Clip Art For Logos: Is It an Even Trade?

Sometimes when designing a logo, an apt piece of clip art will speak to you. Should you heed its call? Is there ever a right time to base logo design on clip art?

Clip art.

Finished giggling yet? I’ll wait another minute.

Okay, great. Fact is, clip art isn’t usually thought of as a serious subject for design discussion. Oh, they do have their uses, and just like any other tool, when used properly and in the right place, they can truly enhance communicative power; used too much, they indicate a lack of actual design. Meant to be universal in apppeal and basic in design, they are a sort of über-fleuron.

But as symbols that communicate they do carry with them the grain of an idea, which can lead to an inspiration. When designing logos, that commodity can be of varying supply. Is the inspiration one may find in a bit of clip art worthy of following to a complete design–or, simply, should anyone base their logo design off one?

A Question Posed

Recently, in Yahoo’s Graphic Designers Resource Group, poster James Connell posted a poser, which was, in part:

James additionally mentioned that he’d gotten a layperson’s opinion that they felt is wasn’t quite right to do so because he wouldn’t have created the complete design, and that he believed it to be a fairly standard practice. Here, “stock illustration” was taken to mean “clip art” based on the message’s title (it actually was supposed to mean an illustration purchased from a “stock illustration” site, but this seems more or less to me to be the same thing).

The Discussion is Joined

Such a remark, whether good question or no, seems to get any designerly person who looks at it to look at the creative process itself and what it means to them. It spotlights concerns such as proper sourcing, the creative’s individual contribution to the process (actually “being creative”, if I may be allowed an overstatement), and the quality of design serving as the problem-solving bridge between a desire (the want for a uniquely expressive logo) and the result (the logo itself).

Almost immediately, Michael Holdren, principal of Michael Holdren Design, made a very cogent point:

He also added, quotably,

Another correspondent, Nick Spence, seemed to feel that there was, occasionally, a time and a place to use clip art as a part of logo design. He gave an example:

His approach seems to say that creativity is not just found in the solution but also how the solution happens, and that creativity here is found in a way to fit the client’s budget and get them what they want without having to cut the hourly rate. “Sometimes,” Nick concluded, “creativity looks like a creative solution to a financially difficult problem”.

However, looked at another way, this creativity can be seen as economy at the client’s sake, as Michael Holdren illuminates:

Susan Kirkland, author of Start and Run A Creative Services Business (check-outable at www.sdkirkland.com) touched on a perennial concern: the dreary but vital intellectual property point:

Also she touched on client satisfaction, which can hinge on the originality of the design, which goes back to the source:

The subject obviously generated lively discussion on GDRG which was nothing if not thought-provoking (and which, ironically, evolved into a discussion of “artist vs. designer”–such is the active mind of the creative).

The Thought, Provoked

Quite simply, the thought, once provoked, didn’t get far from my own mind. Is it okay to use clip art as the basis for a logo?

One can, I suppose, come up with a vast array of situations generated by time and budget constraints that would make basing a logo on a sample of clip art a tempting prospect. But in doing so are we doing our clients a service or a disservice?

I return to one of my conceptual bedrocks: A designer is a problem solver. The notional problem in this case is the provision of a unique and memorable graphic identity for a client–a logo. I think it not presumptuous to state that, regardless of the complexity or simplicity of the logo in question, to the client it ought to express what the client sees as one or more of the client’s organization’s best qualities, be they perceived as integrity, honesty, consistency, innovation, or any of a number of them.

Turning to the problem to solve it, we get our tools out: creativity, the skill–innate or learned–to draw out those qualities into abstractions. To me, this strongly suggests, if not demands, a customized solution.

Clip art is anything but customized. Drawing on subliminally-realized common symbols, clip art illustrates and annotates but does not personalize. It is strong in communicating in the general but weak in the specific, and logos are nothing if not specific.

In the course of this article I’ve included clip art from a free clip-art site, Barry’s Clip-Art Server (http://www.barrysclipart.com). For just a moment, look over them. Though not necessarily apropos to the article, they all indirectly tie, if only by a slim tangential concept, to the subject of the article–though in reality, they actually support the article not at all.

Does it not seem somewhat counter to the idea of a unique and valuable solution to base that solution on something generic and common, regardless of the quality of that thing?

Kinda looks familiar, don’t he? (click to enlarge) (via Fotosearch Stock)

As a final example, allow me to introduce you to a fellow you may all have seen before. You may not think so, but most of you that look at it will feel his face rings a bell. Found on the Fotosearch stock site, it’s a news reporter, excitedly broadcasting breaking news. Retro in feel, I’ve seen this in cafes, circulars, and in a variety of places.

Is it dynamic? Certainly. Does it communicate? Unquestionably!

Would it make a suitable basis for a logo design? Given the common appeal of the design, the obvious appeal to period style, and the fact that it does happen to be a rights-managed image (though royalty-free, one does have to pay to get an actual copy of it) the answer would have to be no.

And I think that answer, logically, must be extended toward the use of most (if not all) clip art. As GDRG member Anthony Gillespie put it:

This, aside from legal concerns, is the greatest danger in using clip art as the basis for a logo. Your final valuable product, the deliverable to the customer, loses uniqueness. It might be like another company’s logo and, if there isn’t a legal problem that arises over that (as Quark, Inc. found out this last year), there is at least a bit of embarrassment as one becomes the laughingstock of creatives.

In the end it devalues creative work in general. Clients come to us for original thought, and a clever approach to budget might be creative in its way, but that’s probably not the creativity that most of our clients want from us.

Our clients pay us for originality. That’s what we should try to deliver.