99 Designs Contest Entry

I stumbled across yet another great website for artists a few days ago. If you're looking for a chance to pick up an extra few hundred dollars, check it out. This site mostly consists of small businesses looking for new logos to use for their business. Basically, someone hosts a contest for designers to submit their design entries based on a company description, chosen colors, examples of other logos, etc.

I'm still looking around the site, but from what I can tell, the minimum payment is $190 USD for the winner of each contest. There are also plenty of contests which pay well over that too. Right now, the highest prize is $1974 for a casino app UI design. The highest logo design prize right now is $835. I've also noticed contests for t-shirt graphics, book covers, business cards, web page design, and illustration.

I drew up a quick logo for a contest last night to get my feet wet a little. The company is trying to create a new electrical wall plug that is simpler, safer, and smarter than the one we've been using across the world for the last 100+ years.

Here is their teaser video for the plug.

It's a pretty cool idea and it's able to easily adapt to our regular plug right now so anything can be plugged into the new socket.

The company name is PEAR. I'm not sure if there is a hidden meaning there (most likely is) but I immediately thought of the fruit and I did up a quick sketch using Krita to give myself a general idea for a design.

It's quite a rough sketch. I've been trying to use Krita, Inkscape, and Gimp a little more than Photoshop and Illustrator because I'm getting tired of paying a monthly fee to use them when there are great free and open source alternatives available. I'm still getting used to them and I'm not as comfortable as using Photoshop but I'll get there eventually if I just make myself use them.

I then transferred that drawing over to Inkscape to design the logo and came up with this...

I tried to implement the Pear with their new plug design by adding in the circles in the center of the 'a' in the same way their plug has circles on it. I also made the stem of the pear an electricity bolt to give it more of a relationship with electricity. And, I made it clear in the description that the colors could always be changed as well as tweaks and adjustments.

I noticed after starting the drawing that there are over 50 entries to this contest so I'm not holding my breath to win. Most of the other contest don't have nearly as many entries. It's also a blind contest so I can't see any of the other entries which really makes me wonder what I'm up against. But, you never know what people will like and maybe my design is exactly what they were looking for.

Wish me luck!

And if you're an artist, it's worth checking out the website for yourself.