“DO YOU DO LOGOS?” - Why This Question Often Upsets Artists.

“dO yOu dO lOgOs?”

In case you didn’t know, many artists are irritated with this question. And before you start to explain we know, we get it..almost every millennial has some kind business they’ve started and nearly every one of them needs a logo. That is so great and we are happy for you. Truly.

But It’s the dreaded question that grinds our gears and has potential to kill our creative flow for the day. It’s the question that can instantly trigger eye rolls, huffs and urges to throw our phone across the room. It is often the question that makes me wonder if I should just keep my art identity offline entirely. I don’t believe people have bad intentions when they ask this question but here’s my go at attempting to explain MY PERSPECTIVE on why it bothers so many of us.

BUT FIRST, LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF:

If you aren’t familiar with my work, my name is Sylvia Sykes. I am based in Akron, OH and I specialize in Portrait Art - That means that I paint people. I typically work in acrylic, oil and digital mediums, in a painterly style, vectors, graphics and caricature art. I’m still developing my purpose but highlighting women of color and minorities is definitely a major motivation. As a disclaimer, I do not explicitly create logos. The closest I can offer is digital vector portraits which I can approve for use in a logo created by someone else.

I don’t usually highlight this biographical information in my blog articles but this information is a key factor in why I wrote this one. So keep that introduction in mind.

I wrote this post with the intention of enlightening others and I hope that nothing here is perceived with a harsh tone. It’s all love, I just really want the world to understand art and artists a little better. I’ve noticed the occurrence of this tension enough that I think it needs addressed more within the art seeking community.

SOME CONTEXT: TYPES OF ARTISTS, ARTIST VISION AND ARTIST STYLE

In our current day, “Visual Artist” is an umbrella term that encompasses any kind of creator who produces visual stimuli which will serve as art to the audience. In simpler terms it is a person who creates art that is “visual in nature”. It is a very broad term that technically doesn’t tell you much about what that artist really does. Just like with music and literature, us visual artists fall into a variety of categories or genres.

Examples - Ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, film making, architecture, digital art, performance arts and textile arts.

Keypoint: Being good and prolific at one, such as painting for example, does not ensure that you are good or even interested in another, such as sculpture.

Furthermore, visual artwork is subdivided into different Styles, Traditions, Mediums and Purposes. There might be two artists who both work with acrylic paint but one may paint in an Impressionist style while the other works in Abstract style. A “Fine Artist” can be defined as a person that produces art for the purpose of securing displays in galleries and museums while the term “Sunday Painter” refers to someone who occasionally paints as a fun hobby with no professional goals for the craft. To highlight different purposes, Jean Michael-Basquiat was an abstract street artist of the 1980s whose work was politically charged - he wanted to send a societal message with his art about the ownership of public spaces. Georgia O’Keefe, however, was an abstract artist who painted large upclose depictions of flowers resembling female genitalia which was serving a feminist motive in the male dominated art world of her time. Both abstract artists, different aspirations or purposes for their art.

“Untitled” by Jean Michael-Basquiat, 1982.

KeyPoint: Different artists depict different subjects, in different ways for different reasons.

Any given artist's “Style” is a combination of these varying factors. How you create, what materials you use and why you create combine to create what is “your look”. I am of the opinion that every artist has their own unique style that cannot truly be duplicated because, at the very least, a higher power has bestowed a unique “vision” to each artist. I believe no two visions are the same; It is like our fingerprint. In my view, an artist's vision is how you view the world which directly shapes how you depict it.

BUILDING YOUR BRAND AROUND YOUR STYLE

Artists generally aim to hone in on their specific style and build their brand around that. The goal is often obtaining a style, which is unique enough that it can be easily recognizable and distinguished to the trained eye, and somehow implementing that within all of your content, services, creations, business stationary and marketing. This is especially true for Artreprenuers - artists who depend on their art income as their livelihood and thus operate it as a business. This is important because it is what distinguishes ONE ARTIST from the billion other artists out there selling work. This doesn’t mean that an artist offers nothing else outside their brand or that they never stray from their style. It just means that their style is what they could be considered an expert in and what they promote as their special offering to their audience. Below is a compilation of all my digital work completed between November 2019 and July 2020. For the most part you can see a coherent style as well as some consistency with subject choice, color theme, canvas set up and art function.

A compilation of my digital art showing a coherent style.

This was originally a Caricature Self Portrait highlighting my digital cartoon style. It was repurposed as a Thank You card which reinforces my business color theme and logo font. A perfect example of Brand Cohesion and Consistency.

A COMPARISON

As a comparison, you have hundreds of fast food chains. They might all be competing for the same customers at lunch hour but they each have a niche or a speciality in order to cater to specific tastes. McDonalds’ specialty is the burger even though they’re constantly trying experimental or seasonal items. Taco Bell has slushies and even apple pies on their menu but their speciality is tacos (arguably). Rallys sells burgers as a main item but they have perfected their unique seasoned battered fries which are distinguished enough that they can compete with McDonalds for customers. Even Burger King, which is dangerously close to McDonalds, has mastered a certain taste to their flame broiled patties to secure enough fans. All of the same specializing concepts apply to an Artists Brand. We all have something different to offer no matter how slight. (Are you hungry after reading that paragraph or is it just me?)

Some artists strive to remain distinguishable even after death in which case establishing a distinct look in your style is even more vital. For example, most people (even without a background in the arts) can probably identify this first painting as the work of Pablo Picasso and the second as Van Gogh.

Sure, a large factor of their recognizability is that these artworks in particular have become extremely popular within Western pop culture. However, since you’ve been familiarized with them so thoroughly you LIKELY are able to recognize these less popular pieces from these artists simply by identifying the coinciding styles. That’s how well each of these artists developed their personal look.

Green Wheat Field with Cypress II By Van Gogh

HOW YOUR STYLE & BRAND CONNECT TO YOUR VISION, PURPOSE AND IDENTITY AS AN ARTIST

While I compared an artist's niche to fast food chains, we differ in that our niche is not something that is solely a capitalist venture. Unlike corporations or other capitalist business models, art entrepreneurs have a more emotional and spiritual connection to what we offer. Anyone, with 2 days of training and the right supplies, can make a McDonalds burger. But our style can ONLY be offered by ourselves (or so we hope). It might be a bit egotistical but artists want our work to be seen as an extension of our existence and our experiences. Our emotions, thoughts and drives are so ingrained in what we create that it's difficult to separate the two. Sometimes selling art feels like you are selling pieces of yourself and thus might be difficult to part with. Therefore, we don’t want you to buy our art just because it's depicting a subject you like. Or at least that’s not ideal. Most of us prefer that even if you had a choice of two artworks depicting the same subject you would actually have a preference and choose the one that resonates with you. Because that is more meaningful and more harmonious with what art should be. We want our art to touch the world and impact people in some way. We want our art to go to a good home where it will be appreciated for its depth and meaning. Otherwise, our purpose becomes void. A career as an Artist is not usually intended to JUST be a way to earn money; it's about something deeper.

ANOTHER SPECIALITY SERVICE EXAMPLE

If you are planning a wedding and are looking for someone to sing at the ceremony, you would most likely research actual wedding singers - someone who has had extensive experience singing at weddings. You wouldn’t likely ask your local neighborhood rapper to perform..unless of course you were having a non-traditional wedding and that particular niche is what you needed for your unique wedding theme. A rapper and a wedding singer are both auditory artists who serve different purposes both ingrained within their identity and experiences. It’s the same with visual artists. You should go to different brands of artists depending on what you are looking for.

Adam Sandler as a Wedding Singer in the movie Wedding Singer, 1990s.

THE REQUEST: LOGO “ART”

Contrasting the above creative concepts and motivation, true or genuine logo creation is more about DESIGN than it is about ART. To clarify, here are their following definitions.

Art - “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”

Design - “A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process, or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product or process”

Those definitions are a bit wordy but for context this means that when you create the digital graphic for a logo you are (or should be) more concerned with the functionality of how it appears - it being formatted correctly for infinite expanding & shrinking without losing quality, the psychological component of its look, the effectiveness of its typography, color theory, its utilization across different softwares & settings, simplicity for easy brand recognizability, cleverness in highlighting what the brand offers, etc.. A logo’s purpose is always its USE for the customer.

A graphic showing how changing JUST color in a logo makes you feel completely different about the brand.

Logo Designers have skills in certain computer programs to create these kinds of graphics and have an understanding for what components make an image legitimate for those uses. A sense of creativity and inclination towards the arts is definitely required but when you DESIGN a logo it's not about the creator at all. It should be all about the customer and why they need it.

Keypoint: Logo creation is more of a commercial venture while art is more of a venture in expression. Neither one is better or worse, but they are distinctly separate services. A Logo Designer may be considered a Visual Artists but NOT ALL VISUAL ARTISTS ARE LOGO DESIGNERS.

WHY THIS COMES AS AN OFFENSE TO MANY VISUAL ARTISTS

Visual Artists often spend years perfecting their craft and developing a unified look of their creations. Some of us have completed untold hours of schooling, training and or studying what we produce. For those of us who do it as a livelihood, there is no lack of evidence of this on our platforms. Artists with an established brand are not likely to post content haphazardly. Deliberate thought and planning go towards what we share with the world so that there is no question about what we offer and what we create. Our Brand is our life and we take it seriously.

When none (or very little) of that advertised content includes explicit logo creation and, yet, we are still constantly contacted for logos, it feels like the seeking party is disregarding everything that can be found on our platforms and making our talents self serving for themselves as a consumer. It’s like all of our vision and purpose is invisible to this person which makes us, in our entirety as artists, feel invisible. This behavior is way too rampant in Capitalist societies and has led to an extreme disregard for the true value of art. Buying art is not just an exchanging of goods such as retail and it is demeaning to the craft when it is likened to that. The capitalist idea that “The customer is always right” has molded people to believe that they don't need to be educated consumers and that their needs are more important than any business purpose or mission.

The following Tweet highlights it pretty well. He only specifies graphic art here - which is ALSO different from logo creation - but it speaks volumes nonetheless to my overall argument here.

When you contact an artist for logos, who clearly doesn’t create logos, you are underhandedly saying to that artist “Your only value in our entrepreneurial society is creating something that serves corporations or businesses”. It’s basically like “yeah sure you can create phenomenal masterpieces that move people to tears but...can you make logos though??”

As I stated at the beginning of this post, I don’t think anyone is explicitly thinking this when they do it. I just think that this is what feeling is communicated to many artists when it happens. It feels like a slap in the face when the core of what we do is not seen. It feels like our talent is being picked apart for certain skills that are deemed “useful” while the rest of our qualities as artists are thrown to the side as meaningless.

Even without people asking for logos, artists already have to fight to feel meaningful sometimes. Since art is not something that is required for survival, it is one of those first ventures that gets disregarded as important during dire circumstances. This leads artists with a big job of convincing people why our work always matters. We don’t need anymore inquiries that are reinforcing this sentiment that our work isn’t valuable exactly as it is.

If all this sounds dramatic then I advise that YOU try spending the last 10 years of your life building an image specifically as a painter, sculptor, comic or sketch artist just to be bombarded with logo requests in the age of entrepreneurship.

For the record, I attempted to get into logo design for a while. And I’m not saying I won’t try again. But I made the choice to stop trying because I realized I was only doing it to feel useful. So many people were contacting me for logos and it was hitting that insecurity that my work as an artist was only valuable if people were willing to buy it. I had to stop myself because the second you start being a people pleaser as an artist is the second you lose your passion and vision. For the time being I haven’t been blessed with a vision of logo design and I am completely okay with that.

Before asking an artist if they do logos, I suggest that you do a 30 second search of their content. If you don’t see logos, I would recommend just not asking. With google and social media at your fingertips, I promise you can find a definite Logo Designer with just a little bit of work.

I would love to hear other perspectives, especially from other artists. Sentiments of all kinds are appreciated. Comment below or reach out via the contact section if you prefer.

Thank you for reading and I hope that you feel a little more enlightened today.

Sylvia Sykes

Creator or SylviaPaints

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Green Wheat Field with Cypress II By Van Gogh

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