
Is Crowdsourcing Evil? The Design Community Weighs In - naish
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/03/is-crowdsourcin.html
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tptacek
I've spent significantly over the last 18 months on print design, web design
for our applications, and small web projects (we launched our product a few
weeks back). I also run an office for a thriving high-end services business.
Some thoughts:

First, designers seem to like to point out that you wouldn't hire an
accountant just because he had QuickBooks, or an engineer because he had a CAD
program. Therefore, why would you hire an amateur designer just because they
had Illustrator? I can answer that question! Because if you hire bad
accountant you get audited. If you hire a bad engineer you get sued. If you
hire a bad design firm, most of your most important clients will not be able
to tell their work apart from Wolff Olins.

Second, designers like to point out how graphic design is so much more than
illustration, involving as it does detailed market surveys and studies of what
will work for your business. I have two responses to that. Response one: I
have never been wowed by a designer's ability to calibrate their work to any
of my businesses, and I've worked with plenty of designers who didn't need to
bill me $5000 to find out what style would fit us. Response two: if I pay
$5000 to have you do a detailed, careful study, I shouldn't have to pay it
again on every subsequent project that isn't rebranding my company.

I think one of the real issues here is that there are two "kinds" of graphic
design projects: full-service and a la carte. A la carte work is cheap. Full-
service work is very expensive. Companies that don't have $50MM marketing
budgets probably get 95% of the value of graphic design out of an a la carte
project. Most of us just need a design that doesn't mix PMN Caecilia with
Futura. But a lot of not-amazing full-service consultancies will go out of
business if they're stuck charging at the 80%-solution rate.

Which brings me to my next point. Which is mercifully short. It is that the
best designers will charge whatever they want, and structure their work
however they want, regardless of how well 99designs does. Happy Cog and Blue
Flavor are still going to have wait lists, because they are proven producers.

It's the same thing with our business, and, I imagine, with _every other
services business in the world_. There is always low-end competition. In our
industry, it's Payment Card certification for websites that accept credit
cards. We all have misgivings about those low-end services, just like our
corporate accountant is probably not enamored of H&R Block. But only in the
graphic design industry is there a moral/ethical issue over the existence of
low-end competition.

Actually, that's not true. There's another industry that has profound concerns
about low-end competiton. It's the interior design industry. Did you know that
in many states, you need to pass a licensing exam to pick a set of throw
pillows?

I have one last point to make. Designers like to crack jokes about what'd
happen if other industries were forced to do contests and auditions to get
work. I don't understand why they think these jokes work. Because in my
industry, we're routinely called on to do detailed discovery, advisory, and
consultatative work prior to starting large engagements. It can take weeks of
otherwise billable times. Often, that work comes to nothing, or even directly
assists our competitors. We call this "part of the sales cycle", and part of
running a business that has to work in good faith in the market with other
companies. In the long run, the "spec work" we've done has always paid off. I
don't think we're outside the norm on this; for instance, high-end law firms
have given us hours of free consult help without expecting a dime from us.

There is clearly a form of "spec work" that everyone agrees is immoral:
sponsoring a design contest, collecting the submissions, and using them to
complete the project in-house without paying anyone. Nobody's talking about
that here. I will probably not source work from 99designs. But I can't imagine
why anyone would have a problem with someone who did.

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indiejade
_"Spec work has become a major force in devaluing the perception of graphic
design in the business world," writes eyeCinq._

It's a well-deserved devaluing.

Is crowdsourcing evil? Not in the least.

If one thinks about the actual costs necessary to be a successful graphic
designer, it's marginally close to zero. Aside from a laptop, and a wifi-
connection (necessary to hook up to these contests), there's not much else
needed for a person with even an iota of design skill. As such, it's not
surprising that the market is forcing the prices downward, closer a natural
equilibrium for a competitive market.

"Graphic Design Firms" that have prime office space, secretaries, luncheons,
hobnobbing events . . . these things all add unnecessarily to the "cost" of
supposed "professional" graphic design services. Firms and their employees my
_think_ that this is why their services are more "valuable" than a freelancer,
or somebody who works on spec, but they're wrong. These things add zero value
to the end product.

How much is a graphic design worth? Exactly as much as somebody is willing to
pay for it.

I think there will be more upheaval in the coming years regarding industries
where this type of work can actually lower costs for buyers.

Side note: I have an idea for a startup that crowdsources advertising (tv type
ads OR print advertising); I think the agency model that most big companies or
"stations" currently use is grossly overpriced. There's room for a new type of
market entrant: one by and for the people. I actually almost started this idea
a couple of years ago (spoofwink.com), but lacked the resources and was busy
with other projects. If anybody wants to go with this idea, please let me in!

~~~
ankhmoop
I'd like to go with your crowdsourced advertising idea, but I'd like to
crowdsource the implementation to see who can build the best prototype.

I'll fund the winner.

~~~
SwellJoe
Every business is in a competition. Just not an artificial one. He would be
directly competing with the old school advertising agencies, as well as a half
dozen other crowd sourced advertising firms. Your point would fit better if he
were offering high end software development consulting because it would be the
software development equivalent of the high end ad agencies he spoke of.

Of course, if you were to take this idea over to rent-a-coder or eLance, you
can have it your way and have the developers fight it out to reach the lowest
price. (They won't develop everything on spec, but I imagine some of the newer
providers might do a small mockup for you).

The difference here is that each individual logo "concept" only takes a few
minutes to mock up. If the client likes it, then you spend some more time
polishing it and refining it to their tastes. The problem with all of the
arguments against crowd sourcing design work is that it denies the reality of
the market.

Most buyers of design work have no network that can inform them of who a great
designer is. Most buyers have no way of determining when they've met a great
designer, short of studying their portfolio, and taste plays a huge role, as
does luck (great designers may not always have great ideas for a particular
logo). Most buyers don't know what a fair price for a particular project is,
but they can see what the going rates are at crowd source sites. Finally, the
response of every anti-crowd sourcing proponent I've seen has been, "Find a
designer you can work with, who will take time to understand your needs, etc."
But that simply doesn't address the needs of most design buyers. Crowd
sourcing solves all of these problems, and more, for most buyers. Just because
a certain (possibly large) percentage of sellers don't like it doesn't mean it
isn't good, as far as the market is concerned.

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mrkurt
I find this whole 99designs thing fantastically interesting. The marginal cost
of going from the "good" work you get there to "great" work from seriously
skilled, experienced designers is disproportionately high.

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poppysan
Imo, crowd-sourcing graphics is horrible. In addition to development, I do web
design and branding and it take more than just a computer and illustrator.

Because its graphics, developers dont mind it, because oftentimes they are on
the benefiting end. But this would change if it was for app development. No
developer (or graphic designer) with any regard for the future of their
profession should be for it.

~~~
zacharydanger
We (developers) already deal with competition from cheap outsourced labor and
it didn't destroy our industry.

~~~
indiejade
The great thing about crowdsourcing is that it really reveals who can deal
with volume and who can't. Similarly, it also reveals a very interesting
element of _time_ . . . buyers of logo projects can literally watch the rate
of submissions over their contests. They can also see, for example, if
somebody submits a fantastic design after 5 hours that it doesn't really take
the weeks and months that some graphic designers say it does (and what they
charge). It's so funny how some graphic designers really roll around in their
"creative angst" and pretend like their work is really so hard and time-
consuming and that they should be paid for it when in reality, it sometimes
just really isn't.

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indiejade
One more thought. I just spotted the logo for YC's Foodoro. It might be some
good advice for startups to invest in some of these logo design contests as
part of building their brand. I imagine the small investment in a crowdsourced
contest could potentially give back a pretty high ROI, esp. when products are
in alpha and the logo is the most memorable thing from an initial visit to a
site.

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lionhearted
Pricing going down typically = bad for one industry, good for entire rest of
world.

However, the rest of the world isn't so invested as to loudly argue against
it. I've always payed graphic design people well and been an easy customer.
Find a guy I like, give him a set of adjectives describing the look and feel I
want, and let him loose. Pay on time or early. You get good relationships and
people will work for you on the drop of a hat if you're easy. And good graphic
design people are worth it.

But that "finding a guy I like" is the trickiest part - this spec design work
sounds great. Good designers ought to get lots of recurring work from it, and
great designers won't need to since their schedule will be full.

