How to create a new logo for 85$ in 18 days

Let me share some of our experiences with the wonderful new world of doing business.

Date	Event	Effort	Cost
1-Jun-07	We posted a job on http://www.Rentacoder.com site.	4-6 hours preparation	0 $
3-Jun-07	We got 30+ replies.	8-10 hours to wade through all references	0 $
4-Jun-07	Selected a designer	-	0 $
6-Jun-07 till17-Jun-07	Received 20 samples, reviewed and fine-tuned	5 hours	0 $
18-Jun-07	Final delivery (B&W version, Photoshop file,…)	-	85$

So, the conclusion:

• 3 calendar weeks
• 3-4 days work on our side
• 85 $

Moreover, we posted the many alternatives on our website and on LinkedIn. We received 26 reactions that lead us to select the final choice. This is a result we could never have reached using the traditional ways.

Oh and by the way, this is the result:

What we learned from it:

• Don’t underestimate the preparation and processing time at your side. Even if the money spent was only 85$, there is a considerable cost at our side.
• The actual work only took a few days, yet we needed 3+ weeks to get the thing finished. We didn’t involve a CEO, a work group or special task force, or alike.

The good news:

• We were pleasantly surprised by the high quality feedback on LinkedIn. Some people printed all the logos in B&W and color, made estimations about printing costs, and gave other valuable feedback we hadn’t thought about.
• When some of the freelancers on Rentacoder say they keep on improving until you are satisfied, they actually mean that. We didn’t exploit that, but on 1 or 2 iterations we had to overturn some of our earlier decisions. The freelancer simply kept going along with us.

Post a comment if you got similar or other feedback.

Reddy.

                   

The facebook/myspace trap

As nicely pointed out in this post on zolved.com, facebook was initially restricted to the college kids. Because of the pressure of the numbers, gradually facebook opened up. Initially you could subscribe pretending you were from a high school. It nicely offered a list of schools to choose from. I got myself a fake account a few days after facebook opened that door. Now, virtually anybody can join. Moreover, the site now offers a zillion software applications to exploit your and your friends’ profiles.

Doing this, facebook forgot its original unique position:

• Restricted community
• Clear and simple interface

We are convinced not to fall into that trap. Let’s hope we are not tempted just because we want to attract more users…

What we learned from user testing

We read the books, the numerous articles, even organized usability testing on some of my previous projects. Each time I am surprised by the amount of feedback you get from a simple 30min session. If you ask someone who has never seen your application to do even the simplest things, you can’t believe how difficult it can be for them.

More feedback will come soon. If anyone is interested in testing our application, drop a note to administrator at radiocorridor.com.

What logo to choose

We know about software, but logo design is something completely different. So we put this job on rentacoder.com to draw a new logo. We received 20+ bids. It took us ages to go over all these people’s portfolio. We even got kicked from rentacoder for 24hours because of ‘heavy browsing’.

Finally we selected ‘Draward’, who really convinced us with a smashing set of his previous work. You can find samples of his work here and here.

So now we are faced with a second problem, what logo to choose for our RadioCorridor.com site. This is where we want your help. Have a quick look at the logos below and tell us which you prefer. You can add a comment or send us an email with your thoughts on Administrator@RadioCorridor.com.

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So mister president, what is this about?

There may be many causes for a celebration, but this is certainly one: our RadioCorridor.com site is finally up! Man, man, we have big plans with this thing.

1. First and foremost, we are building a community for people of the same company.
   We are all very passionate about the place we work. Everyone has opinions/suggestions/remarks about his or her workplace. So many people write about their jobs in public blogs. We want to offer a forum where people can do that without worries on bringing out confidential information.
2. Define company strategy from within
   We are not in any way affiliated with any of the companies we are hosting. We want to offer you the certainty that in no event, information on our servers will be shared with your management. In future versions of this site, we will be offering features to let people define together where the company has to go to. This is company strategy definition from within, the grassroots level.
3. Build a site, make a statement, get things moving
   Builders build houses, factory workers build cars and software people build sites like this one. That is what we at RadioCorridor want to do: to build the best inhouse company social network. The wish to get this working is keeping us awake!

So here we go…