Alanbenner needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 469 designs submitted by 76 freelance designers.
Backyard Farmers
The founders of our start-up are passionate about improving the health and well being of Americans and improving the environment and building family and community values by educating homeowners, schools and businesses on all the benefits of turning their backyards into productive "mini-farms" with raised bed vegetable gardens, fruit trees, chicken coops, perennial vegetable plantings, forest gardens, composting and rain water catchment systems, and other unique products, potentially even honey bees and rabbits.
We plan on doing seminars in local restaurants with taste tests comparing "conventional" store bought produce to local, freshly picked organic produce. We will then do a power point presentation on all the health, social, and environmental benefits surrounding our concept, enjoy a locally sourced organic dinner, and then sign people up to have their own "backyard farms" designed and installed by our company.
The company will offer as many locally produced and grown plants and materials as possible and will be all about quality and making sure everything the company does is done right.
We will also approach area schools, businesses, and other organizations to embrace our concept and hire our services.
We will give back between 10 - 20% of profits for helping to educate and ensure that less fortunate children can have access to healthy, locally produced food.
The company will initially target upper middle and upper class suburban homeowners and will initially start in the Philadelphia market with plans for expansion geographically as the company grows.
Targets for "backyard farm" installs:
1. Suburban Homeowners with larger, sunny backyards who are interested in healthy, good tasting food and lifestyles, but may not have the time or ability to convert their backyard into a productive, food producing garden/mini-farm.
2. Area schools - public and private for purposes of education and healthy food for students
3. City dwellers with small backyard and/or roof top planter gardens
4. Commercial properties - businesses with cafeterias, green roofs, etc
We believe there is a strong desire right now with people to "get back to the land" and we intend to be a big part of this trend. We intend on having a very comprehensive website (also will need to be built) that will create a very significant online community for anyone working to establish their own backyard gardens and food supply.
Our service will:
1. Reduce pollution and greenhouse gases by producing food locally
2. Produce food that is much more nutritionally dense
3. Provide a backyard "classroom" for children and a way for neighbors to share produce and form stronger social connections.
4. Enable people to become more connected to the land and more educated on food.
IMPORTANT update for all designers: We have decided to extend two additional days... We have a very nice design (#130 ) that we like. We are not certain however that this is the best visual to make our brand memorable, as it is more of a "backyard scene" In the next couple of days we would like to see some adjustments to the farmer character image (see response posting to #'s 125, 144, and 146. The best of these will be put into the mix and voted on with #130 .
VERY IMPORTANT: For anyone starting a new design concept, we would like to try a few other more simple concepts (and of course are open to any other outside the box ideas)...
1) an image with a (bean) sprout uncurling out of the ground with the company name "Backyard Farmers" next to it (most likely the name would be on two lines)
2) an image of a basket of fresh produce (fruits and vegetables) along with a few eggs of varying shades of brown and white with our name next to it. Not sure if the eggs should be in separate basket or in a compartment or small basket within the produce basket.
3) same as # 2 but with a pitchfork and/or farmer hat as part of the image
4) Just a pitchfork and farmers hat w/ or w/out the sprout.
5) (high on this idea at the moment)
Another design concept we are playing with is putting the letters of the company name into a vegetable...for example each letter of Backyard Farmers into each individual pea on each side of an open pea pod - ie. the top half would have:
B A C K Y A R D and the half of pod below would have F A R M E R S - each letter inside each pea...
We think this type of design could be simple and clean yet very memorable
To sum up, we think we might need to keep this logo a lot simpler. Our target audience is the upper middle/upper class suburban homeowner and the imagery and font used need to be very classy/high end looking. It should also have a strong earthy feel. Definitely not busy looking or campy...
6) we also think a farmer hat hanging off the name Backyard Farmers w/ or w/out a pitchfork and/or produce might be very effective...perhaps just the hat...
Once we have a bunch of these other design concepts described above submitted, we will then conduct a poll for the top 8 (this will include #130 and the best farmer character logo we receive).
Which ever image gets the highest score in that poll and is agreed as the best by the partners of this company will be awarded the prize
Thanks again to everyone for your submissions.... we believe this logo will some day support a strong national brand, and we need to get it right... We want something simple, classy, clean and memorable so that once it becomes established in the market everyone knows what it is for...just think of a logo you see and you remember what it is without the name next to it...that it ideally what we really want!
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