Logo designs - are crowdsourced sites better than boutique designers?

Last month I began designing my latest project - a web application that is targeted at the guitar world - specifically at teachers who post guitar lessons via video.

Normally when I design a site, I will either create the graphics myself, or go to one of the many pre-made graphic resource sites around the web such as graphicriver.net or creativemarket.com.  But THIS time, I decided that I wanted something custom made, so I would try out fiverr.com to see how that panned out.

Expectation were not high - after all, the site says that each job will cost only $5.  I soon discovered that this was not strictly true, as the initial price of each job is $5, but there are all sorts of additions (some non optional, such as high res copies of the logo etc.) that add on the to the costs.

In the end, the job was going to cost me $10, so I entered my brief, including a description of the site, and sent the job off to one contractor on that site who specialised in logo design.

A few days later, I got a reply from him with a suggested logo.  It was a nice logo BUT... All he had done was to google my site name, grab the first image result on there and flip it right to left.

I was amazed at his audacity, and emailed him back immediately to inform him that I thought this was a rather lazy effort, even for $10.  He emailed back his apologies, and told me he would rework the logo.  True to his word, he got back to me a few days later with another logo.  This time I did a quick Google Image Search but it didn't come up with a match online, so it appears that he DID design this one from scratch.

End of the day, I think it still looks a little amateurish so I probably won't use it and will probably approach another site to help me design one.

By now, most professional graphic designers reading this will be having an apoplectic fit.  "This is EXACTLY what is wrong with using crowd sourced design sites!", you will shout.  Along with "Well, you get what you pay for - pay peanuts, get monkeys!".  And you would be right.

Sort of.

As a 'boutique' software designer myself, I can relate.  I hate those sites that promise coders who can code up an entire web site for $100, when my normal quote for a similar job is $2000.  I have had clients reject my quote so they can go down that path.

When I started my business back in the mid 1990's, I needed a logo for my company, so I approached several local design firms to come up with an idea.  My experience was actually quite wonderful.  All of them took time to talk to me and get an idea of what my business was about, and all of them prepared some beautiful presentations and concepts for me to look over.

One designer in particular, was very effervescent in his enthusiasm, and went to the trouble of printing out mock business cards with my name on it and some glorified title that I cannot remember now, but he was trying hard to 'paint the whole picture' for me.  We didn't go with his firm, but instead chose another one that was more conservative.  I remember this guy as being the only one to call me back after I sent him a "Thanks, but no thanks" letter.  He got quite agitated that I didn't go with his design, but I explained that I thought it was great, but a little over the top.  It didn't seem to sooth his feathers.

I just put it down to him being a little too personally attached to the results of his work, and just left it at that.  Heck, I am the same with MY work most of the time.

But a couple of months later, I was driving down the industrial district of our town, and I noticed that a new dry cleaning business had opened up with a brightly painted warehouse.  The huge sign out the front screamed their company name and motto, and... the EXACT same logo that was designed 'just for me' by the abovementioned designer.

I just laughed it off and carried on.  After all, it makes perfect sense to recycle your hard work and not waste your creative energy each time you pitch to a new client.  I just wondered if he told these new clients that this logo was design 'specifically for them based on the dynamic nature of their business', like he told me.  Actually, I wonder if even *I* was the first one he designed that logo for?  I could have been just one of a long line of business he had brought that one out for.

Fast forward to a few months after that, and I saw the same designer one the front page of our local newspaper, and not in a good way.  You see, around the same time we were getting our logo design done with him, he was designing a new logo for our local electricity company.  They had spent millions on their rebranding and associated collateral, and then.... they discovered that their logo was the exact same rip off of a European Union association.  Not even slightly altered, but a direct copy.

I reflected on this.  Sure, recycling your design work is perfectly acceptable, but plagiarising work from other is definitely overstepping the mark.  

So nowadays, when professional designers call out the cheap design sweat shops online, I have to stop and wonder about the fact that the two seem to have more similarities among them, than major differences.

After all, does the amateur designer hunched over a laptop in a small flat in Karachi care LESS about her work than the experienced guy working in a 10th floor award winning design firm in London?

I would think that the drive to create something new and wonderful is the same in everyone, across the board.  However, the ethics involved in the process of creation seems to be rather more flexible than I would have thought, regardless of the respective hourly rate.

Recording guitar with 4 microphones on my Macbook Pro

In my last blog post, I posted about revisiting the acoustic guitar again, and I posted a song there called "The Fisherman".  Normally when I record guitar, I use two inputs - the inbuilt guitar pickup/preamp, as well as a microphone somewhere near the soundhole.

For THIS particular recording though, I wanted to try something different.  I wanted to try up to 4 different recording inputs!  The problem though, was that I only had an audio interface with 2 input channels.  I am using an Apogee Duet, which as its name suggests, is a two input, two output device.

How then would I get 4 inputs?  Well, I recently purchased a Steinberg UR22 (once again, a 2 input, 2 output audio interface) for my son.  The Apogee Duet has a Firewire interface, whereas the Steinberg has a USB interface.  I thought that I might use BOTH on my ageing 2009 17" MacBook Pro.

Plugging in the Steinberg was a piece of cake.  I had to download the latest OS X driver from the Steinberg site, and the device was recognised immediately on my system.  Great.

The main problem came up when I fired up Logic X.  I discovered that Logic will only recognise ONE input device, and ONE input device only.  I could only choose between the Duet, or the UR22 as my input, giving me only 2 input channels in total at any one time.

The solution - was actually pretty easy, and took less time than plugging in and setting up the UR22 in the first place!

The secret is - Aggregated Audio Devices.  OS X has a nifty feature which allows you to combine two or more hardware (or software) devices into a single virtual device.

Under your 'Applications' folder on your Mac, there is a folder called 'Utilities'.  In there, is an app called 'Audio MIDI Setup'.  Fire it up, and you will see a screen with all your hardware (and software) audio devices.

Click the little '+' button on the lower left corner, and you will be able to set up a new aggregated device.  I ticked the Duet and the UR22 so I could use both devices together.  I set up the Duet as the master clock device for the MIDI clock, and I nominated that I wanted to use Input 1 and 2 on the Apogee, as well as Input 1 and 2 on the Steinberg (see image below).

I called my Aggregate Device the 'Dueberg', which was my amalgamation of the words 'Duet' and 'Steinberg' :)

Note that I had KRK Rokit 5 monitors already plugged into my Duet, and nothing plugged into the output ports of the UR22, so I ticked ONLY the 2 output channels on the Duet in my aggregate device.  This effectively gave me a 4 input, 2 output device.

Sure enough, when I went back to Logic X, I could choose the 'Dueberg' as my input device, and was able to set up 4 tracks with Inputs 1, 2, 3 and 4 across the two audio interfaces recording simultaneously.

For those that are curious, I set up the inputs as follows:

• Apogee Duet Input 1 - Direct from Guitar pickup/preamp
• Apogee Duet Input 2 - Rode NT-1A
• Steinberg UR22 Input 1 - AKG C5
• Steinberg UR22 Input 2 - AKG D40

The NT-1A was placed about 12 inches from the soundhole.  The C5 was placed near the lower bout and pointed at a 45 degree angle at the bridge of the guitar, about 10 inches away.  The D40 was placed directly over the 12th fret, pointing straight at it from around 6 inches away.

I am not sure if the sound was any better than my older recordings, but I felt I had more scope to play with the frequencies and tone shaping this way, including panning each mic left and right to create more 'space' in the end recording.

In the end, this was an easy and cheap way to get 4 inputs working in short order.  I was actually considering getting a Focusrite audio interface with 4 or 8 inputs on it, but this proved to be a far cheaper solution.

Hope it proves useful to others out there.

Rediscovering guitar - The Fisherman

Well it has been a long while since I recorded an acoustic guitar piece, so this weekend past, I decided to resolve that deficit and record a new song.

I remember a friend sending me a video of Simon Fox playing this particular piece in a live setting a few months back, and I was immediately taken with the song, which had a lilting Celtic cadence, combined with the feel of a lively jig.  Thankfully, Simon provides the tabs for all his songs on his website for free, so I downloaded them and learned "The Fisherman".

Technically, it was not an overly difficult piece, but the 'trills' proved to me more difficult that I thought.  Strangely, I find that some days they seem to come off perfectly, and other days, they just don't seem to work for me.

On the day I recorded this piece, they weren't working as well as I would have liked, but I persevered anyway.  The other thing that I found I needed to work on was the timing of this piece.  There is a dance like pace that needs to be maintained even though there are those trills and several syncopated notes to break the melody up.

I also decided to go a little overboard on recording this one, and used 4(!) different mics to capture the guitar sound.  I will post more on the details of that in another post, I think.

This was played on my Taylor BTO custom acoustic.  I had recently put pure Bronze strings on it to see how they sounded.  While I like the wamer, softer sound, they didn't seem as smooth under my fingers, and string squeak was a big problem, but I am relatively happy with the end tone that I got.

Here is "The Fisherman".  Enjoy.

Why I gave up on online forums

"Guitar Troll" by Steve Bolduc

Earlier this year, I decided to make the difficult decision to turn my back on online guitar and music communities.  I had been participating in various forums for many years, indeed even racking up nearly 10,000 posts at one of them.

I used to enjoy the camaraderie and sharing of knowledge that went with those forums in the early days, but over time things devolved and changed.

I am sure we have all seen it, on various internet communities.  The trolls start to emerge.  Discussions turn into sniping and personal insults.  Everyone seems to become outraged at the tiniest misinterpretation of something.  People judge without knowing.

It all started to get too much.  I initially pushed back at the negativity, and attempted to either defend or explain my point of view - but alas, the waves of constant hostility just began to wear me down.

"Relax" others would tell me.  "It is just the internet.  People do things there that they would never do in real life or to your face.  Just grow a thicker skin and stop being so sensitive."

Well, I was raised to believe that character is defined by what you do when nobody is looking.  I sincerely believe that someone who acts in a hostile or mean fashion behind the anonymity of a screen name has character flaws that I would not find attractive in real life either.

As for the second part about growing a thicker skin, well... as a musician, I believe that my sensitivity is actually an asset towards me creativity.  If I was to lose or suppress that, then I would lose a part of myself that makes music a joy to my soul.

So I have decided to take a sabbatical from online forums for a long while.  Who know, as with most communities, their nature is to evolve and change over time, and perhaps one day, they will organically weed out the energy sucking trolls and begin to celebrate those members that share knowledge and try to advance humankind again.

Then, I will rejoin the fray with gusto.