2,635 Entries in 3 Days: How Teed Got Its New Logo

The old logo had to go

When you're building fast, branding is one of those things that gets a placeholder and never gets replaced. Teed's original logo was functional — it worked in a nav bar, it showed up in a favicon — but it wasn't something you'd put on a sticker. It didn't have personality. It didn't say anything about what the platform actually is.

We'd been meaning to do something about it for months. The trigger was looking at our social previews and share cards and realizing: this is the first thing people see when someone shares a bag, and it looks like a side project.

Why Freelancer

There are a few ways to get a logo. You can hire a single designer and go back and forth for weeks. You can use a generator tool and get something that looks like it came from a generator tool. Or you can run a contest and let hundreds of designers compete.

We went with Freelancer. The pitch was simple: we need a logo for a platform where people curate and share their gear collections. Think of it as a link-in-bio for your stuff — golf clubs, camera gear, EDC, coffee setups, whatever you're into. The name is Teed. The domain is teed.club.

The brief included the color palette we'd been using (deep greens and golds), the general vibe (premium but approachable, not corporate), and a few things to avoid (no generic shopping carts, no clip art golf tees).

2,635 entries

We expected maybe a few hundred entries. We got 2,635 in three days. That's roughly one new logo concept every 98 seconds for 72 hours straight.

The volume was honestly overwhelming. You'd refresh the page and there would be 40 new submissions since the last time you looked. Designers from all over the world — India, the Philippines, Eastern Europe, South America, the US — each with their own interpretation of what Teed should look like.

Some patterns emerged quickly:

• Golf tee literal interpretations. A lot of designers went straight for a golf tee icon. Makes sense — the name sounds like "tee'd up." Some of these were clever, but they locked us into a golf-only identity when the platform covers way more than golf.
• Abstract letter marks. Stylized T's and monograms. Some were beautiful, some were generic. The best ones felt distinctive; the worst could have been for any company starting with T.
• Collection/curation metaphors. Grids, boxes, curated arrangements. These captured the concept but often looked too much like an app icon for a storage company.
• The sweet spot. A handful of entries found the balance — something that felt premium and curated without being literal about any single category.

What we picked

The winning design hits a few things we care about:

It works at every size. There are two variants — a circular icon that works as a favicon or app icon, and a full horizontal lockup with the wordmark for headers and marketing. The circular version doesn't lose detail at 16x16 pixels. The horizontal version looks right in a nav bar.

The color palette feels right. Deep forest green (#213C31), warm gold (#C8A16C), and a rich brown (#7A5F3A). These are the colors we've been using throughout the app, so the logo feels native rather than bolted on.

It's not about golf. The mark is abstract enough that it represents curation and taste without pointing at any single category. Someone curating their coffee setup should feel just as represented as someone cataloging their golf bag.

The rebrand

With the new logo came a broader cleanup. We updated the display name from "Teed" to "Teed.club" everywhere — page titles, metadata, email templates, RSS feeds, share buttons, structured data, Open Graph tags, blog author lines. About 50 files touched in total.

This wasn't just cosmetic. "Teed" on its own is ambiguous — is it a verb? A golf term? "Teed.club" immediately communicates that it's a place you go. It's a URL. Type it and you're there.

The favicon, navigation logo, and all social preview images now use the new mark. If you've been using Teed for a while, you'll notice the change next time you open the app.

What we learned

Contests work for logos. The sheer volume of creative directions you get in 72 hours would take months to explore with a single designer. You see ideas you'd never think to brief for. The tradeoff is that you spend time reviewing instead of collaborating, but for a visual mark where you'll know it when you see it, that tradeoff is worth it.

Brief specificity matters. The entries that missed the mark almost always came from designers who didn't read the full brief. The ones that nailed it clearly understood what Teed does and who it's for. If you run a contest, spend time on the brief.

2,635 is a lot. We're not complaining — it's a luxury problem — but reviewing that many entries is a real time investment. Freelancer's starring and shortlisting tools help, but plan for a solid afternoon of scrolling.

The new logo ships today with v2.9.0. If you're curious what 2,635 options condensed into one mark looks like, open the app. It's the green circle in the top left.