $60. I can fish out her contact details if you like.
That’s the one I was talking about, but maybe I should just talk to IM3D since his price is much much lower….
Drop me an email if you would because I’d like to discuss this more as far as whether you got some sort of package deal for ThomasSinfield.com, how you went about determining your criteria, etc.
REally nice logo! i was thinking on launching a contest on sitepoint for a logo. As i see your success i might be doing that in a near future :)
I checked out the other entries, all were nice, but you made the best decision in my opinion.
I love the logo, and yes, it was the first thing I noticed when I visited the site. A good quality logo can go a long way, and I love that you got one that is brandable, so that you can use it with or without the text and on your future products.
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Really good looking. I like it…
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