Total Confusion in IPPB Logo Design Competition

India Post had invited Logo and tagline for India Post Payment Bank (IPPB) from general public through MyGov portal of Government of India.  For better participation, invitation was conducted in the form of competition and declared a price money of Rs.25,000/- each.

The last date for submissions was 09.07.2016 in the earlier stage, but the date was re-fixed to 31.07.2016 due to poor participation.   Totally 4861 creations were received when submission closed.

Persons participated in this competition were eagerly waiting for the next stage of this competition after submitting their creativity.  They were regularly checking the status of their submission in the Activity point of MyGov account.

First abnormality in this competition was found just after few days of submission closure date and still continue.  Some figures shown in the web page made me confused.  IPPB logo and tagline design completion page in MyGov portal shows that total 600 submissions were approved and remaining 4261 submissions out of 4861 were under review process. See the screenshot below.

Still you can see this abnormality through the following link

https://www.mygov.in/task/logo-design-and-tagline-competition-india-post-payments-bank/

Accidently or not, the webpage has given the facility for viewing the approved submissions.  Actually there was no review process happened in this competition because we can see lots of discrepancies in this regard.

Lots of questions remaining unanswered while seeing the review process.

1.  Whether it is a serious competition or for a media publicity?

2.  What is meant my Approved Submission?

3.  Whether actually reviewed all the submissions?

4.  Whether it is a part of preplanned drama?

It is clear that the submissions which are shown as approved have not been reviewed actually.  Because the last submitted 600 creations are blindly taken as approved submission.  Remaining 4261 submissions have been put it under the head “Under review”.  When you check the submitted date of the approved 600 creations, you can clearly understand the fact that something wrong happened.

All the approved submissions have been submitted on one month and one or two weeks ago. What a magic. Bulk approval has been done for the Logos submitted on those days.  How this happened?

Now the voting started for selecting the apt logo and tagline from 20 selected submissions.  But now the remaining 4261 submissions are under review.  When we login to the MyGov account, it also shows that your submission is under review.  How this happened?

Why this bad selection happened

Let us leave the above said discrepancies because everyone wants to get a good logo for IPPB.  So we can analyze the selected 20 logos.

Selected 20 logos are shown below

I respect and congratulate all the creators of these 20 selected logos and I understand the effort you put it on each creation.  But I have to express my views on these logos.  Don’t feel bad.

Most of the selected logos except two or three violate all the rules of modern logos and it is very amateurish in style.  And at the same time it is not in accordance with the conditions fixed and published by the authorities.

The most important among them is that the logo should be original.  The original in the sense, it should not be a modified form of other logo or should not have any special image or symbol that indicating some other organization.

Most of the logos in the selected list cannot be considered as original creation because they are using full or part of India Post logo in one or other way.  Some other logos are using the readymade clip art as portion in logos.  India Post is a Government department and IPPB is a fully owned Government Company incorporated under Indian Companies Act 1956.  Registration will not be possible if IPPB logo has any resemblance with India Post logo if it goes for registered trade mark. 

Modern logo should be in such a way that it can be easily marketable through web, social Medias or print media and its shapes can be clearly visible in all size and colours.  Logo should be impressive if we use it on any surface or object.  While considering the selected logos most of them lack these qualities.

The era of complex logos ends and now everyone is behind simple logos and most preferably square or round in shape because same can be used as Mobile App icon, Favicon, Software icon, Avatar image, etc.

If a professional logo designer makes a review on these selected logos, he never consider majority of them as deserving.

Two or three logos in the selected list are very professional in nature.  My doubt is only about the review criteria and who made this review and what about other submissions which are shown as under review.

 What is in short?

1.  Inviting logos from public and declares price money.

2.  4861 logo submissions happening.

3.  Simply shown last submitted 600 logos are approved without making any review.

4.  Selecting 20 logos violating all logo criteria for voting.

5.  Other 4261 logos are still under the review process.

What about my choice?

I will select two logos from this list as ideal logos for IPPB that is Logo 14 and 19.  I am not completely satisfied with these logos because it does not convey any brand image but it possesses almost all qualities of a good logo.

Conclusion

The initiative of Government is appreciable but the concerned department for whom it is carried out should pay adequate attention in the execution process.  Otherwise so many discrepancies will be happened and so many questions will be raised.  Then the activity planned for a good intention will be questioned.