Big Wins for Aussie Startups
It might only be September but we think it's safe to say 2013 has been an eventful year on the political, tech and business front. Australia has changed prime minister 3 times in five months! We lost the Ashes (again). The new iPhone 5 is about to hit our shores. Yahoo took out line honours for the longest logo unveil in history. DesignCrowd launched its own contest to find 11 awesome alternative Yahoo logos, and our designs caught the eye of All Things D tech writer Cara Swisher, who announced she preferred DesignCrowd's crowdsourced Yahoo logos. Score!
The mining boom showed signs of slowing down. But the tech startup economy is crushing it! Aussie startups are going from strength-to-strength. Highlights include:
- Bugcrowd, the Aussie security crowdsourcing startup just raised $1.6 million. Congratulations!
- Atlassian, the poster child of the local startup scene, has hinted it could soon list on the Nasdaq. It was only a short time ago the company was a two-man show with a $10,000 credit card to the $100M in annual revenue and 20,000 customers around the world.
- DesignCrowd hit $10,000,000 in designer payments and doubled the size of the business in the last six months! Since we launched we've grown to a community of over 130,000 designers and over 2,000,000 million designs have been uploaded to our site. That's a lot of design projects being launched!
- In July, BigCommerce, the home grown Aussie ecommerce software startup making big waves in SME retail online, raised $40 million from Revolution Growth. Massive.
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Startup Logo Design Trends
In our roundup of 52 startup company logos there are a bunch of new arrivals since our last review of Australian startup logos back in 2011. Digital Sorbet, Sneaking Duck, Image Brief, Go Catch and Shoes of Prey have all launched and thrived. Older startups like Atlassian and Posse have rebranded.
Australian startups love their wordmark logos. There was strong emphasis on typographic logos using modern typefaces like Helvetica Neu and script fonts like Lobster (Pozible) or hand drawn fonts (From Little Things) in use. We noticed that a few startup logos used the same font with only minor differences in execution (Agenda Selects and Pozible for examples). Typographic or wordmark logos are popular replacing the gradient driven, bevel loving Web 2.0 logo styles which dominated the past. Another clear theme to emerge was limiting the color palette to neutrals like black, white, shades of gray, whether for the logo itself or the background.
We've divided up our list into 3 parts. 1) The So-Hot / Awesome logos. 2) The Average. 3) The Ugly / Logos That Need Love. Enjoy!
- The Awesome Startup Logos -
The best logos use clever graphics to emphasis the typography. Elements that are able to stand alone without any wordmark. Atlassian and Sneaking Duck were stand outs for these reasons.
FlikGift
- The Average Startup Logos -
These logos have the potential to be awesome with a little more imagination and solid execution. Big data crowdsourcing analytics marketplace Kaggle has a logo that does the job but it doesn't give much away about the service. We know a few designers who would love to help them update their logo. Hint, hint. Too many logo designs relied on generic, dated typefaces or stock images. A company logo needs to communicate what your business does and your company values. Glancing at some of these logos without hitting up their website we were left clueless.
- The Startup Logos That Need Some Love -
The logos that failed to leave a positive impression. Too many were reliant on using the same fonts over and over again or referenced logo styles that date them. To the startups that made this list, we say it's not too late to update and get a logo that's memorable and unique!
Which logos make your top picks? Let us know in the comments!
Need a logo for your startup? Try BrandCrowd's startup logo maker or find an Australian logo design on BrandCrowd!
Written by Jo Sabin on Thursday, September 12, 2013
Jo Sabin is Head of Designer Community at DesignCrowd. She's led the company's public relations and social media programs since 2012. With more than ten years' experience working with Australian and international tech startups in the creative industries, Jo has been instrumental in meeting DesignCrowd's objectives in Australia and abroad. Get in touch via Twitter.
