After shipping Flickity v2 thus wrapping 2016's huge development project, I didn't have it in me to write another line of code. I discussed my state of mind and motivation in this 3 min podcast.

New thing, shortsightedness on Bumpers

Looking to change things up, I started making logos.

Man, I love logos. A little piece of imagery that represents the ideal you want your project to be — that's design magic right there. I've been able to work on some great logo projects, but I've been itching to do more. Rather than wait for projects to come my way, I gave myself a project of my own: design 50 logos. 50 logos in 30 days.

Fifty logos is a lot. At least one or two a day for an entire month. I tried pushing myself: exploring different styles, subjects, and techniques. It was like design boot camp: working all those muscles you never use.

Designing

More than effort, this project required time. I took off an entire month from working on Metafizzy's active breadwinners: Isotope, Flickity, and Packery. This new project needed to make money. I decided to sell these logos. So now I wasn't just designing little illustrations, I was designing products.

Critics have commented that these logos aren't actually logos because they weren't designed for anybody. Think bigger. These logos were designed for 50 potential buyers. I designed the logos collectively, as a product line. That's why there are simple logos and complex logos, animals and people, realistic and abstract, cutesy and bad-ass logos. I didn't just design the individual logos, I intentionally designed this project as an event.

Pricing

I took inspiration from the The Million Dollar Homepage and I Wear Your Shirt, both why didn't I think of that ideas. I always wanted to do a why didn't I think of that thing. A gimmick!

• All logos are the same price.
• The price starts cheap.
• With each logo sold, the price increases.

This encourages customers to buy sooner, as the price is only going up. It also helps define what a realistic price for these logos as a product. How much would people pay for them?

But most importantly, it's a gimmick! It's something just barely intriguing enough to capture your attention. Like a .pizza domain. If Logo Pizza didn't have a gimmicky pricing model, would anybody care about a bunch of logos for sale?

As much as I hate to say it, if you work on the web, you work in the Age of Gimmicks. 140 characters. Photo filters. Face swap. The giants of our industry often have had a gimmick at the core of the brand experiences. Gimmicks: more than a gimmick.

Results

I launched Logo Pizza on September 13th. It was much more successful than I had expected. Logo Pizza cracked the top 5 of Hacker News, which gave the logos and my work a much broader audience. I underestimated the power of a gimmick and a slow news day.

• Hacker News
• Under Consideration: Brand New
• Product Hunt
• Designer News
• It's Nice That
• The Next Web
• HUH

I've sold 23 logos so far, resulting in $8,500 of revenue. A good amount, but the break-even point was at $8,000, because I devoted a month to design all the logos.

The real success was how much new business the project generated. I've landed several great logo projects currently in the works. It's enough new business that I'll be designing logos for the remainder of 2016.

That's what this was all about. I wanted to be a logo designer, but I didn't have the portfolio to back it up. The pendulum has swung the entire opposite way. I'm loaded with visual design work, which has me pining to get back into code.