Crowdsourcing: Sabotaging our Value
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- OSFA
GREAT!
http://idsgn.org/posts/crowdsour…
Sometimes it feels like we, as designers, put up with this treatment. We may even invite it by not questioning this attitude or acting against it. But today, I want to focus on something even more ineffective and misguided that is threatening our industry: crowdsourcing.
Imagine our dinner analogy now extends to crowdsourcing. In the chef’s kitchen, you’re again in search of the perfect meal. But now you have a great idea! Fire the chef and invite random people from the streets (and wherever you can find them). Tell them they will not be paid a chef’s salary, but they can play with all the fancy equipment and be a chef-for-a-day (oh, and they can now put this on their résumé!).
It might go something like this:My accountant from 71st Street loves salt and sardines, so this must be part of the dish. My niece from California is a vegan on macrobiotic raw food and insists on adding quinoa and nutritional yeast. My upstairs neighbour Louise has a thing for liver and onions... Can you see where this is going?
Does this seem like a logical system to finding the perfect result? More importantly, would you eat that?
Although designers are a small, creatively driven group, they have the ability to make an enormous impact on the world and solve complex problems. Not just anyone can do what they do or can see the world as they see it. The truly skilled designer has a unique analytical and obsessively observant way in which he or she interacts with people, places and the world around them. They can visualize culture and make the complex understandable. As problem solvers with such reputable capabilities, I am forced to ask myself, why do so many designers consistently sabotage their own value?
Crowdsourced design sites like 99designs, DesignCrowd, and Crowdspring are just some of the many sites that are devaluing our industry as a whole. With slogans like Crowdspring’s “The world’s #1 marketplace for logos and graphic design. Get a design you love or your money back,” or 99design’s “Logo store,” how are we supposed to be taken seriously as experts if we are offering dollar store prices on identity, packaging, and other forms of design?
According to Techcrunch, designers have submitted around 6.5 million logos to 99designs over the past three years. In return, the company has paid out $20 million—or an average of $3 per design. Meanwhile, Accel Partners (a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm which has a 10% stake in Facebook) has recently invested $35 million in 99designs.
It’s hard to admit, but we as designers have created this monster. As communicators we are poorly communicating our own value and if it continues, we will continue to be undervalued, underpaid and subjected to pitch work and crowdsourcing.
A growing part of our industry has decided that it is acceptable to take on pitch work and crowdsourcing. The negative effects of this transition are verbalized in Brian Collins’ (and the AIGA’s) comment:
Work developed without fair compensation will compromise the benefits of the effective design for both clients and designers.
Let’s think about this for a minute. Clients now search for examples of solutions to their problems from anyone willing to throw out a possible answer, versus hiring an expert to efficiently and successfully solve the problem. Would you hire an engineer, an investor, a carpenter, or any other professional for that matter who did not have the proper credentials and training?Designers go to school to learn a craft and thus become well educated and proficient in their respective field. When a bank like Citigroup or a law firm like Cravath, Swane & Moore hire a graduate from a prestigious college, they are willing to pay that employee a hefty salary as they will receive a higher return from him versus a candidate who is not as well trained. This model should also apply to the design industry. Spec work and crowdsourcing are ultimately disgracing a designer’s education, training, natural talent, and yes, the value of work he or she produces. This in turn lessens the conceptual and strategic value that would have gone into the client’s final product or solution.
Maybe the designers who currently partake in crowdsourcing do not realize the impact of their actions. The value of our industry depreciates each and every time another designer accepts these practices.
- OSFA0
Had to share...
- Thanks! I didn't even have to click on the link. This is a discourse all designers should memorize.monospaced
- ;)OSFA
- team_zissou0
crowdsourcing will affect the smaller to mid mid-range budgets and some low-end budgets.
i dont see it affecting the highend.
- vaxorcist0
we could all make logos for an all-croudsource agency...
call it...
Crispy Porno Bogusguy
- Continuity0
@team-zissou:
You don't think it will affect things on the high end? The Gap were perfectly ready to crowdsource a new logo for themselves ...
- < thisOSFA
- yupmoldero
- its an exposure / PR thingteam_zissou
- OSFA0
Didn't JCPenney also pulled this for their new logo?
- dbloc0
crowd sores
- team_zissou0
Im guessing popular brands like the exposure that a crowdsource competition brings.
They still need to hire someone to do branding for their campaigns anyways.
- akrok0
^
there's now agencies that's based on the whole crowdsouring shit.
- vaxorcist0
wait... if agencies are crowdsourcing the creative, why don't clients just crowdsource the entire ad process and cut out the middleman?
- inteliboy0
a shop am working at this week crowdsource "initial brand concepts" as a springboard before getting their real designers started.... which to be honest is a wank.
- wow - designers are good at throwing out first-generation ideas on their own. they don't need help with that.bulletfactory
- Miguex0
I used to get angry at this, but I'm now positive that this movement can't be stopped. As technology becomes more available people are more inclined to give design a try.
You could say that people crowdsourcing design, don't really care about design in the first place, at least not enough to hire a professional, and maybe that's true.
But in the end, people want to save money and if crowdsourcing a logo is 10 bucks, why not give it a try? (I'm tying to be as objective as possible here). That's what I think these people think, the model makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of saving money. Quality work? that's chance, and these people are ok w/ that.
Similar thing is happening with Groupon, (which I have never used or seen yet, but friends of mine have similar concerns that we do with croudsourcing).
Apparently groupon makes it easy for people that don't know each other get together to buy something in particular (could be a service from a photographer for example) and get a deal based on volume (correct me if I'm wrong) meaning that if I get 5 friends to get a photoshoot, we all demand a volume discount over the original shoot. The photographer might get more work, but in order to compete will have to offer better deals than the other photographers on groupon.
- my GF is a groupon addict, it's not quite like that... she gets half price mani/pedi, restaurants, etc...vaxorcist
- well, but that manicurist prolly feels the same way as we do about crowdsourcing, that's what I meanMiguex
- a photographer can offer a deal outside of Groupon, so that doesn't really hold water. Groupon offers a way to gain new unique customers.dbloc
- new unique customers.dbloc
- exactly, groupon clients aren't doing anything for freereinitialize
- I read that groupon gives a biz $ upfront, and a % of buyers never actually show upvaxorcist
- akrok0
^
they cut corners where corners shouldn't be cut.stock photos are cheesy as fuck. plus you see same photo on other ads or print material.
- Miguex0
Now, let's take a look at the quality of work you get from crowdsourcing, by enjoying this promo video below (which has a great narration and is easy to understand, but makes great use of word manipulation to make it sound better than it really is.
for example, in the entire video they never mention that you are giving your project to basically anyone that wants to give it a try, instead the participants "designers" "advertisers" and even "professionals".
- dbloc0
I see crowdsourcing as a totally different beast than Groupon...
- Miguex0
^
I admit I have not used it yet. What I heard is all I know and might be wrong.
- tOki0
There is not a day that passes that I do not see these 2 people. We're totally fucked!
- tOki0
derp
- Miguex0
If we really wanted to do something, we should for some sort of campaign, to inform why hiring a professional designer is better than crowdsourcing a project.
I mean, that's what we do best right? we develop brands, we inform, we attract and we present it in a way that is visually attractive.
I know there are sites like
http://www.no-spec.com/But if we were to organize for example a basic statement and start promoting it through the usual channels of communication, we could educate not only people but designers as well.
Let's say more and more designers donate their time to do this, why listen to a cheat wearing an expensive suit with dreams of modern day slavery when you have design professionals letting you know their side of the story?
That's the problem, it's a direct business for them so they make a profit with this model which will continue to grow and wont stop, mainly because the counter argument has no voice at the moment, other than a few designers complaining about it on forums like these, only visited by designers.
They are targeting the message to the consumer.
- Miguex0
I saw your comments on youtube, someone marked it as span
I just marked it at no spam hahaha I think it should be showing again?