Company wide logo contest

[cpalmatier]

I am an in-house designer for a large US corporation (team of 5). Recently, a company wide contest was announced for anyone to submit a logo design relating to the environmental initiative. Has anyone experienced this? I'm rather unhappy as 1) I feel it is insulting to open it up to the entire company, rather than bringing it to the graphics department 2) our branding guidelines will not even be considered, and this is something that will be visible globally! How do we take control?

[ZiaG]

Wow, I agree on both. That's a knotty problem. Did you know about it before they announced it? Did your boss? Is it possible to add some "fine print" limiting usage for the design winner logo so that it's used in promoting some VERY limited portion of the environmental initiative? If not that, maybe it could be only on a remote part of the web or only on stickers or something: limit its use. Or add some language that the winner's design will be adapted for use according to branding guidelines. Then you can change colors and redesign it to make it fit for the good of the company. Or just do a design winner project where it is used intact but only once. What does your boss think?

Or, just ignore it. Maybe no one will submit anything usable anyway. Suggest some kind of thank you for those who entered.

Good luck!