110,575
World's Top Choice For Graphic Design Services
Your global team of 100,000+ graphic design experts
You'll set your own price, see work from dozens of talented designers and choose from an average of 110+ original custom designs. We promise world class customer support (we're an American Business Awards Winner for Best Product/Service) and an easy to use process. With our money back guarantee, crowdSPRING offers a proven, fast, and risk-free way to buy a custom logo design at an affordable price.
- Typical project gets 110+ entries
- Thousands of satisfied clients
- 100,000+ designers & writers
- We guarantee your money back
- Recommended by 96% of customers
How crowdSPRING works
It's that simple. Take a quick tour »
Featured in these fine publications around the world.
What our customers say
- "We would not be able to continue operating as a growing technology company without crowdSPRING."
- "For everything that I do, I would go to crowdSPRING first. I just think it's the best process out there."
- "You get such a wide variety of designs. The site was easy to use and the cost was very fair."
- "Our experience with crowdSPRING was outstanding. Ten out of ten. Couldn't have been better."
Frequently asked questions
What are PRO projects?
Almost from the day we launched, many companies, brands, and advertising agencies have asked us if we can give them privacy features and greater control over projects. If you are an agency, you’re worried that your campaign may leak out before its time. If you are a brand, you’re worried that the competition may get a peek at what you’re up to. Pro projects offer a great way to crowdsource product design or packaging design, or a way to leverage our community without letting the general public see what you’re up to until you’re ready. Pro projects are automatically added to our robots exclusion list so that they are not profiled in search engines. We’ve built a dynamic system of non-disclosure agreements to let you screen creatives before they are permitted to participate in your project. Creatives will see a public description of the project and must agree to a non-disclosure agreement before they are permitted to see the full project brief and materials.
Buyers have full control over access to their Pro project. They can admit participants automatically after a non-disclosure agreement is signed or can decide on a case-by-case basis. And once participants are admitted to a project, they can be removed by the buyer and added back at any time. Buyers can decide whether creatives can see one another’s entries and comments (including the buyer’s comments to other creatives). Pro projects can last up to 30 days. And Pro projects have all of the great features we offer in standard projects, including: customized legal agreements, full project management tools, robust notifications, great customer service, etc.
How does crowdSPRING help me communicate with designers?
We’ve built useful tools to help you communicate with the crowdSPRING community. After you post your project, we list it on our site, send emails, and inform people via RSS. You can public or private message any user or group of users in the community, and will be able to communicate with anyone either publicly or privately. We’ve also built tools to let you communicate with everyone participating in your project. And each step of the way, we inform others when there’s a comment or message waiting for them (each user can set customized notification preferences).
Does crowdSPRING provide tools to manage my project?
The entire project is fully managed right on our site and we give you the tools to make this easy. You can easily sort or filter the entries as they come in, provide feedback and score, ask for iterations, send public or private messages, create updates to your project brief, upload files to share with the participating creatives, ask your customers to come vote for their favorites, and much more. Even the project wrap-up takes place on our site. At the end of the project after you pick your winner, you’ll complete the project on our site. The winning creative will upload proofs for your final tweaks/comments and then will upload the final files with your favorite designs. We even take care of paying the winning creative(s) on your behalf after you approve the final files.
Does crowdsPRING have a reputation system for designers?
We’ve developed a two-way reputation system with relevant information to help you decide whether to work with a particular creative or buyer. At the end of every project, we ask the buyer and designer to rate each other on a variety of factors and to provide a short written narrative about the project. This reputation system helps buyers and creatives on crowdSPRING to make informed decisions.
Should a logo be simple?
Yes. Simplicity is vital. A complex logo will be difficult to print and reproduce and may not fully engage your audience. Take a moment and think about brands that are successful and/or famous. Most likely, you've thought of companies like Nike, Apple, Volkswagen, Target, McDonald's, etc. What do they all have in common? They all have logo designs that are simple and easily recognized when printed by themselves, and when printed in solid black and white.
Should a logo be memorable?
Your logo does not always need to describe what your business does. Have you ever seen a car manufacturer with a picture of a car as their logo? How about a shoe manufacturer? It would look silly to have a picture of a shoe….on a shoe. When using icons in your logo, consider icons that could communicate your brand without the company name. (examples: Y! for Yahoo! or the Swoosh for NIKE). This will allow you to use the icon as a stand-alone image (on package graphics, for example). For a person to retain and identify with a mark (your icon), a little mental tennis match must be played with it. If an icon is too blatantly obvious or easy to 'read,' the viewer often feels no sense of discovery or personal equity with it. But remember that too much abstraction can be dangerous because your message can be lost.
Should a logo be timeless?
Trends are good but innovation is better. (And fads are often deadly). A logo should have a long life expectancy. It will evolve and change over time, but the longer it stays the same at its heart, the better brand recognition you will get over time. Examples: Coca-Cola, Dior, Rolex. A good logo design will have a sense of timelessness about it. A logo that feels anchored in a certain time period is more likely to feel outdated or need substantial repurposing fairly quickly. The best logos change very little yet feel fresh and vibrant every time. (Nike, IBM, Apple).
Should a logo be unique?
Will it stand out among the clutter and the crowd? Does the mark distinguish itself in a unique way from the competition, or is it predictable / default / bland — and thus unmemorable and ultimately invisible to the intended audience? With thousands upon thousands of fonts, billions of color combinations, and an infinite flow of design ideas, choose the logo that is most unique. Try to avoid common logo cliches like "swoops," "wooshes," and "pinwheels;" these techniques are perhaps the most commonly used practices in the logo industry (just look around your house, you'll see). Avoid clip art like the plague, unless it's significantly modified by the artist. It's quite disturbing when you start noticing your logo, and things that look like it on many other people's brands. That's the quickest way to look low-budget and second-rate.
How should a logo express your brand?
Don't compare the logo you will be choosing to already famous brands in the world. Those brands are famous not because of their logo, but because of the people/vision behind that logo. So, always remember that the branding behind the logo is very very important.
How is crowdSPRING different?
When we launched in 2008, we introduced new innovations that were then (and even today) unmatched. We’re not sitting still. We haven’t stopped innovating. We have an awesome creative community. Don’t just take our word for it. In 2009, we were nominated for a Webby Award (as one of only five startups in the world) for the Community category. The Webbys are the leading international award honoring excellence online. Some of the most creative people on the planet work, learn and teach on crowdSPRING. Our community has people from nearly every corner of our planet. We’re lucky to have some who are just starting out and creative directors from some of the world’s top agencies. Our community has worked together to help fight some of the worlds most challenging problems in our Give Back program – where both crowdSPRING and designers agree to help – without any fees – worthy charities and non-profits with graphic design needs. And our community has worked together to create outstanding guides to help buyers around the world, including: 10 Logo Design Tips For Buyers and 10 Tips For Buyers To Effectively Manage Design Projects.
Is customer service important to crowdSPRING?
Like Zappos, we’re building a culture where extraordinary customer service is the norm. People say that imitation is a form of flattery – and we think Zappos does customer service better than nearly anyone on the planet. We believe that happiness is helping others and that helping is happiness. And thousands of our customers have let us know how much they’ve benefited from our approach to customer service. Don’t take just our word. In June 2009, we won a Stevie Award from American Business Awards (the world’s premier business awards program) for Best Product/Service.
Is crowdSPRING committed to education?
We’re not just a marketplace. We’re a community, and our commitment to this community extends into numerous areas, including education. As I wrote above, our community has collaborated on numerous guides to help others, we spend a great deal of time collaborating, educating and learning in the forums, and we’re proud to share helpful resources not just with our community but with designers around the world. We share with our community awesome design resources through our Twitter account and in our forums and blog. We’re shared with our community and everyone in the world two free e-books (Contracts for Graphic Designers who Hate Contracts and Contracts For Software Developers Who Hate Contracts) to help designers and developers with their freelance legal contracts.
Does crowdSPRING provide legal agreements?
Other marketplaces, if they do anything at all, just give you a generic form agreement and leave you on your own to figure it out. How does that help you? We’ve built a sophisticated system of dinamic legal agreements that take into account the country you’re from and the country that the winning creative is from. Each legal agreement is customized to your project. And we don’t charge you a penny extra for this – it’s all part of our 15% project fee.
How does crowdSPRING protect intellectual property?
crowdSPRING respects intellectual property – this is one of our core values as a company (before co-founding crowdSPRING, I spent 13 years as an attorney focusing on the protection of intellectual property, for clients around the world). We don’t just talk about it – we’ve spent an incredible amount of time building tools, policies and procedures to help us. If you’re interested in the details, please take a look at this post: How Does crowdSPRING Protect Intellectual Property?
Should a logo be flexible?
A logo should be visible and distinguishable on a big billboard from 100 meters away or on stationery design from to 20 millimeters away. It should also work well in different size formats like for example on business cards, brochure, t-shirt design and other marketing materials such as embroidery, stamping, embossing, etc. A good logo will work well in many colors and in just one or two colors (yes, black is a color). A good logo will work well on light backgrounds as well as dark backgrounds, even on multicolored backgrounds.
Many start-ups and smaller companies use their logo on a few marketing materials but use something else on other materials. Be sure that you use your logo consistently and be sure that your logo design allows you the flexibility to do so in multiple formats.
Are the colors in a logo important?
If you are looking for a color logo, consider the messaging that color sends to your customers. Do the colors reinforce and strengthen the intended core message/personality/mood you're trying to communicate through the logo, or do they distract or neutralize? For example, blue often communicates trust, loyalty and freshness. The color blue is common in banking or finance. Green represents life, nature and cleanliness. Also consider colors that work well with dark and white backgrounds. Because logos are often printed in black and white, chose a logo design that is viable and as strong or stronger in black and white.
Although gradients provide an aesthetically-pleasing effect on computers, consider possible future uses of the logo such as on letterheads, business cards, and merchandise. Will the logo provide ease of printing and reproduction in and on all types of media? A logo for a web design or a band, or a one-off project can be more rasterized and colorful than something that's going to be printed in many different ways.
Think twice about including more than 3 colors in a logo - too many colors will increase the cost of production when printing and may make the logo more difficult to reproduce. Although such costs have decreased considerably, this remains good advice.
How important is typography in a logo?
Typography, Typography, Typography. Ask yourself what you're trying to communicate. Depending on the type of application; typefaces with serifs convey a sense of dignity & power, sans serifs are often more clean looking and offer either a sense of stability or whimsy (depending on the character of the face). Will the face work with what you currently have? Can it be read at small sizes? Is the letterspacing/word spacing well adjusted? (the larger the wording gets, the more obvious the flaws will be) Typography is a craft in itself- it's the first voice of stating who you are. Beware that there are some truly horrible typefaces out there, make sure you're getting your money's worth.
Why should you ask for vector files?
Always request vector based graphics. It's often tempting to ask for complex illustrations in a logo. However, unless you plan on never using your logo outside of an on-screen/online application, a JPG or PSD isn't going to cut it. A properly drawn vector design will provide you with the ultimate flexibility.