It’s been quite some time since I was neurotic about my business here in public. In fact, things have been going along swimmingly, and I’ve been happy and busy. But I frequently still feel like a fledgling business owner who gets in over her head.

I had this fantastic idea (and a pressing desire) to revamp mywebsite, and the freakouts began.

The first inklings of self doubt started with a small comment from Mom when I told her I wanted to update my site. “Honey, what’s wrong with your old site? I think it’s nice. Why do you need to change it?” Inner voice… why did I need to change it? It’s like when I realized I sported a great haircut for my face back in the early ’90s. Why didn’t I just stick with that? But I wanted to change my site to reflect more of the services I have added since I started. So I decided that Mom was just out of touch and that I should forge ahead.

So then I had a revelation that I needed a new logo. I designed my old logo myself at about 3 a.m. during the scrambling, desperate first week of my business. I didn’t know then what kind of writer I wanted to be, so I designed something very conservative so that I would look professional yet innocuous. The logo was black and beige. BEIGE, for goodness sake. I’ve never been beige. And I came up with the name, Avenue Z Writing Solutions, because the other company names I kept coming up with had the word “lavender” in them. Again, remember that I was staying up all night trying to get my business rolling.

So, I was going to hire a designer I worked with before who would create a logo for $150. But the work I had seen from them usually all fell into one or two different looks. I wanted to think bigger, have more to choose from. I didn’t want to get locked into one thread. That’s when I had the idea to use one of my own low-cost tools to run a logo contest. For $200 bucks, I submitted a description of what I was looking for toLogoMyWay.com. I ended up with something like 260 designs from 60+ designers from all over the world.

Overwhelmed. Unable to choose. So here’s where I started asking for help… I first went to a handful of close friends and family to get their impressions about which logos really said Avenue Z. A handful received several votes, so I had the brilliant idea of inviting thousands to vote on the perfect logo. My mom chimed in again, “Honey, we like one of these logos, but really, we liked your other one better.” Gulp. Was I doing the right thing?

Here’s where it really got complicated. More than 200 people took the voting challenge. Most (95%) of the comments were very positive and made me feel good about what I was doing (such as, “Has the most flair, suits Beth’s personality!” and “It has pizzaz!” and “Bold yet classy, just like you!”). But several people, whose opinions I respect, took the time to truly critique the logos and this effort…

1. None of them really look like a logo for a marketing company. B looks like a retail logo, C is fun, but i don’t think it conveys marketing professionalism, it’s more of a consumer product logo and D is for sure a retail clothing logo White House Black Market. A is sterile enough to use as a marketing logo.
2. Really, none of the above. I liked the ones that had the inkwell. None of these imply what you do. Of these four, the last one looks most like printed words. Though I don’t like that writing etc is faded and hard to read.
3. I just read your bio below. I don’t think of you as a cheapskate brand – and am not a big fan of positioning oneself as cheap – that said, if that’s what you want, Logo D would be a better fit. It looks like something anyone could come up with on their own computer – a cheapskate way of designing a logo.
4. I would like to see other options.
5. I actually loved your old logo.
6. I really liked your old logo.
7. Why’d you drop your old logo? It was cool and really showed what you did.
8. [Paraphrasing] I don’t think you’re giving enough thought to branding. This will be detrimental to your business. You need to stop what you’re doing and think this through.
9. [Paraphrasing again] Don’t you know that the design community really, really hates those logo contests? Not only do they degrade the very difficult process of thinking through a logo that means something, they also are rife with plagiarism and copyright violations. There’s a huge chance that your logo will be a copy of someone else’s work.

Ack! Ack! Ack! I was thoroughly shaken. Am I making a HUGE mistake? Do I have any idea what I’m doing?But now I had committed to the voting process, and people were writing me left and right, “Did my logo win?” “What did you decide?” I couldn’t scrap the whole thing at this point and start over. It was kind of like figuring out that you don’t really like your fiance two weeks before the wedding (not that that happened to me). The invitations had been sent, baby, and I had to walk down the aisle.

I was quite fortunate that my very favorite logo won the contest. Now I needed new business cards and a new site to go with the new logo. Within 10 days of the end of the contest, both are completed. And frankly, I’m overjoyed with the results. I think even if I hadn’t asked for input, I’d be looking at close to the same results, and I’m kind of flattered that people think the new logo really captures my spirit.

BUT… did I make fatal mistake? Is my logo too generic? Is the site too orange? Too glitzy? Too professional? Too juvenile? Too cookie cutter?

My god, Beth, what have you done?

Yeah, well. It’s done. As a business owner, I need to accept the decisions I made (with your help!) and move forward. Unless I can have a do-over?