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Comment by bennyg | Hacker News Reader

As a fellow designer, I always cringe at stuff like this too. What if I hired a programmer for $5 to write a few web services that could scale to infinity? Luckily, I've taken the time and still take the time to improve on both of these qualities in my own professional development. Quality matters, and I'm trying to provide that across all creative outlets I partake in.

The logo IS important, very important, but it's just part of a web of important shit your business has to do. Having a great logo with a terrible or unready product means it's going to be even harder to acquire new people if they already recognize you by your "symbol" as not executing, or almost there, or the idea's good, etc.

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> What if I hired a programmer for $5 to write a few web services that could scale to infinity?

No developer will work for $5 in the first place, whereas there are plenty of designers who will work for $5 on logo design.

For small Saas businesses, logo may not be as important as how designers see them to be. Why is it hard for designers to accept that there are plurality of opinions on the value of design?

No, but there are plenty of developers willing to build applications and then sell them for a dollar on the app store (or free even.)

Not even comparable.

Whether or not "design" is important to the business is irrelevant. What we're talking about it the designer's time. If a company who didn't really need an app for their business, but just wanted one for good measure, and hired an app developer, do you think $5 is fair payment? Can't developers accept that there are a plurality of opinions on the value of apps?

Well, how much did the last phone app you bought cost?

> Why is it hard for designers to accept that there are plurality of opinions on the value of design?

Really? As if that doesn't apply to literally every other profession? I certainly don't mean to say that the logo is the end-all solution to a user's experience– that's ridiculous. People can pay $1000, $10k, $100k even and still end up with shitty branding but the point isn't that quality necessarily scales to how much you pay. It's the fact that on the other side is a person providing a dedicated and unique service who is effectively being bet against (1/6) for less than minimum wage.

And unfortunately, yes there are developers who will work for practically nothing. Unsurprisingly, they are quite underrepresented in places like this and on virtually every other plane because the work they can do for that sort of money is just like 99.999% of $5 logos– total garbage. And what kind of a living do you make when all you can make is garbage?

That's a very western centric view of the world. Let's say it takes 2 hours of work to create those logos (look at my results, I think it's not an unreasonable estimate). $2.50/hr is a lot of money in some countries.

Every single one of them got paid too, it wasn't even spec work. They did work, they got paid.

Two hours looks about right for an average. While it's great that everyone gets paid (heh, wouldn't it be nice if that could scale to say... architectural comps or ad pitches), saying that $2.50 is a lot in some countries is just a bogus argument. So what if it is a lot of money to some people? Did you specifically seek out designers in developing countries? With graphics software, broadband, and 2 hours of free time to do little design jobs? That part seems sort of silly since the point of your post is that it cost virtually nothing to you.

Now, I wasn't being sarcastic when I said that I'm glad you've satisfactorily solved your problem. Further, I'm glad that everyone you contacted got paid. But that doesn't address the problems which I see, which are that 1) it wasn't a very business or worker friendly (yes, in my opinion) move and 2) I think you could've done better.

I looked for designers willing to take $5 in exchange for logo design. These were people willingly and publicly advertising their service. I didn't pay attention to region at all. I looked at the portfolios and if they weren't horrible, I hired them. Just because it costs nothing to me should have no bearing on this discussion. Do you get upset at Bill Gates for paying retail for his coffee at starbucks?

business/worker friendly: I think it's hard to judge. I had an outsourcing company in Indonesia once. The salaries there, if they could get constant work for $2.50/hour they would have better off than what we were paying.

done better: probably. I invested $30. I hope there are better options. How much money and time they would/will cost is a different matter though.

I actually had a free one designed by a really talented guy here on HN, but it was for a different brand name that we didn't end up being able to use. (If you're curious: http://kevinohashi.com/sites/default/files/mention.png)

Not really sure what you are ranting about. The website itself exists to provide services for $5. Surely these designers are able to place what they think is a fair value on the use of their time and resources. Why do you think its a bad thing to take advantage of that? FWIW I also hire programmers for less than $10 an hour and I get stellar work from them. Price is a signal, but there isn't always a direct correlation between price and quality (or effectiveness) . To leave you with an anecdote, I have between $5 and $1000 for App icons (iphone), my best selling app is the one with the $5 icon and no custom UI elements.

My reaction was surprise (at jsnk's comparison), not intended to be a rant. But I'll explain further: I completely understand why this site and many others like it exist. They have a purpose, which is to provide a quick and painless service at practically no cost. I don't think that the service itself is necessarily bad. Rather, I think the way it's used is wrong. You don't use them to 'hire a designer' (or a dozen). You use them to get a couple people with either too much time, too much software, too little skill, or too little opportunity to show something off in hopes of getting a few dollars. In this case, there is a startup which needs a brand so that they can forget about it as they build their business. My feeling is that regardless of the cost, there is a better approach to getting this sort of work done especially if you claim to value this step of the process. I understand the desire to cut costs, and I am perfectly aware that quality doesn't scale with cost. On top of that, I've done my share of cheap-ass logos to pay for a little gas. But this is hacker news, I think it's worth putting in this perspective. In the most basic sense, I see it as a simple professional courtesy to pay a proper wage, even when you're getting closer to squashing costs and risk.

No one that works on a logo for $5 is a designer, they're someone that is trying to make a quick few bucks off of preset shapes and OS-shipped typefaces.

> No developer will work for $5 in the first place

www.elance.com , www.odesk.com

Go for hit. eLance, ODesk, Freelancer, the list goes on and on.

I want to read your story of how you hired a programmer for $5 and got something done. I will even try it myself if I see a way for me to use the same strategy. You would be saving me a huge amount of money.

Everything matters. Saying logos matter is matters is somewhat meaningless. The question is how much do they matter? How much do they matter at one specific moment in time? How much time can you afford to spend on the logo problem at a moment in time?

I shared this story because I suspect there are a lot of people who would be willing to spend $30 to try getting a cheap logo for their startup/side project/whatever.

I really don't think you should feel threatened by it if you're able to communicate what value you're adding to a company by applying your unique design skills.

When your industry experiences an explosion of second-rate product at third-world wages is that a threat?

Not necessarily the end of your business/career if you can market your value-add but a threat none the less.

You just nailed what I tried writing in two paragraphs in two sentences.

As a developer, I think it's already happened as some degree. Do I feel threatened? Not in the slightest. Plenty of people hire developers on eLance et al at low rates. I've seen no impact on myself or my developer friends. Stand up at a tech meetup and say you're a developer looking for a job and see what happens.

As an entrepreneur? I see a wave of arbitrage opportunities.

Meh, I was making the point to try and raise concern for the other side of the perceived "coin" of product creation, as it applies to software. I would never hire a programmer for $5 - I program everything myself, just like I design everything. It's fun and I'm actually committed to excellence in both domains of my product.

No offense, but the logos you received aren't that great, and definitely on par with what I'd expect for paying $50 or less. All I'm saying is, that in your post you talk about how it is the one symbol that defines your brand, and I feel like the quality of logos people get on sites like that end up looking like Acme Corp. It's all plug and play with no feeling, or emotional investment into the product. Of course, some are good, but the logos need a kernel of an idea. Notice how pretty much everybody put the wifi signal. Of course they did, that's the first thing I would think of too - but good design goes further than that. It truly takes some deep thinking.

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