Today, iStockphoto.com announced that it will be selling contributor created logos in the near future, possibly around the start of 2010. See this forum post with the announcement: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=119471&page=1
We’re excited to announce a whole new product coming to the iStock collection. Clients will soon be able to download a unique logo to brand their business or organization right here at iStock. This is a huge opportunity not just for existing iStock contributors, but for our community of designers as well. If you’re a designer, you’ve probably created hundreds of different logos over the course of your career and we’re offering you an outlet to start selling logos to the world’s largest community of creative buyers.
This hearkens back to the early days of microstock, where you might as well be selling your images instead of letting them sit on your hard drive.
Selling
The most important thing to note right off, is that these logos will be sold only once and then disabled. The price range for logos will be 100-750 credits, and the contributor receives %50 of that.
I repeat: 100-750 credits. The contributor royalty (%50) on that figures out to $96 – $562.50 US, based on the cheapest to most expensive credit price.
Regardless of what you read on twitter, they are not selling logos for $5 or $10 or $1. The wording in the email sent out to designers was a bit confusing to some:
If you create one of the first 10,000 approved logo designs for iStockphoto by January 1, 2010, we’ll pay you $5 per approved logo and another $5 if we reach 10,000 approved logos by that date.
That $5 is a bonus, in addition to whatever price the logo may sell for.
Is this the end of the world?
Designers who have never posted in the forums are voicing their opinion in the thread above. Some are for it, some are against it. The people I sell my images to are designers at various levels, so I certainly take their opinions very seriously.
I understand that some feel that this “cheapens” the notion of design work. That “I can get this for $100 on iStock, why should I pay you more”? That is a valid first reaction, but what I sense from some other designers is that it is not just the creation of an iconic symbol that makes a successful branding for a company, but the interaction and research into that company that a designer does. A whole marketing campaign. This is a valid selling point that a designer has to use to gain clients anyways – iStockphoto isn’t the first to sell logos online. Designers must already have a bag of tricks they use to win over a customer.
Admittedly, that kind of campaign isn’t cheap. Experience and education play into the hourly or project rate of a successful designer and can be out of reach for small businesses or community groups. Regardless of their need (or not) for an expensive campaign, it may just be out of reach. This iStockphoto initiative may be an attempt to woo these groups into the market with a unique identifier, instead of a pinched bit of a vector illustration, which is against the legal terms anyways. In that sense, 100-750 credits may be just the right price for someone who just needs a professional edge to step up their business.
There is a feeling among the posts that some designers feel threatened. However, there are also comments along the lines that what will be bought will be “a generic, worthless logo that says nothing about the consumer”. If the product ends up being so undesirable, then there truly is no need to feel threatened, is there? Or will it be necessary for those doing below average design work to step it up? Much like the photographer, who was used to making thousands of dollars off of an average image of a tree, laments the good ole’ days, perhaps there will be a new line as to what defines good useful quality, at least at the low end.
One poster said:
As designers, we pay the same amount of money on education as many other professions. We struggle to find that first job in an agency, studio or corporation to get the experience we need and to feed our creative souls. We require expensive computer equipment. We purchase legal fonts, new design software, and constant upgrades. We pay taxes, rent office space, pay accountants, and pay for overhead. We spend years learning marketing, target audience, branding, RBG, CMYK, vector, ppi, tracking, kerning, fonts, retouching, and much more. We are skilled professionals, yet why should we practically give away our work? Young artists should learn about the value of their work.
Replace “designers” in the first sentence with “photographers”, and you see the same argument that professional photographers were making a few years ago. Yet buyers have been using iStockphoto and others to save money for their clients.
Now, I’m not saying I am for or against the intiative at this point. It seems like there is still plenty to iron out. Whether interaction with the client is part of it (I hope not), fonts, legal responsibility, etc. I also like that other content can be licensed repeatedly. Selling a one-off isn’t appealing to me right now. Anyways, I’m just throwing some thoughts out there.
Keep in mind that turning away from iStockphoto in some sort of protest also hurts those who have been providing you with quality imagery these last 6 years. Both exclusives and independents. Maybe this will provide a new opportunity for the designer they weren’t expecting. We’ll just have to see where it goes at this point.
Feel free to discuss here.
Posted by sjlocke 
Posted by sjlocke 
). I spent hours cutting holes and poking Christmas lights through a red velvet background. I hired local artist 
. You can find the above images in the search linked below. Thanks!
Posted by sjlocke 
