Brandstack.com is a marketplace for graphic designer's "leftover" unused work made for a past clients.
Brandstack is like Ebay, but for creative design work. The site encourages graphic designers to sell all of the unused work made for past clients. Graphic design is all about giving the client options, and there’s frequently a lot of “leftover” material — still valuable, but not sellable. Until now. Cool!
For people looking for design work, Brandstack markets itself as a way less expensive alternative to agencies. Some of the designers say they’re willing to customize their works, but I have to sense that you’re still going to get more from an agency than from a Brandstack designer. After all, Brandshack is kind of like a giant used record store or mega flea market for graphic design. While I wouldn’t launch a small business completely reliant on Brandstack, I would definitely be interested in doing business no Brandstack from either side.
For every item sold, Brandstack receives a 15% share. Not bad if you ask me. I’m not too familiar with the ins and outs of graphic design, but this seems like a great way to capitalize on work done for past clients. When I designed my logo for Preheat 350, I couldn’t stand not knowing what to do with the other concepts. Had I known about Brandstack then, I could have dramatically boosted our budget by selling our design scraps. (Of course this would require someone to actually buy our work.)
Brandstack does bring a few questions to mind:
- Are graphic designers ever legally obligated to not share, sell, distribute, etc., any and all work made for a client? In other words, is this completely legal? Something tells me we won’t be seeing mockup design ideas for Apple, Starbucks, or Nike on Brandshack.
- Does an agency own rejected creative work made from its graphic design team? Can the agency owner sell this work on Brandstack? What about the designer?
- How does Brandshack ensure the authenticity/originality of the sellers’ work?
- Pretend you’re a self-employed contract graphic designer selling work on Brandstack. How do you avoid putting yourself in an awkward situation with past and present clients if they find out you’re selling the work you created for them in the past? How do you maintain your reputation and attract new business in the future?
Brandstack’s really cool, but I have some legal/ethical concerns — what do you guys think?
Perhaps it’s better to answer your post questions directly:
1) All depends on the contract and who signed what.
2) Again a contract spells it out, I can’t put some of my work on my portfolio because of such contract, also if you are an agency you wouldn’t sell logos as cheap as $150 – $1000. Maybe stock clip art like GoMedia, but not logos. There’s no revenue in it.
3) They don’t. It depends on complaints and if they bother them enough to begin with.
4) You don’t. Clients will think what they want to think.
Your comment regards to Redbox and Netflix, they are not close enough to cause infringement. Also a lot of the top brands in the world use mostly either blue or red. The typography makes all the difference.
Hi Imokon! Let me clarify: I was referring to the possibility of designers working with big-name clients on branding/graphic design for new products prior to launch. These brands are examples of companies that have huge creative teams behind the marketing of late releases like Starbucks VIA, iPhone, etc,.
Rephrased another way, I was asking if clients have a way of owning/controlling creative design work, so that it doesn’t end up on Brandstack. I believe extremely similar and competing logos, color schemes — basically any branding identifiers — can weaken two organization’s brand identity, especially if they compete against each other. Someone buying something on Brandstack because it looks like a big name is riding on coattails and I think that’s unethical of the Brandstack designer and buyer.
For example of too similar brands, I have a hard time differentiating between Netflix and Redbox: they’re two completely different organizations, but its hard to remember that with the similar reds and curved logo. (Even their websites look extremely similar.) The dude who started Redbox used to work for Netflix, so go figure.
Thank you for going over my article on this very subject Nathan.
I would like to point out about your comment on the Apple and Starbucks logo scraps showing up on Brandstack. Serious branding is about lots and lots of research – costs and payments can reach 5 figures and beyond for one mark.
I could go on forever but examples are researching the typography – where people have seen the font and what do they associate it with, the mark e.g. too many Ms in circles are associated with Metro, the exact color value, has this color been tested on various screens as well as print settings… I mean it is painstaking work!
Also there’s been too much of “inspired by” designs at Brandstack that the work is hardly original anymore, and defeats the purpose of branding.