Tip 1: Write an awesome brief

The most important part of using a crowdsourcing platform such as DesignCrowd and getting an awesome logo design is writing an awesome brief. The old say of "Garbage In, Garbage Out" never held so true. When writing a brief for designers, make sure to take your time and clearly convey the requirements.

You need to remember that designers don't know your business like you do, they don't sit in your office and don't deal with the day to day tasks. As an outsider, the designers rely on the brief to get direction and an indication of how much artistic license they can use.

When putting your logo design brief together, remember to take these things into consideration:

• Company information
• Who you are
• What you do
• What you stand for
• Where you're based
• Similar businesses/competitors
• Company objective/mission statement
• USP
• Colours
• What colours do you like – be explicit, find examples
• One colour or multiple colours
• Shading or solid colours
• Fonts
• What font do you like – if you don't know the name find examples
• Do you want different fonts for different text (if you have a by-line for example)
• Shapes
• What shapes represent your brand
• How do you want these shapes used
• What do the shapes represent?
• Wording
• Make sure to explicitly highlight logo text and any by-lines
• Check, double check and triple check spelling
• Check punctuation
• Effects
• Would you like your logo to be 3D, flat or embossed?
• Do you like negative space logos?
• If you're not sure, use examples
• Inspiration
• Provide examples of logos that inspire
• Look for inspiration in other place – nature, music, even the office!

Tip 2: Provide Relevant Collateral

Even as you pour your heart and soul into the logo design brief, the team of crowdsourcing logo designers still rely heavily on any collateral you can provide. This often helps to cement ideas and instructions you've provided in the brief by showing concrete examples. Items you should consider uploading or referencing in your logo design brief include:

• Company website
• Old/current logos/branding material – flyers, letter heads etc
• Branding guidelines

Tip 3: Spend Time Reviewing Designers

A great feature of crowdsourcing logo design is the fact that you receive logo designs from designers all over the globe – from Australia and New Zealand to the USA and even the Ukraine and Russia. These designers provide a massive array of different creative concepts and ideas, meaning that the entries in your logo design contest can all be very different, but still meet the brief.

By its very nature a logo design contest on DesignCrowd is open for all designers to enter, however you can encourage individual designers to participate in the project by inviting them. The best way to find designers to invite is to review the designers in the graphic designer directory. You can view their previous work; see how many projects they've won and how much they've earned on the site.

When you're looking for designers to invite to your project, make sure to look at:

• Previous designs
• Do they match the style your looking for
• Have they worked in the same vertical before
• Winning designs
• How many contests have they won
• How many contests have they entered

Remember though, although a designer may not have won any contests, you don't want to rule them out – there are gems to be found in new designers joining the site.

Tip 4: Post a significant Budget and Timeframe

This might seem obvious, but is something that is often overlooked when posting a project. The basic premise is that the higher the budget and longer project deadline, the better the final outcome of the logo design contest. On a logo crowdsourcing site such as DesignCrowd, designers actively seek out projects where their return on investment will be high.

So, when posting a logo design brief, take these into consideration when choosing your budget:

A higher budget will mean:

• More designs – the more designs that are submitted the more chance of finding one that you love
• Higher quality – a higher budget attracts better talent, resulting in higher quality designs that require fewer rounds of feedback

A longer project deadline will mean:

• More opportunity for designers to work on a design and submit
• More opportunity for designers to discover your project
• When a designer's design is eliminated, they have the chance to submit again

Tip 5: Promote, Promote, Promote

How do you get new customers to your store, how do you drive new visitors to your website – the answer, advertising! Sure, advertising is a bit of a different beast when comparing your business to a logo competition; however some of the same rules apply. If you want to attract the highest number of quality designers to your project, then you need to invest in some shameless promotion!

DesignCrowd makes it super simple to promote your project and enhance the chances that top designers will find it and submit logo designs. When posting the project consider utilising the project upgrades:

• Top Designers - A personal invite is automatically sent out to our 3 top designers for your project
• Highlight in Job List - Your project is shown highlighted in job lists
• Promote via Social Media - We promote your project to thousands of designers via Twitter and Facebook
• Featured Project - Your project is promoted to top of designer's job listing above regular projects

Tip 6: Provide Constructive Criticism

Following all the above steps will only get you part way to a stunning logo. To get all the way there, you need to be involved in the design process. Much like a traditional design agency, feedback from customers is the glue that holds a great design together.

When you provide feedback to designers, you are more likely to get a logo that meets your requirements and that you are proud of. So, when providing feedback make sure you follow these simple rules:

• Update the brief if you feel the submissions are not hitting the mark – sometimes it's easier to provide a blanket update via a brief update, rather than individual feedback many designers
• Provide detailed feedback – describe the changes you want to see and what you want those changes to convey
• Eliminate designs that don't meet the requirements quickly and provide a detailed reason as to why – this gives these designers another chance to submit a design that will be closer to your liking
• Don't provide positive feedback without any reasoning – "good job" and "nice work" don't help designers refine their work and improve

By following these 6 simple steps, you will be well on your way to getting the most from a crowdsourced logo design. You'll end up with a stunning logo that you love and represents your business.

Written by Clancy Clarke on Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Clancy is the Organic Search manager at DesignCrowd. Clancy has over 7 years of online marketing experience and a passion for analytics. Get in touch via Google+.