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Design

‘Rejected Logo Competition’ Celebrates Designs That Didn’t Quite Make It

Graphic designers are getting a second shot at proving their unhappy clients wrong.

In a world where even the CIA is on Twitter, #branding is a lifestyle, and every single thing seems to be getting a minimalist makeover, it’s safe to say that graphic designers are some important players in the Internet era. These PhotoShop-wielding warriors are part of a growing $20 billion industry, but there’s still a lot of struggle in the lives of these designers. When they’re not messing around creating viral masterpieces, they’ve still got to pay rent, and that means dealing with clients, many of whom want a new logo to spice up their branding.

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Some designers get lucky (read: work hard and are very talented and then are in the right place at the right time), and wind up redesigning a megabrand's logo for the zillionth time, but others spend their days working for smaller clients—a precarious hustle to say the least. A lot of great work is lost forever because some clients preferred option C or thought their logos should be cuter. What happens to these forgotten graphic gems, though? While many get tossed in the digital trash bin, a new outlethas arisen to spotlight these creative expressions: the Rejected Logo Competition. The contest's slogan? "You loved your logo design, but the client didn't. We want you to celebrate it." Time to raise a Adobe Illustrator-made glass.

The current entries range from elegant simplicity, to snappy humor, to classically-inspired traditionalism. Unicorns, flamingos, afros, top hats, hummingbirds, and rainbows are cradled in sans-serif text nests, urging you to check out radio stations, electric companies, a funk parade, and even a shotgun store. But with a contest like this, the brands are hardly the point, it’s just cool to see the work of some very talented designers and think about what could have been…

The challenge was issued by UK printing company Print Express, with the aid of web institutions like GitHub, CodeSchool, and Squarespace. A team of designers will judge the top ten user-chosen logos, deciding the winner of $500 in Amazon cash, among other prizes. You can cast your votes at the competition’s website here.

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The deadline is July 4th, so we’re expecting loads of lovely logos from all corners of the digital marketplace. We hope the winner uses all of the $500 prize to design and then print a big “I told you so” sign outside the client’s house—maybe that will go viral too.

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