Real improvement over the old logo. I particularly like that we are now referring to ourselves as U.S. Masters Swimming rather than USMS. If we are trying to attract new members and we are all on occasion walking billboards with meet t-shirts, who knows what USMS means besides those who are already members. I have any number of meet t-shirts in which neither the graphics or text give any indication that it is actually from a swimming event. Kudos to the group who picked the name change and the design.
Matt,
I understand USMS had these costs anyway to review this design. My concern is that with a contest you want to give some panel of people or the whole masters swimming community a chance to vote on designs, right? Would it not be prudent to have each design legally reviewed before the vote? Otherwise, you might have a winner that didn't pass the legal test and you would have to start all over and incur duplicate costs. Unfortunately, I have seen this done. So, best case a contest costs you the about the same and worst case it cost you much more. There is much more risk involved with a contest.
Not to mention that if you have a contest you might have someone come up with a concept that works for one media really well, but not another media so then you have to have a professional tweak the design to make it work. Added costs and added time. To run a contest you probably would want to spend some professional time on design specificiations as well so that is added costs. You might want a professional to review the designs before the selection to discard ones that don't meet the specifications too. More costs again.
I think the new leadership probably had an idea of what they wanted going into the process and had probably limited their design concepts to minimize costs (both legal and design costs). That is just my guess.
What happens if the swimmers like the design, but Rob and other leadership doesn't think it will help with developing masters swimming? Start over and waste money or undermine Rob's and other leadership's vision? Rob was hired to do a job. It appears he is trying so maybe we should let it go. I have nothing to do with USMS other than being a member and volunteer local coach, but it must be a struggle transforming the organization from being a wholly volunteer organization to a partially volunteer organization.
I don't disagree that there is probably a better design out there, but the time and money to get there is probably not worth it. Overall, good job USMS.
Tim
It's not that complicated. Every year USMS has a cover design contest for their Rule Book. It's simple, voted on at convention and there aren't all the issues you mention. Trust me, an open request for logo designs could have been done to the membership via the magazine, emails and here and with very little cost to the organization. I for one, did the Go The Distance logo. I happily have given my time to USMS and Mary Sweat for the project. And I will continue to do so in the future to USMS, my LMSC and other organizations that ask. I do graphic design for a living.
Matt,
I understand USMS had these costs anyway to review this design. My concern is that with a contest you want to give some panel of people or the whole masters swimming community a chance to vote on designs, right? Would it not be prudent to have each design legally reviewed before the vote? Otherwise, you might have a winner that didn't pass the legal test and you would have to start all over and incur duplicate costs. Unfortunately, I have seen this done. So, best case a contest costs you the about the same and worst case it cost you much more. There is much more risk involved with a contest.
Not to mention that if you have a contest you might have someone come up with a concept that works for one media really well, but not another media so then you have to have a professional tweak the design to make it work. Added costs and added time. To run a contest you probably would want to spend some professional time on design specificiations as well so that is added costs. You might want a professional to review the designs before the selection to discard ones that don't meet the specifications too. More costs again.
I think the new leadership probably had an idea of what they wanted going into the process and had probably limited their design concepts to minimize costs (both legal and design costs). That is just my guess.
What happens if the swimmers like the design, but Rob and other leadership doesn't think it will help with developing masters swimming? Start over and waste money or undermine Rob's and other leadership's vision? Rob was hired to do a job. It appears he is trying so maybe we should let it go. I have nothing to do with USMS other than being a member and volunteer local coach, but it must be a struggle transforming the organization from being a wholly volunteer organization to a partially volunteer organization.
I don't disagree that there is probably a better design out there, but the time and money to get there is probably not worth it. Overall, good job USMS.
Tim
It's not that complicated. Every year USMS has a cover design contest for their Rule Book. It's simple, voted on at convention and there aren't all the issues you mention. Trust me, an open request for logo designs could have been done to the membership via the magazine, emails and here and with very little cost to the organization. I for one, did the Go The Distance logo. I happily have given my time to USMS and Mary Sweat for the project. And I will continue to do so in the future to USMS, my LMSC and other organizations that ask. I do graphic design for a living.
