Branding and imagery is important to every business, but when it comes to hair salons, it’s crucial. Who would feel confident that a hair salon could make them look great if the hair salon didn’t have a great image itself? Up until a couple of years ago, a salon would develop their own unique design by hiring either an individual graphic designer or an agency. But in the last couple of years, practices have increasingly turned to online crowdsourcing platforms for their design solutions.

Crowdsourcing is a model where problems are presented to the public and an open call for solutions is then made. The public – or the crowd – then submits solutions to these problems. The person who provides the solution is rewarded with a prize, money or recognition.

Wikipedia is probably the best known crowdsourcing model, where the public edits and updates online encyclopedia entries. And the model is also now regularly used for business solutions: For example, Lay’s potato chips recently held a Facebook contest where they have decided to produce one consumer’s potato chip recipe and pay that person $1 million, or 1% of the flavor’s net sales in 2013. The crowd will choose the flavor: the winner will be whoever gets the most likes on Facebook.

MycroBurst.com is a crowdsourcing platform for graphic design—it has more than 35,000 designers from around the world who provide design ideas to our clients. Businesses of all different types and sizes come to the site for design solutions, from day spas to government agencies to dentists, and hair salons are some of its most active clients.

The site features a simple “how-to” video on its homepage, and after clients fill out their creative brief, designers then submit designs for the client’s consideration. Contests are run for seven days. At the end of the contest, the client chooses a winning logo, the designer who won gets paid, and the client is the proud new owner of a custom-designed logo – and prices for logos start at a reasonable $199.

Hair salons that use MycroBurst are finding crowdsourcing to be an excellent solution for their branding needs. Heidi Archibald, owner of The Colour Bar in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, opened her salon earlier this year, and she needed a logo for her new business. 

Archibald explains, “Our salon is set up as a color bar, where four people sit at a table, and we’re Wi-Fi accessible so people can work while they’re getting their hair done. My husband used MycroBurst for his business, and we knew that we would have a choice of logos, so it was a good way to see lots of choices for a reasonable price.

“The process was great; we got good feedback and some really interesting logos. I liked the sleek and modern design of the logo we chose. We’re in the historic district, but my salon is more metropolitan, so my logo fit my business. It’s a great thing for $199 – we got hundreds of choices.”

Diana Perez-Nunez, who co-owns the Alex Dante Family Salon with her husband Alex Nunez in Coral Springs, Florida, also needed a new logo in advance of their launch. Says Perez-Nunez, “I hired someone I found on Craig’s List and paid a large amount of money. Unfortunately we were unhappy with the result. I found MycroBurst by Googling, and we love the logo that we ended up with. It was a very simple process, and I plan to use the service for marketing and for web design. The price was good and the service was phenomenal for someone on a tight budget.

“We put our logo on our capes, and we’re going to put it on certificates for kids who get their hair cut for the first time, as we are a family salon. I would recommend that salon owners take full advantage of crowdsourcing because it’s affordable, and you get so many designers who compete, so you get lots of different perspectives.”

Claudia Cruz, owner of Elegant Image in Westfield, New Jersey, has run her salon for over nine years, and she decided she wanted a salon makeover. She says, “I previously designed my logo myself, but I wanted something a bit more professional. My new logo is contemporary and simple but very distinctive. I’m using it on my business cards, and I’m redesigning the salon. There will be a sign on the inside and outside the salon with the logo on it. I think it’s really great for startup businesses as well as redesigning. The price was a big thing for me too. I’d highly recommend it.”

Check out www.mycroburst.com for more information on crowdsourcing great affordable design.