48hourslogo provides customers with access to hundreds of designers through a 48 hour custom logo design contest starting at $29 and no pay if you don’t like the designs. That’s a no risk proposition.
The right logo is everything. Imagine if Nike didn’t have their classic swoosh or Apple was missing the half-eaten fruit. Would these brands be half as recognizable as they’ve become today? It’s hard to say, but I think not. If you’re looking for a logo that’s also instantly recognizable, then you’ll want to go the route of custom logo design.
I’m in the process of redoing my logo here at Cool Wildlife Photography. I wanted a logo with a bit more panache, and, if possible, the inclusion of animals. This way, people could know what my site was about the moment they saw the logo.
I may be a photographer (and a blogger), but a graphic designer I am not. What made the most sense to me then was to let a professional graphic designer do the work. Rather than go to the professionals though, I let them come to me. How? By opting to use 48hourslogo.com contest for my logo design online services.
What are the steps to setting up a 48hourslogo logo design online?
- Register an account if you don’t already have one
- Log in
- Pay $29 for a contest
- Select the rules and parameters of your contest
- Let the designers send in their logos
- Pick your finalists
- Let them edit their logos
- Choose the best logo and pay the winner.
- Load the new logo on your website, business cards, t-shirts, mugs, etc.
As you can see, getting started with 48hourslogo is quick, inexpensive, and easy. Instead of painstakingly searching for just the right pro graphic designer to hire, I got to work with 47 talented logo designers at once. I also got to see my Cool Wildlife logo envisioned in all sorts of unique and interesting ways before picking the logo that most resonated with me and my vision for the site.
If you’re thinking also of getting a redesign for your website through a custom logo, then you won’t want to miss this post. I’ll introduce you to 48hourslogo, explain how their contests work, show you a few of the entries I received during my contest, and even provide you some pointers on picking a winner.
Let’s get started!
What Is 48hourslogo?
You may be unfamiliar with 48hourslogo, as it’s no Fiverr. I like to think of 48hourslogo as a diamond in the rough. You have the chance to work with very talented professional graphic designers on 48hourslogo, but the platform isn’t overrun like Fiverr.
Here’s a bit of history on 48hourslogo. The company started as a crowd sourcing project in 2010 that’s made to give people like you or me the chance to get a high-quality, professionally-designed logo without spending an arm and a leg.
Seven years after their founding, 48hourslogo has worked with 40,000 entrepreneurs and companies, and that number only continues to go up. Most of 48hourslogo’s clientele are small businesses and startups, the former of which I would describe myself and Cool Wildlife Photography.
By choosing 48hourslogo for your custom logo design, you can start a contest for under $30. I’ll explain more how the contests work in the next sections, but this is essentially how you will get your logo designed. 48hourslogo even mentions that if by chance none of the logos you receive during the contest meet your design standards that you don’t have to pay for the work. That’s a satisfaction guarantee if I’ve ever heard of one.
The lowest logo reward prize is $99, so 48hourslogo is affordable for aspiring photographers on a tight budget who really want to brand themselves with great website design. 48hourslogo knows who their clientele is, which is why you never have to worry about being upsold or having to pay for upgrades unless you want to. If you receive hundreds of entries to your design contest, then you get to see them all since you paid to host the contest.
48hourslogo – The 7 Things You Need to Know
Before you sign up to run your contest there are seven things you need to know. The most important answers this question:
How to get more 48hourslogo designers to join your contest?
- Prize Money – As mentioned previously the lowest reward prize is $99.  However you have the option to make the prize money higher when you set your contest. The higher the prize money, the more top designers are attracted to participate.
- Featured Contests – For $19 you can make your contest one that is featured. Featured contests are highlighted above the regular contest to attract more designers. On average, featured contests receive about 25% more design entries.
- Guaranteed Prize – I mentioned above if you don’t like any of the designs you don’t have to pay.  However you do have the option to select a prize guarantee.  This option also attracts many more designers as they now know there will be a pay day for someone at the end of the contest.
- Invite Designers – The platform allows you to see who the top designers are and for $5 you can invite them to your contest. Â I did invite the top designer to my contest. Â That person did not win however their design was in the top five.
- Provide Direct Feedback – Even though I did not like some designs, I still provided some direct feedback to encourage the designer to submit new concepts that were closer to what I wanted. That was a winning strategy for me, many of the designers I provided feedback to submitted well over 10 designs each.
- Simple Design Brief – When you’re setting up your custom logo design contest you’ll be asked to submit a design brief. Provide direction if you have aspects of the design that must be adhered to such as font type, colour, etc. However do keep it simple and easy to follow, the designers use your brief to decide if they wish to participate.
- Reference Samples – It is best to select at least five sample designs from the 48hourslogo gallery and/or upload any reference images or samples that you think will help designer understand your preference.
I leveraged all seven of these strategies and had 47 designers submit 339 entries over the three days that I ran my contest.
Designers
With more than 3 million logos on the site and counting, 48hourslogo has worked with a lot of talented designers over the years. On 48hourslogo’s website, you can check out their rich scope of designers. They’re organized by their positive ratings and how many contests they’ve won.
Next to the username of the graphic designer, you can see three of the designer’s best logos so you can already get a feel for the designer’s work without clicking anything.
If you happen to know of a designer by their username, you can simply type that username in using the search function to go straight to their page.
On the designer’s page, you can see more information about them, such as the last time they were active online, how many contests they’ve entered, how many contests they’ve won, and how many times the designer has been a finalist. You can also review the number of contest invites this designer has received.
The entirety of the designer’s logos are also on display on their profile page. You can click any design to see it in more detail. The recipient of the design can also review and give the designer between one and five stars for their work, all of which you can review.
Every design is arranged chronologically, so those first three designs you see on the list of designers is also their most recent work.
Portfolio
You can also head to the portfolio page on 48hourlogo’s website to check out more than 20,000 design examples and ideas from the platform’s real graphic designers. If you have an industry in mind that you’d like to search, you can. The available industries include:
- Hospitality and travel
- Technology
- Legal
- Beauty
- Sports and recreation
- Medical and dental
- Nonprofits
- Events
- Consulting
- Natural resources
- Retail
- Home and garden
- Real estate
- Automotive
- Education
- Financial insurance
- Restaurants
- Religious
- Accounting
- Construction
- Miscellaneous
After choosing your industry, you’re directed to a page with designs in just that industry. Then, hover your mouse over any winning design that catches your fancy. You can see when the design was submitted, a bit of background on the design, and how much was paid for it.
How Do 48hourslogo Contests Work?
Let’s say you wanted to host a contest on 48hourslogo and let an assortment of designers submit their best work to you.
On their contests page on the website, you can review open, judging, and closed contests. At any one time, you’ll find dozens of open contests at 48hourslogo.
According to the most recent stats on their website, 48hourslogo says that they have hosted 68,701 contests and, last month, that all their clients collectively paid out $48,497. If you’d like to get in on the fun, you need to register on their website.
Select the client registration option and then input your email address and what you want your password to be. You’ll then be asked to confirm your password.
Once you register, you’ll receive a confirmation email, but 48hourslogo automatically redirects you to the client login portal. Here’s a glimpse at what it looks like.
As you can see, you have the option to select from three styles of design for your contest, including only a logo, only a brand identity design, or a combination of a brand identity design and a logo.
The logo contest is $29 to host with a prize of at least $99. The brand identity is less expensive, with a $29 fee and $50 prize. Combining the two leaves the hosting fee the same but boosts the prize money to at least $129. Bundling the designs let`s you shave 15 percent off your overall costs, which is nice.
Next, you get to choose the prize amount, which is how much money you’ll pay out to the winning designer. The lowest cash prize for logo design only is $99, the standard is $148, and the gold prize is $198. You can also customize your prize money if you’re feeling financially generous.
Once you set the prize money, you move on to your design brief.
This is where you tell the designers what you want. Begin by selecting your industry from a drop down menu. You’ll then be asked to pick five designs in that industry that you most like so the designers have an idea of what your logo style is.
From there, type in the name of your company that needs the logo. Talk a bit about your business and then share your vision for what the logo design should be. You can write as much as you want here, so have at it.
If you think visuals would help, you can also upload several images that conveys or better illustrates your ideas.
When you’re done with all that, you can preview your contest, including an overview of everything you’ve selected to this point. If you’re happy with the contest as is, then you can submit the prize payment either via debit/credit card or PayPal. Once you pay, the contest is live.
My Contest Experience with 48hourslogo + the Results!
As I mentioned, I personally used 48hourslogo for my own logo design contest. My prize was $148 and I made my contest featured and it had a guaranteed prize. In doing so the designers were assured that someone was going to get paid for their efforts. This strategy yielded 339 designs from 47 designers. Yes, the same designer can submit more than one design. After all, any designer competing wants to win, so if they can maximize their chances by submitting more entries, they will.
I found those designers that took the time to visit my website to see what it was all about did the best job of providing me with a design that I liked. Thus I suggest you mention your website or any other aspects of your business that will help guide the designers in your contest brief.
The 48hourslogo contests have five stages:
Phase 1 – Qualifying Stage
We begin with the qualifying stage, which is where any designer with an active account on 48hourslogo can submit their custom logo design to your contest. This is when all 339 designs came to me.
Phase 2 – Finalist Selection
The next stage is about selecting the finalists, which did admittedly take a while given the sheer number of designs I had to go through. You also have to pick only three designers out all whom have entered a design to move on as a finalist, so it’s not exactly easy.
For me, I considered which designs most closely matched my contest specifications as well as those which I visually liked the most.
48hourslogo allows you to select three finalists. Below are a few of the designs I quite liked as I went through and narrowed down my selections.
Request designer Protein for $5
Request designer Azizah for $5
Request designer Valace for $5
Request designer DreamLogoDesign for $5
Phase 3 – Design Revisions
I had picked my finalists, but no one has won yet. During this third stage, the designers get a week to make any edits to their logo design so it’s even better. I also got a say at this point, as I was able to communicate what I liked and didn’t about the designs. There was definitely some back-and-forth, but this is to the designer’s benefit so they can make their logo even better.
Phase 4 – Selecting a Winner
There can only be one winner, and after reviewing the three revised custom logo designs, I chose the logo below from designer Protein as the winner.
I thought this logo best encapsulated what I was going for regarding my Cool Wildlife Photography brand and the specifications that I had asked for in the contest brief.
The winner is the one who takes home the prize money. Even if second and third place did bang-up jobs, if you don’t win, you don’t get the cash. However there is the option to tip those whom you felt put forth a lot of effort.  I had a few designers that submitted over 15 designs and revisions so I tipped those designers to reward their efforts.
I had two designs that I really liked and it was hard to choose just one. That begs the question:
Can I choose multiple winners for my 48hourslogo contest?
The 48hourslogo contest prize allows you to purchase just one winning design from your contest. However as soon as you select a contest winner, if you go back into your gallery of designs you will see the options to buy all of the other logo’s that did not win from their respective designers. The prices for additional logo purchase varies depending on the designers. Additional logo’s are usually between $50 to $100 and do include include free design revisions. The process of finalizing the design and downloading the logo package file is the same as choosing the contest winner.
Phase 5 – Project Completion
From there, with my shiny new logo in tow, I closed the contest and the project ends. The money I paid at the beginning of the contest gets transferred to the winner and I’m free to do another contest if I ever want to. Once you’ve selected a winning custom logo design you’ll be presented with the opportunity to add your logo to a variety of items such as business cards, t-shirts, mugs, etc. so 48hourslogo can be a one stop shop.
Should You Use 48hourslogo?
If you’re wondering if you should use the service for your own custom logo design, I would say go for it!  My experience was excellent and I landed on a custom logo design that I really liked. I thought about working with one designer but then I would only have had one source of input into the design. That’s why I opted for the 48hourlogo contest. Also the low cost was appealing on my limited budget.
48hourslogo is not a particularly super well-known platform, but I think they should be. After all, they cater their services towards small businesses, startups, or individually-owned freelancers and bloggers who can’t spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on pro-level graphic design.
The contest entry fees are very reasonable, $29, and you have the freedom to select the prize money so you’re not paying too much. If cash is really tight for you, then you can go with the smallest prize. Of course, you will attract more people to your contest if the prize is more lucrative, which is something to keep in mind.
Once your contest goes live, you can pay extra to promote it if you prefer, but this isn’t mandatory. As I said, I was quite pleased with the number of designs I got for my contest, and I didn’t use promotions. Otherwise, you sit back for a while, let the designs come in, and then it’s all up to you to choose the designs you like. There were so many rolling in I did spend an entire day providing feedback so you do need a little time to manage the contest.
You would never get this kind of design option freedom if you hired a freelance graphic designer on a one-on-one basis. Using 48hourslogo lets you see a variety of takes on your idea/concept from all sorts of different perspectives, which is always useful.
Plus, you’re in the driver’s seat from start to finish. You can pick from preexisting 48hourslogo designs to show the style you like, upload an image of your own vision, and ask for revisions until your requested logo is perfect. As you may remember from earlier, 48hourslogo won’t make you pay for design services until you’re thrilled with the design you have. You can be a bit picky and still get a great design on a budget.
How often can you say that with other services? That’s what I thought.
Conclusion
For custom logo design, I would really recommend 48hourslogo. Like I called it before, this service is sort of like a diamond in the rough. Even if you’re not a photographer, any business on a small budget can benefit from utilizing the contests at 48hourslogo to get their next great custom logo design.
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