At the beginning of July, I saw a post on Instagram about the CWDi 67 Logos Designathon. It is an annual event run by CWDi for Mandela Day in support of small businesses in South Africa. As a small business if you enter, you get to work with a designer to receive a new logo for free.
Last year I worked on a press release about the event for a platform I used to do some work for. When I saw the Instagram post about it, I knew exactly what it was and that it would be an amazing opportunity for Over Saturated.
I applied at the end of June/early July, and then forgot about it. A week or two later, I got an email saying that Over Saturated had been accepted as a business at the event. I was incredibly excited.
One of the biggest struggles I have had is wanting to have really good branding for Over Saturated, but not having the design skills to come up with something really good.
I have a list of priorities that I want to spend money as I have a bigger budget for the platform. A new logo was first or second on that list. Now, we were going to receive one for free.
The process of the event works like this: You write a brief with some guidelines from CWDi, they read through it and match you with a designer based on that brief, you meet the designer and chat a bit about the design, then the designer has two days to come up with something and they send it back to you for feedback. Once you have given feedback they finish up the design and send that through to CWDi for the final event which takes place on Mandela Day.
I met the designer, Madikela Dikgale, I was going to work with on the Tuesday. She asked me for a mood board, which I created and sent back to her. By Thursday she sent me two design options, and I knew immediately the one design option was right for the platform. To quote a joke from New Girl, I replied with “No notes”.
Madikela sent through the design to CWDi and sent me the logo pack. All that was left was to attend the 67 Logos Designathon event on Mandela Day.
The event felt like a good event to create a YouTube video about. So here is a video of what it was like attending the event remotely and getting the new logo.
Getting a new logo through the CWDi 67 Logos Designathon | Video