Tarsnap logo contest
mail.tarsnap.com
mail.tarsnap.com
By opening a contest, you're not only going to get a much lower quality of submissions, but in the end, the final decision is going to be made by you, someone "useless at anything artistic".
Paying a designer $500 won't get you a full brand identity makeover, but that's not what you're going for. You should be able to find a talented designer who will spend an hour discussing what you want to get our of your logo, some time going over a number of their own ideas, and then wrap up the project and give you the sizes you need and a vector file if you ever need to scale your logo up or down.
That's a fair point... but I do know what Tarsnap is, and it's not exactly "typical". I don't know how many non-tarsnap-using designers would come up with something which is consistent with the rest of the "tarsnap brand".
To put it another way, if you needed to roll out a new feature for Tarsnap but couldn't do it yourself, would you hire someone on contract, or do a contest for it?
Or have I misunderstood and you're saying that for $500 finding a designer than can hold that conversation is unlikely?
By holding the contest, he can get dozens of submissions. They may not be well-designed, but he can use the best theme from the designs submitted to hire a top-notch designer and polish it up, if need be.
You know what's funny? We use the word "design" for software, and you wouldn't think that you could run a contest to pick the design of a software system. But nevertheless you think someone can design his communication strategy & brand identity by a contest, without spending the time to write down the requirements first.
To the OP: my advice is, just don't bother with a contest or a logo. Find someone (a friend) who is good at typography, and ask him to typeset the word "Tarsnap" for you in a way that looks good on that banner. Just use that as a logo, until you have the time & resources to hire someone to do a proper brand identity for you (because that's what you are asking for here, not just a logo)
Then you call in a real designer to look over the submissions and pick the one that inspires them, and do an improved version of that.
That's what springs to mind when you hear the name of your company, so that's what you need for a logo.
Here are a few options:
Before you discount it, remember that Sourcefire has a goofy looking cartoon pig.
http://twitter.com/tqbf/status/384037360570089472/photo/1
(I'd have used FF Scala).
Vote parsnip!
Do the right thing, Colin, call this thing off, take an hour to go through logopond and dribbble and email a dozen of guys you like. $500 is a good budget to get a good logo.
EDIT - alternatively, just pick a good sans font (something that you personally like and that matches well what you think tarsnap is about - simplicity, clarity, reliability, etc.), take a semibold or bold weight, type "tarsnip" in lowercase letters, kern it tightly and you got yourself a clean and concise wordmark.
He can actually judge the logos he gets and choose the best one (or potentially non at all). Designs don't have anything close to a monopoly on good(enough) taste.
Evaluating the quality of a code base, on the other hand, requires close to enough skill that you probably could write it your self. It's not analogous.
A castle and medieval font to convey security and resilience
Use of a font with a distinctive R to help it appear as TAR-SNAP and not TARS-NAP
A monospaced font with underscores to convey that this for the UNIX command line
Subtle gold/silver colors that convey a history of widely acknowledged value and future longevity
Font: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/metamorphous (free) Castle: http://3docean.net/item/door-castle/4004680 ($32 licence required)
Please feel free to use/build on this concept if you like it, I waive my rights to this logo design.
I think it's a bad idea to use a novelty display typeface for the name. Also, that typeface looks like something from a 1990s Front Line Assembly album.
Also, any typeface you pick better mesh well with Times New Roman, because Colin can be trusted to set type in that.
The castle will be hard to reproduce at different sizes, won't work at all in black and white, and is effectively clip art.
edit: http://imgur.com/k6elBCU with masthead
Not a professional designer but I like mucking around in inkscape and it was a fun way to avoid work.
(I quite like it, but if you replace that keyhole with a simple "A", it would be much better.)
It's a fantastic program even to a developer type like me, it also has really really good PDF import which is useful sometimes :).
Does the interest in design contests stem from a fear of paying and getting something you might not like? Or not knowing what you might like until you see it?
If I knew that, say, I wanted a graphic of a piece of tar being snapped in half, I'd look for an artist and say "here's $500, please draw this for me". But given that I have no idea what I want, I figure the more people I invite to provide ideas the better.
That takes a lot of work--usually at least 30 to 40 hours for a good logo. Would you put in 40 hours of work for somebody on the off chance they might pay you?
You can rest assured of this as well: people will definitely submit to your contest--but none of them will be great designers, because all of them will be people who place the value of their work at somewhere around "maybe 500 dollars."
This would almost certainly be true if content participants had no connection to the business. In this case, participants my be considering their work to be pro-bono work with a value much greater $500.
It's possible that I'll find that someone has a nice idea but a poor implementation and award them the $500 but go off to hire an artist to draw the idea better.
You can just do what Steve Jobs did with Next: pick a designer you like, and leave it entirely up to him.
Ironically not because Jobs didn't have ideas on what he wanted but because the designer insisted:
"I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, 'No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.'"
Would you run a code contest to have a software product built?
Here is a piece of tar being snapped in half.. it just makes sense, you know you like it. You can have this one.. its yours.
If I were your designer-for-a-day, for 500 bucks i would do a few iterations once the concept is okayed to get it just right for you and give you all the svg / png / pdf or whatever other format you would like, and downscale to icon sizes etc.. but not until, in the immortal words of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP_GOoBPKfQ (c/o mike monteiro;)
Maybe you don't really care if it's a very good logo, or if you're collaborating with a professional who can walk you through the process of discovering what you want. (You do want something, trust me--you just won't know it for sure until you start rejecting the things you don't want.) And that's fine--it's your choice. If your business is doing fine without an awesome logo or a slick brand, then good job!
But if you really do want something professional, something that can be built out into a bigger brand, and something that someone put a lot of thought into, then this is the wrong way to go.
I wouldn't hold a contest for $500 for a developer to write a piece of code for me. Why would I do it for a logo?
http://dev.bitmono.com/tarsnap/tarsnap-website.png
PS: Created in Inkscape, font is Deja Vu.
I think I get the name (unix `tar` plus a snapshot or securely locked in). It's not lack of familiarity - I've known about it for years, and even have an account.
I doubt you're keen on a name change, but "tarlock" would avoid this.
Or... a parsnip as a logo.
EDIT how bizarre! The instant I commented this, jasonkester made the same suggestion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462378
Good designers, the ones you want if this is important to you, don't do contests. We have families to feed and bills to pay. "Winning" a popularity contest, not based on substance but instead on style, doesn't allow us to support ourself and our families doing our work. So, who are the designers doing these contests? Well, besides the large number of completely untrained laypeople, it's mostly students wanting beer money and portfolio pieces. And lets face it, most designers need many years beyond school before they're anything approaching "good" at their craft. Those years are spent doing grunt work with increasing amounts of responsibility under senior designers, art directors, creative directors, whatever.
My second point about that is how rare it is to win a contest. Designers know that they're often designing blind here. They could spend all the time in the world creating the perfect brand and the client could choose something else because they don't like the color blue or they're scared of clown logos or whatever. Point is, the client is often hardly objective in these situations and the designers know this. What does this mean in practicality? They are going to put as little effort as possible in to this because the chances of reward are small. Personally, I'd love to see the average amount of time spent on these logo entries. I bet most of them are well under 10 minutes.
Legal issues. I'll skim here because I don't have my links handy but most of these contest websites have been caught with stolen logos in their submissions. Companies have been sued for using these logos from contest websites costing them thousands of dollars they didn't expect. It happens and when the "designer" is some anonymous guy across the world, you have no recourse but to pay the fees, lawyer fees and then pay to do your logo all over again. Not to mention the embarrassment to your company when this happens. This stuff is very, very rare for clients working with designers face-to-face.
Lastly, when you're missing the face-to-face collaboration between designer and client, you're also missing most of what makes design "design", instead of art. The research as well as most of the creative process tends to go missing. The designer starts to view the client as the ones to design for instead of the "user" and as a result, the logo/brand/whatever becomes less effective. And you know what? A lot of important questions go missing ... like what are your plans for the future? What is your strategy to deal with your competitors? Even simple things like "am I making the logo for the company, the product or both" ... changes in company strategy are rarely mentioned in logo contests and this could be the most important question in the world. Logos need to be adaptable to company strategy and that strategy needs to be talking out between company and designer. Often NDAs are signed beforehand, good luck doing that with on a contest.
I'm not looking for a good designer. I'm looking for a hacker (ideally a unix hacker) who happens to have some design skills.
And so what if the 'wrong kind of people' start submitting designs. I bet the contest runners would be happier with an arsehole submitting a fantastic logo, than a lovely person submitting a crap one.
If someone was going to make a free Tarsnap logo, they're unlikely to be deterred by the possibility of a small reward for it.
The only downside to the "wrong kind of people" entering is more entries to look through. Who cares what kind of person they are if the logo's good?
Of course contestants realize that they aren't likely to win, but if he's doing the right thing by setting up a mud wrestling match? I personally think he's not, so I do give a fuck.
I hope you find somebody that loves your product to do the logo and don't have to fall back on the contest. Good luck.
The rest of your comment, though --- what is Colin supposed to do with this? He doesn't want to buy face-to-face collaboration. He doesn't want to subsidize your whole industry. Have you seen his website? Suffice it to say that your profession has very little to with his company strategy. I doubt he cares how many minutes go into the design; the point of contracting the work out is that other people can do in 10 minutes something he couldn't do in a month.
So what it boils down to is, he's made a decision that a logo has $500 in business value to him. The process you're advocating, with the specific bells and whistles you're mentioning, starts at $5000. No sale. Could you instead give him some advice that involves a more effective use of $500?
It doesn't exactly work like that. I wish I could find my notes right now, I have a half-written blog on copyright issues for clients that I did a bunch of research and found these cases. Anyway, you don't get to just say sorry and move on. You're liable for damages whether you knew about it or not. You can, of course, go after the designer if they're not outside your reach (international or hidden behind an anonymous online identity) but it's a real issue. As a designer, I have to know about this stuff because I can be sued if a client gives me something they don't have permission to use and I do. There are, of course, a number of issues that could effect the outcome including if the copyright is registered and if they're willing to go through the effort to go after you but it's a danger that shouldn't be ignored. (I am not a lawyer. I just have a healthy fear of them.)
> The process you're advocating, with the specific bells and whistles you're mentioning, starts at $5000. No sale. Could you instead give him some advice that involves a more effective use of $500?
Not always. My wife and I are both designers. Many of our friends are designers. We do a lot of on-the-side work with small budgets that would give a much better result for the same cost. Sometimes one of us will come home from doing something during our 9-5 for a huge multi-billion dollar corporation to do something for a 1 person startup. Often the startup has more interesting projects and are much nicer to work with. Plus, I don't have to wear a suit, a fake smile and get patted down by under-paid security when I go to meet the CEO of tiny-startup, llc. And as a bonus, most of you guys pay in less than 6 months without having to resubmit form 41824817B with the new PO number to the department that never answers their phones. (I hate corporate work.)
I wish you and your wife the best. Believe it or not, I have very similar experiences working with startups! They reach out to us all the time for security work, and I'm always happy to talk to them; I like hearing about what they're doing. Most new startups are nowhere near ready to pay the going rate for software security assessments. When they get on the phone with me, I don't explain to them how they need to forget about buying that next server or renting their first office so they can make room in their budget for an assessment. I give them advice and point them to options for getting some kind of baseline coverage in advance of driving serious revenue through their system, at which point maybe it would make sense for an assessment.
My experience with all sorts of professional services practices mirrors this. Lawyers, for instance, will often do consults for free as a form of speculative work in anticipation of a client eventually being big enough to do real business with.
So... as a (perhaps inadvertent) spokesperson for your profession, why don't you tell us what someone like Colin should do in this situation? Hope he runs into a designer who will take his $500 and throw him a bone for the fun of it, as a change of pace from corporate work?
I do agree that contests are shit and that we never take part in them. This contest is unique in that he doesn't want a designer as much as someone who 'get it' and doesn't need any direction.
Portfolios aren't enough. Conversations aren't enough. And, the standard payment plans of a third up-front leaves the client holding the bag if the designer can't deliver. It comes down to whether the designer can understand what the client likes, add his/her experience, design principles, creativity, artistic ability, etc., then execute in a way that is compelling and professional. But, frequently you don't know if the designer can truly do this until you have committed and get that initial revision.
Here's how it goes: After the initial revision, you then give feedback and the designer begins to iterate, frequently getting further and further away. From there, it devolves into a frustrated designer who then puts the onus on the client to tell him/her exactly what he wants. This means the client is now effectively designing and the designer is just putting the pixels together in Photoshop. Game over. Of course the client doesn't know what he is doing or how it will look ("maybe if you move this over there" or similar is frequently heard). But, the designer then takes the position that "this is what you asked for."
I have seen some variation of this happen far too many times, and not just with my own projects. It seems to be the rule, and not the exception. The designer either gets it or not, and too many don't.
So, something needed to change about the process or otherwise, and I think that is the entire impetus behind these contests. Maybe they are not perfect and have their own downside, but they shift the risk squarely to the designers' side. Too much? I don't know. But, sites like 99designs are a market-based solution to a real pain experienced by clients in the design space. Think about that: It is not just price. It is the total experience and the risk profile on the client side.
If more designers were taking better care of their clients (as you may well be doing), I would have no interest in seeking such alternatives.
There is no doubt that there are difficult clients, but I am referring to a different problem.
https://github.com/neilk/tarsnap-logo/blob/master/tarsnap.pn...
I wanted to get away from castles and locks and such. You can check out the README if you want to know what my thought process was, but it should be distinctive and appealing without an explanation.
Note that the font is not free. From the fine print: Use by more than 25 Users, or equivalent Website Visitors, is a breach of this Free Licence Agreement, and instead requires a commercial licence.
About the license - you are correct. I was under the impression this font was already distributed via Google Fonts, but I was wrong.
It's a very nice font, and just costs $67.00. But it could also be swapped for a font with a less restrictive license.
I like how Colin adopted prgmr.com style of appealing to the technical minded for it's website design/documentation. A simple logo wouldn't hurt.
I'm certainly not opposed to having a simple logo. I want to see what people come up with. :-)
Tarsnap: a guard dog for your backup data
An then your logo is the very stylized face of a bulldog, looking straight on. The word tarsnap is set to the right of the dog face for the full logo. You can use the face by itself for the favicon etc.
I think the word 'snap' has a lot of dog connotation to me. A dog snapping at your heals. The dog snapping at the mailman. And a guard dog is a pretty good metaphor for your product. It keeps things safe and protected from the bad guys.
Also, to have a 'mascot' like logo fits in with the penguins, devils, ponies, etc. You can make it stylized to project a "serious, reliable" image, rather than cartoon like.
If you like my suggestion, take the $500, and hire my favorite designer, tywilkins.com. You get a much better result than me trying my hand. The problem with a $500 budget is you don't have a the time to explore a lot of options. At $100/hour, you just have 5 hours. But that might be enough time to draw an already fleshed out idea.
Something like: http://mobiusband.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/finger...
But less detailed and with something that indicates noise emanating from the fingers.
Sorry for being too lazy to take a stab at implementing the idea.
http://codepoints.net/mathematical_operators
I suggest ⊷ "Image of".
The logo is the wheel on a cassette, which is a fun throwback to the tape days, inspired by TAR -> Tape ARchiver.
I can put something together but at the end of the day it's just changing fonts until there's a winner.
Colin, if you're interested in the idea and there's a particular font/color you would like used let me know and I'll make the pngs for you. Don't stress about payment, it's quick and easy for me to do.
But someone is going to get $500 (or $500 minus 99designs' cut), even if it's just someone who typesets "Tarsnap" is a way that I like more than anything else.
These security-related icons are so frequently (ab)used that I'm getting a strong urge not to use any product that relies on them to symboloze its security.
I'm inclined to agree... I'm not saying it's impossible to produce a good logo with one of these, but I'd need to see something really inspiring to put up with a cliche.
> scrypt(P, S, N, r, p, dkLen) = MFcrypt__HMAC_SHA256,SMixr__ (P, S, N, p, dkLen)
Another gem would be "pleaseletmein"
We did CBC mode in "tattoo flash" style.
(I'm seriously considering another take on block mode diagrams for a tattoo).
Implemented via the Web Inspector:
http://static.deliciouslynerdy.com/tarsnap/logo-and-favicon....
I am assuming it's not a piece of tar snapped in half. Although sometimes, having the FreeBSD ports system compile perl and python from scratch when I am trying to install emacs does make me want to snap it in half (yes, yes, I know I am not the model FreeBSD user, et cetera :))
tarsnap = TAR backups, in a SNAPshotted model (vs. incremental backups). I also liked the fact that it reminded FreeBSD users of portsnap, which is a very popular tool.
... basic idea was: "box" - not very original, but imho appropriate when thinking of storing things. as illustrated on the right, the form is the intersection of the shapes on the three visible faces of the box. the two in the front make up the "T" and on top is a very minimal "S". i thought of this intersection as a simple visual analogy of encryption.
wouldn't consider this a final logo - probably there could be done some more work on the details.
Font is consolas