The brand new city office of arts and culture, which has decided to call itself “Creative Greensboro,” has gotten off on the wrong foot with some in the artistic community that the office is supposed to support.

Chief Creative Economy Officer Ryan Deal announced last week that his department would be holding a contest for a logo for Creative Greensboro, where contest finalists would be paid $100 for their entries and the contest winner would receive an additional $1,000.

A notice of this contest was placed at Nextdoor.com by the city, and it’s safe to say didn’t receive the response intended. The contest notice received 15 negative comments, several neutral comments and no positive comments.

Dawn M. of Friendly Lakes commented, “I’m a local Graphic Designer and would absolutely LOVE the opportunity to help, however, I’m on the Board of Directors for the Graphic Artists Guild and we promote how horrible logos contests are for local artists. We take time away from our paying clients in hopes to “win” a contest. What happens to the artists who don’t win? Their time is wasted. A logo takes many hours to design and/or to illustrate and a $100 participation prize just doesn’t cut it. In fact, the $1,000 winner fee doesn’t cut it either. A real professional logo with a custom illustration should cost a minimum of at last $1,500 as a starting point.”

That comments received 16 likes.

Tim Bryson, Irving Park, commented, “I could not agree more with Dawn …”

Andy Lindsay, Pleasant Ridge Farms, commented, “‘Creative Greensboro was created to help support our local creative community. What better way to do that than offering this citywide platform for visual artists to be recognized?’ said the City’s Chief Creative Economy Officer Ryan Deal, who runs Creative Greensboro.

“Well Ryan, since you asked, here’s a better way: pay a professional visual artist with actual money. I’ve been a visual artist in Greensboro for three decades, and I have yet to be able to make a mortgage payment or put food on my table with all the publicity and recognition some people would like to pay me with instead of actual money.

“I’ve come to expect this sort of ignorant offer from the uninformed or misinformed, but if your job title is ‘Chief Creative Economy Officer’ and you run an organization called ‘Creative Greensboro,’ well, just shame on you. You should know better …”

That comment, which goes on to note that Ryan is being paid over $100,000 a year and ask how much work he would be willing to do for recognition instead of cash, also received 16 likes.

It would seem at least a good portion of the professional artistic community is not happy about the contest for a Creative Greensboro logo, which has to make you wonder about the quality of entries that are likely to be received, versus the quality of the logo that Creative Greensboro could have by paying for it.

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