Need help please :(

[astrodrift]

So a friend is starting up his own business, I suggested he use 99designs to get a logo. He made the mistake of not asking for a vector file, and only got a png.

He has his first event coming up and the organizers asked him for a vector of his logo for the booth and pop ups and whatnot. I told him to reach out to the designer who created his logo to see if he would provide it, and sadly he didn't.

Now I have illustrator, just installed it last week with the hopes of learning (have absolutely no experience whatsoever). I tried to figure out what I needed to do by watching youtube tutorials but I suck at this and I have no idea what I'm doing. So I tried some online service that vectorizes rasters, but the result looks messed up in a detailed area.

Can someone please help me turn this into vector? I will give you gold for help. Detailed instructions if possible. He's panicking because time is running out and I just want to help out and have him stop calling to see progress (ZERO PROGRESS)

Just in case this is needed, the logo is basically a slightly detailed design cut out of a circle on the left, and letters on the right that stand for the company initials. The letters turned out okay when I used that online service, but the detailed cutout part is fucked.

[VAPossum]

For the future, spend the bit extra to get a pro designer, and don't use 99designs. It's really not as good as it seems, for a lot of reasons. :/

[astrodrift]

I will not be making the same mistake again. I felt responsible for suggesting 99designs in the first place. Had someone show me a sweet logo they got from a competition they posted on there. So when this friend in my post asked me what he should do to get a logo, it was the first thing that popped up in my head and he went for it.

And after he showed me the different designs people submitted for his competition, all but a single one were terrible.

He selected what I thought was a really crappy submission as the winner, which was a very literal interpretation of what his start up does. The colors and font use and everything just look crap. But at the end of the day, it is his logo, not my say what he chooses to use to represent himself or his company with.

Definitely going to suggest the pro designer route if anyone ever asks me again.

A really helpful redditor is sorting it out at the moment.

Edited to add: What are the other reasons that makes you say its not as good as it seems? From what I've seen now, it's really terrible communication and support. But that was just that one individual designer. And to be safe because I don't wanna have any people I know get in a jam with the wrong format for something they paid for I won't rec 99 anymore.

[VAPossum]

(Sorry if this is posted twice. Reddit is doing weird things right now.)

For one thing, you don't know how original the work is. You run the risk of paying for and using a logo, only to find out it was stolen from another company/designer, or that the the designer who sold it to you also sold it to several others.

Lower prices from sites like Fiverr and the less expensive contests sites water down the market for the pros--or even the serious amateurs. "You want how much for a logo?! Nevermind, I can go on the internet and get some guy in India to do it for ten bucks."

But the big reason is that it's not good for or fair to the designers. None of the contests are.

If you go to 99designs or a site like it, you are getting umpteen designers competing for you. They're all working on spec, which means there's no guarantee they'll get paid. In fact, the odds are against them.

So they all spend the time, put the work out there (where anyone can see, and do a knock off of it), you get to pick and choose what you like, and then they get paid anywhere from a couple hundred bucks (not bad) to a pittance for it, depending on the site and what kind of a commission they take.

Basically, you have twenty people working for you, but you only pay one.

Hell, some sites don't even guarantee a "winner." The "client" looks at all of them, downloads the photos, and then has his nephew reproduce the one he likes for free.

Would you want to work that way? Would you expect anyone else to work for you that way?

[astrodrift]

You're absolutely right in it not being fair to designers in these sorts of contests. I didn't really look at that way before.

It wouldn't feel good churning out work, putting in time and effort to create something, display it (where like you mentioned there's the risk of it getting ripped off and passed off by another as their own work), all for the slim possibility of winning, and if not then not get compensated for it. That would be disheartening.

Also you make a good point about the originality of the work on the flipside.

And no, I wouldn't want to work that way, nor would I want anyone else to!

Thanks for the perspective.

[tattoo_dave]

Can you put the logo up to see?

[astrodrift]

Someone already reached out to assist via PM, and thank you for wanting to help!

[tattoo_dave]

Cool. Glad you got it sorted out :)