CrowdSpring is a new web resource that hopes to bring ”crowdsourcing” to the daily lives of creative individuals. The site allows any individual or company to post a design need (generally logo designs at the moment), along with escrow funds to pay their promised fee, and then anyone can design and post a response. The response the client likes the best gets paid out of the escrowed funds. The others don’t.
While it may seem a bit brutal for the designer side (an individual could create a ton of spec designs and never get chosen), the system at least sets out a clear set of rules for the game.
It will be interesting to see if more complex design demands can be satisfied through this system (a logo can take a few minutes or a few hours to design…if you’re only generating initial ideas…a full branding effort can take months). I wonder, for example, if anyone will post a request for a new composition.
In the short term, it’s an interesting alternative for low-resource organizations to get high-quality (or at least high-volume) designs. In the long term, it may be a new way creative work gets done.
Hi and thanks very much for writing your review about crowdSPRING. We are especially proud that our marketplace is transparent – we spell out very clear rules for both buyers and sellers.
We wanted to build a creative marketplace where businesses — small, mid and large — can source their creative needs from creatives worldwide. On crowdSPRING, creatives, whether non-professional or professional, can compete on a level playing field.
As you can see, people have already posted many projects for site design (including a number over $1,000), icon design for software programs, online game design, etc. We truly think we have an opportunity to help redefine the way creative services are bought and sold, and our quickly growing community is ready for the challenge.
Best,
Ross
So, the economics of this system are all to the benefit of the buyer, and the work of the artists only has value if it is selected. The artists do the creative work for free, and hope they are selected. Basically it is a contest. Naive students may be interested.
Would you purchase other professional services this way, like legal advice? Dentistry?
@Tommer
Many professional designers refuse to do work on spec as an ethical matter. However, contests are well established as an extremely effective method for solving difficult problems. This is especially true when the buyer lacks good information about who is the right person to hire.
The most famous historical example is probably the Longitude Prize. One of the thorniest scientific challenges of the day was eventually solved by a working class joiner from Lincolnshire with little formal education. There’s no way that guy would have turned up in a formal search.
Today there’s the X-Prize and the Netflix prize, both of which have attracted an impressive array of submissions from all over the intellectual spectrum.
So, perhaps you’re right that no dentist would work under this model, but plenty of highly qualified professionals in other scientific fields are willing to throw their hats into the ring for an inspired contest with a meaningful reward.
Perhaps that’s the key point – inspired contest, meaningful reward. As someone who spent decades in the studio, I can’t tell you how many competitions I entered (to say nothing of donations to nonprofit fund-raisers, but that’s another story). Since I was in a rural area with only passing access to city-based arts outlets, I thought it a good investment. Not sure what conclusion a careful analysis would bring. So, what ARE the benefits to the artist/designers??
It’s the “I’ll know it when I see it” model used by inexperienced marketers. But it’s not creative.
I can just picture the kind of watered-down, aimless work that would arise from this model. If clients didn’t come to designers for consultation, the abundance of used car salesmen-like communications would run rampant. And we all know that stuff doesn’t work (unless you’re looking for a used car, I suppose)
The real value of creative work comes from the designer who has a unique perspective and experience that no client could ever possess. The designer should be making recommendations to the client regarding what’s best for his business, not the other way around. The creative business is a dialog, not a contest.
But until designers are more business oriented and able to justify their work, the creative industry will continue to be devalued by concepts like crowdSPRING.
So best of luck. I’m sure you’ll land upon the next Nike. And you’ll be too ill-informed to see it.
As somebody who works as an artist, a poet, and a former student journalist, I sympathize with the “customer isn’t always right” idea. Heck, that’s even true when you work in a coffee shop. Sometimes (often) people, especially those focused primarily on the bottom line, need good, beautiful, elegant concepts shoved down their throats, and the world benefits.
But as a 22-year-old with a liberal arts degree who wants to be a part of the design world but has no idea where to go first, I think this could be a good idea. I am talented, interested, fascinated… but I am totally inexperienced. What I need, what everybody needs, is a portfolio.
As I plug away, pre-job, pre-MFA, to create good things, why not use a freelance community like this as an incentive? The same thing has been going on at sites like iFreelance for years, the difference being that pending offers are not visible to the public. This sight offers two differences: everyone can see everyone else’s work (likely a good thing), and the site is clean and fairly well-designed. This is an important point, as existing freelance sites are virtually all mired in careless, dated web design. It’s rather humiliating to peck around for jobs on a site that looks like it needs a job itself.
So, yes, this is sort of a provisional service, and “crowdsourcing” will never replace the thought and authority of real, contracted designers. Spec work will always be annoying. But for some of us, this looks like a good thing to have.
I don’t like it. I will not work for spec. It devalues the skill of professional designers. One of our talents being the ability to translate a clients words and ideas into an artistic visual. A good designer typically receives a response such as, “exactly what I was thinking.” By giving a potential client multiple concepts and translations for free, you are decreasing the value of graphic design including the value of the selected “winner.” Clients will take these proposals and use them to assist in translating their needs to the next designer. Good designers understand this and respect their value and occupation. Their secretary has Adobe, just have her do it.