Customer Blog

We’re in good spirits this Valentine’s Day, having received a special Valentine’s gram (video below) from App Village, a client currently in the business of bear hugs. But the real recipient of this thank-you is Zaaviart, the designer in our community whose awesome illustration work won him the contest that App Village ran on our site. What they needed were …

A logo design has at most two components: there’s the text and there’s the symbol. While most designs keep the two separate, designers love to combine them when possible. Harnessing the biomorphic nature of letter forms or the negative space they create to craft something symbolic, a la FedEx or Tour de France, is a …

There’s a lot of talk surrounding “lean startups” these days (in fact, we wrote about a lean startup related contest earlier this week). But perhaps the subset “dorm room startup” warrants some buzz of its own. Jeff Steitz, a rising senior at Claremont McKenna College, and his five undergraduate friends-cum-entrepreneurs did not have much in …

A great logo quivers on the page. Its component parts at once complement and contrast, creating a slight tension that makes the whole look as though it is about to leap right off the screen. The key to achieving this effect is good composition, and as with all things that appeal to our senses, this …

Few designs flop harder than ones that attempt to be playful, but end up reading like a still life. Avoid this. If you’re looking for a logo on the fun/playful side of the spectrum, you must insist on a sense of dynamism – movement, action, “pop” (just keep this last word out of your brief; …

In a world that tends to organize its visual real estate according to the Times Square model – cramming as many lines, colors and textures as possible into a given space – sometimes a feeling of clean spaciousness is the most outstanding attribute your design could have. In other words, what your design is may …

You’ve drafted your design brief, proofread it twice, crossed your t’s and dotted your i’s. It looks solid to you (naturally – you wrote it!), but will it speak to the dozens of designers who will soon be seeing it? Here’s an exercise that may prove illuminating: extract only the adjectives from your brief and compile them …

If you’re new to 99designs, you may not yet know about one of our customers’ very favorite features: the poll! At any point during the entry submission contest, contest holders can create a poll featuring up to eight designs and invite anyone they like to weigh in by rating designs on a 5-star scale and …

Let’s say, for example’s sake, that you own a farm called “Lynd’s Blue Frog Farm” and are seeking a logo on 99designs. You can safely bank on receiving designs that involve an image of (can you guess?) a blue frog. The company name conveniently comes with a built-in image that gives designers a well-defined space …