Why Designers Hate Crowdsourcing 569
An anonymous reader writes "Since Wired's Jeff Howe coined the term in 2006, 'crowdsourcing' has been a buzzword in the tech industry, and a business model on the rise. 99designs.com is a site that hosts design contests for small businesses requiring relatively smaller design projects. Anyone can submit their near finished pieces of work to the contests, but only one winner gets paid. Forbes covers just why established graphic designers are so angry at this business model's catching on."
An Industry Ripe for Change... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is no different than Expedia disrupting the travel agent industry, iStockPhoto allowing designers to buy photos shot by amateurs for $1, or eTrade allowing people to do their own stock trading for $9 a piece.
The only people that complain about disruptive innovation are those directly affected by it. Gone are the days when you can charge $5000 for 3 logo concepts when some college student is happy to spend 2 hours cranking out a concept in his spare time for the chance at winning $269 - the price quoted on the 99designs logo design page [99designs.com].
I see what they're upset about. (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, the times are changing and you have to either adapt of die. You can't really rage against the fact that globalization increases competition.
Re:Angry? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's more like this.
Imagine your Boss came to you and said "We're having 10 programmers make the same program, but we'll only pay one of you". That means that 9 of them end up working for free. That's why they hate that business model, no serious graphics designer can make a living out of such contests.
Just like the music industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Supply and Demand (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds to me like there's a supply and demand problem for these established designers... namely there's too much supply for the available demand.
I understand their position: for someone outside of the design industry, it can be difficult to know who to go to with a project. So large, established designers get good business, just because they have enough of a reputation to appeal to the more conservative business types. But the prices they're charging are well above the market optimum, and they thrive off of imperfect knowledge in their client base. An organization like 99designs.com gives small, unknown, but potentially talented players access to the client base that has typically been reserved for the big guys. This drives the actual price of services (when amortized over all the work that doesn't get paid for) down to the actual economic optimum.
In other words, it's an industry bitching about the internet killing their business model. Yawn.
Re:Angry? (Score:2, Insightful)
I actually think dramatically devaluing the programming process through a system like this would go a long way toward deflating the out of control arrogance in the nerd population.
I, for one, can't wait.
Re:An Industry Ripe for Change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait until wannabe designers in low-wage nations like India, China, Brazil, etc (using cracked copies of design software) start entering into the process. $269 will seem overpriced.
It's like rent-a-coder... no American can earn a living doing piecework for rent-a-coder. Most would be better off working at McDonalds. Same thing's going to happen for piecework design.
Two sides to this issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Business Evolution As Usual (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the same in any industry...once a group of people figure out how to make an income they then put bureaucratic barriers (e.g. legal, regulatory, educational, or certification requirements) in place. They then develop their own lexicon which future puts an informal educational barrier in place and they treat anyone who doesn't speak their cant as an outsider. It's a natural evolution where they try to protect their income by making it harder for the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th person through the door to accomplish what they have. This of course struggles against technology and innovation which is making it easier and eventually innovation overcomes the barriers but in the mean time the dinosaurs fight ferociously to live in the manner they have become accustomed to. See RIAA, MPAA, Software Patents, all certified careers, etc. etc. etc.
Crowdsourcing is iffy at best. (Score:4, Insightful)
You put a job up, you pick the "winner", and it gets fulfilled.
Then you see the same design has been shopped around to every other site, including your direct competitors.
Then you see that this "design in a box" approach actually handily ignored many of your stated requirements in your original request.
All this to save a few bucks on design by farming it out to people who do this for literally a few bucks a job. You get what you pay for: a $50 design that looks cookie cutter (because it is), and is designed by "e-lancers" from India and China who didn't understand all of your requirements and in most cases, didn't have time to care, because they'll only see $10 of it.
Makes sense...I'd be angry in their shoes too... (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I can see why they're angry. This business model reduces their profession to amateur hour - and it can only hurt it in the long run.
I've worked in both the public and private sector. There is a reputable way to select somebody for a contract in a competitive setting. It's called a request for a quote, or RFQ (or request for a proposal, RFP). A general call goes out to businesses and people in the required industry. Proposals are collected, with projected timelines, pricings, and samples. Then, a decision is made, and the winner gets the contract. The losers go on to bid on other contracts.
The point, though, is that the time spent producing the final product is spent only by the winner. Everybody else moves on.
Now, that's the right way to do it. What's described in the article is the wrong way to do it. Imagine, for a moment, that you're a web site designer (I know the article is about graphic designers, but bear with me here). How would you feel if instead of preparing a proposal for a part of a website, you had to prepare the entire finished product - and then, after those hours of work (that could have been spent on working for a paying client, or in finding a paying client), you find out that somebody else got the contract, and therefore you get nothing?
Somehow, I think you'd be pretty pissed off too.
Now, this may be fine if you're just starting out, but it's not going to sit well once you've got a few years of experience under your belt. The really good people are going to get sick of it and do one of two things - they'll either leave that model and just work for the people who will treat them like professionals, or they'll leave the field itself.
Will amateur hour be cheaper than dealing with professionals? Absolutely. But, in the long run, it will drive the real talent out, and that will just make the field poorer.
Re:Another industry F/OSS has killed. (Score:5, Insightful)
if higher education in design does not provide a strong enough competitive advantage in terms of output quality, than such education is a waste of resources and should die off. this isn't medicine or engineering where fuckups kill people. the worse that happens is a design does not win, or a company chooses a crap design and has an ugly logo or website until they figure out that it sucks and change it.
Re:Angry? (Score:5, Insightful)
No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Any profitable business is based on some barrier for entry for competitors. When the barrier gets lower, the profitability inevitably goes down to zero as a result of unhindered competition. This is called free market.
Being angry about this is like being angry at gravity or evolution.
Re:Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means that everyone else that submits work has essentially done so for free. No one would want to work like that, and such crowdsourcing is in no way a viable path for real, fulltime employment. Besides, I'd be just as worried as a client. I post vague specifications and hope for the best? That's asinine. Good design work requires that the artist and the client work back and forth, improving and changing the product little by little until both are satisfied. You don't get that here. What you get with crowdsourcing is mostly mediocrity. Why invest tons of effort into something that you very likely will not get paid for?
Re:Oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)
You joke, but most businesses rely on their ability to project sober professionalism and seriousness. People who don't understand that Comic Sans (I know, I just font-Godwinned myself here) deteriorates that image of professionalism rather than merely communicating "informal" or "fun" (often when neither is even appropriate in the first place) shouldn't be designing anything that represents their company. And if they're in charge of paying someone else to design it, they should take advantage of that designer's skillset.
I don't tell my auto mechanic how to do his job, because I don't know how to replace wheel bearings, nor do I want to.
Re:Makes sense...I'd be angry in their shoes too.. (Score:1, Insightful)
whatever.
you say that as if graphic designers aren't just english majors with pirated photoshop and illustrator.
Re:Angry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then most professionals would laugh in your face at such a concept and walk away. Those who want to pay peanuts, end up hiring monkeys. If the business arrangement doesn't suit you, don't enter it. That person would *never* have been your customer anyway because the way they want to scrimp and save and "only pay one person" means they were always looking for a cheap way out - and any *decent* designer wouldn't be satisfied with what they were offering. The designers haven't *lost* any business, they just aren't getting any from a new "auction-style" job market that's cropped up. That's up to them, but it's hardly a jobs nightmare. At any point in history, in any profession, the same thing could have (and has) happened.
Re:Crowdsourcing is iffy at best. (Score:3, Insightful)
In my rhetorical example (which isn't really rhetorical, as I've known two people to whom it's happened to), people don't find out their design is offered to multiple sites unless they look at their competitors' offers on 99designs.com, go to their websites after they've already picked a winner, or someone tells them.
People who think 99designs.com is a good way to save a few bucks for important work that represents their company generally aren't aware of the drawbacks. They just want a website or logo that looks good. And it does look good (good enough for their non-designer eye), just as good as the rest of the people who are farmed the same template. Hardly a way to make a distinct impression.
Crowdsource CEOs (Score:2, Insightful)
They're angry because they're established. Expensive suits. Exquisitely designed suites to work in.
It hurts when your whole business model is built on puff and people start figuring it out.
Graphic designers' business model is not built on puff. Of course, it is in the best interests of business owners who buy the services of graphic designers to lie and claim it is all puff, but that's just a bargaining tactic. In fact, I would have to say that the profession of CEO is built on puff far more than that of graphic designer. Why not crowdsource business decisions? That would certainly cut the outrageous salaries of these well connected upper class twits. CEOs get paid regardless of performance, yet supposedly we offer CEOs such unfairly high compensation because we need to attract the best performers. But these 'best performers' will not accept a contract that ties pay to performance! And we need these best performers, so we can't measure their performance or they won't work for us. But we already know they must be the best, because look how much compensation they are asking for. Or something. Crowdsource those rich assholes, not struggling artists.
Most clients don't need high-end design (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem that 99designs solves is that most clients don't need a $20,000 design and don't have $20,000 to spend.
Years ago I worked for a company that made point of sale systems. They had a logo that looked like a monogram on someone's shirt. It was drawn by a marketing VP who had no design experience, in the early days of the company. Eventually it became an embarrassment and they hired a consultant who made a new logo, new letterhead, etc., for $80,000.
But the thing is that they only sold to industry and didn't need that degree of expertise. Something from 99designs would have been good enough, and if it happened to look exactly like the logo some real estate management startup in Boise, Idaho was using, too, so what. Since then I've worked for a bunch of startups and the logo and website design has always been a problem. Usually it gets done by somebody's kid or somebody's friend, because startups don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a logo unless they're selling a consumer product.
Re:An Industry Ripe for Change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Angry? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's apply the same thing to every highly paid job. We're going to let thousands of doctors offer their diagnosis, but only one of them will get paid. Eventually we can get the cost of everything to almost zero!
Re:An Industry Ripe for Change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gone are those days indeed.
And really, I'm glad to see them going - despite doing some small work in the industry. Here's the skinny:
My girlfriend works for a conservational society downtown, at a place called the Lougheed House. Peter Lougheed was one of the biggest founders of this city. Even today he has a provincial park and a hospital named after him. His House with it's massive garden is still downtown, surrounded by giant hotels, but still standing with most of its original decorations. They've turned the grand dining hall into an expensive restaurant, and there were some additions to the house during the world wars, but for the most part, its as original as it can be.
A few years ago, they hired a guy, we'll call him "Ted" - to design a web page. I'm not entirely familiar with how much was involved, but in the end - the website is hosted online - and is considered property of the Lougheed House. However, they have no idea who is hosting it, how to access any administrative tools, nothing like that. Anytime they want to make a change, they call up Ted and Ted makes the updates for them. He charges $40 for this.
So after the marketting team went to a presentation from the Ex-president of Critical Mass, they have decided that web-marketting is something they really need to pick up on. They've started a facebook page, twitter, a blog, etc. They want to keep their website up to date more often. Monthly news postings, etc etc. My girlfriend, she's not exactly in the marketting team but more like an event co-ordinator also got to attend this meeting (and was rubbing it in my face that she got to go while I was working. And apparently there was a devilled egg tray!). So she approached me afterwards, asking how difficult it is to update a website, because they don't want to spend $40 every time they want to make a change.
And I told her, it all depends on what you want to change, and how you want to change it. She said they mostly just want to change a few images, update it with some info, not really template or layout changing, just words and pictures. And so I told her, its pretty simple, HTML is easy enough for a noobie to edit. You can, in fact, ignore all the code, look for the section you want to edit, and just change whats between the tags. As for images, its as easy as either overwriting the old image, or putting the new one in the same place and changing the reference in the html to the new image.
Excited about this, she told her boss. Upon this, they consulted with TED about what they wanted to do, and TED offered that he would make them a CMS (content management system) for $30,000 if they want. Not only do they not have that kind of money, but I already told them how to make the changes they want. The only thing they need is access to whatever FTP or hosting company they are using - I imagine Ted is the only one with the credentials to actually upload to the webserver. It sounds like he is going to hand it over, though, and not hold things hostage, which is good.
No matter how much my girlfriend tries to relay my information, they want me to come in and consult with their marketting team. They will pay me (more than my current job) for my time, and deliver a free lunch. I think Monday, I never enjoy Mondays so I think I'll take it off from work and do something fun like teach people HTML & CSS.
Anyways, the point is, I'm tired of companies and contractors trying to over-inflate prices to make more money than they really deserve. Don't get me wrong, design can be a tricky business. But if you are a professional designer, and you can truly produce some stuff better than anyone else, you shouldn't have an issue with crowdsourcing. Some college person spending his off hours on a design SHOULD NOT be able to compare with your product which you have spent all your work experience developing the necessary skills to come out on top.
Stop Working for Content Mills (Good Luck...) (Score:5, Insightful)
Freelance writers have long complained of similar practices amongst "content mills" such as Demand Studios (the guys behind all those "how to" webpages). The mill pays $3/story, $15/video. For a working writer or videographer, it's the kind of revenue that puts the "chump" into "chump change." But -- and here's the catch -- thousands and thousands of people will work for this! Many full-time writers sneer at them as mere wannabes who are pissing into the community pool, but their work is (apparently) good enough for The Client, and these folks are happy to be making some beer money "writing professionally." The thing is, there are so many writers -- and designers, too, apparently -- and the bar for entry into the profession is so low, and the, well, "romance/coolness" of being a paid (however niggardly) creative artiste is so great, that the Content Mills have such low overhead they are making money hand-over-fist.
Of course, if you're really good at what you do, you get to name your price and you do well. But if you're in the bottom 90 percent of a profession whose products -- such as words and designs -- aren't constrained by artificial geographical boundaries and location (thanks to this new-fangled Internet thingy) then, brother, you are scrapping and scrambling.
Re:Quote: (Score:1, Insightful)
Sturgeon's Law (Score:3, Insightful)
99% of everything is crap. That'll be true for crowdsourcing and traditional models.
Everyone wants a crowdsourced model when they're buying, and no one wants it when they're selling. Do you think the grocery store wants you to pick the nicest looking apples from the pile? Of course not. Do you? Of course you do.
Re:Supply and Demand (Score:2, Insightful)
There are 7 billion people on this planet, it's nothing to move ideas around the planet and there's hardly any barriers to entry. As one Slashdotter said many moons ago, these countries will export their poverty and we'll consume it. There's no going back now.
No one and no profession will be immune - except for the owning class. And as labor of all types becomes more and more of a cheap commodity, it will become harder and harder to move into the owning class. Our real wages will continue to decline while our cost of living continues its rise and as a result, it will become harder and harder to save to own: stocks, bonds, real estate, businesses, etc...
Sure, people's standard of living in other countries will increase slightly - which is a good thing - but we in the US will see ours decimated.
The economists' argument that the pie is getting bigger? That may be. But many of us are not going to get a piece. My case: our real wages have been in decline since the 90s but yet, corporate profits are growing like gang busters. Who's getting that wealth? It's not me.
Re:Crowdsource CEOs (Score:2, Insightful)
Someday when you join the real world and own a business, you are welcome to employ whatever means you like to compensate your CEOs and graphics designers.
In the meantime, it's none of your business how others choose to.
Re:Quote: (Score:2, Insightful)
Look, if I'm a business and I can get a good design at a cheap price I'll do it. If it's cheap enough, I can, as a business, take a chance -- what am I out if it doesn't go anywhere?
If "no one would want to work like that" then the crowd would dwindle, the site would fold and business would return to usual. Just because you don't see value in the model doesn't mean that applies to everybody. Sounds like you are whiny graphic designer who has his/her knickers in a twist because you now have to compete against a larger pool. The expanded pool may be mediocre but even a blind sow finds an acorn occasionally. If you do consistently excellent work, and consistently meet client needs, you can charge for it. If you are a hack then the pressure will expose you as such.
Graphic designers are like everybody else, they want to be "special". But like everybody else almost all of them aren't special. This is not Lake Wobegon and all the children are not above average.
Re:Angry? (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine your Boss came to you and said "We're having 10 programmers make the same program, but we'll only pay one of you". That means that 9 of them end up working for free. That's why they hate that business model, no serious graphics designer can make a living out of such contests.
And the decision of who to pay will be made by someone with no expertise in evaluating user interface design, usability, scalability, security, or correctness.
As much as I don't want to bestow special powers to designers, I have met good designers that seem to have a gift. Through training, experience, and natural talent, they can design visuals that direct the eye to the right place, evoke the right emotions, and have lasting impact. Most people cannot consciously distinguish between visuals that have those properties and those that do not, so when the client simply chooses from a large pool of designs there is no telling if the graphic is actually any good.
Re:Crowdsource CEOs (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, it is my business. You see, we have this thing called free speech. Using it, one may express opinions and attempt to sway the opinions of others. I am of the opinion that CEOs, as a class of people, are overpaid for the value they provide society, and I am attempting to convince others to resist the transfer of wealth from the working class to the elite. I understand that these views are not popular with the elite, and they would prefer me not to exercise my free speech, but seeing as how I have little sympathy for the desires of the elite, I don't think I will comply.
Claiming that I am not in the real world, and assuming that I do not and have never owned a business is certainly expressing your opinion, but I would hardly call it civil discourse, and it is unlikely to sway the opinion of anyone not already decided on the matter.
Hopefully, this small lesson in civics will help you understand how society functions.
Re:An Industry Ripe for Change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait until wannabe designers in low-wage nations like India, China, Brazil, etc (using cracked copies of design software) start entering into the process. $269 will seem overpriced.
I'm very curious about this. I worked for a packaging design firm for a while, and my company was very interested in cracking the India market. There seemed to be a huge opportunity in packaged goods there, as a new affluent class gradually trended toward American-style consumerism.
The problem? Graphic design is ultimately about communication -- often in very subtle, even subliminal ways -- and we, as Americans, simply didn't understand how the Indian mindset worked. We got someone to scour some shelves in India and bring back some successful Indian products, and their packaging was pretty much baffling to our designers. Who was this character pictured on the front of the box? What values did he represent to the consumer? Why this choice of typeface? It was in Indian script, but was this type modern or classical? Why use English here, but not here? Why would a tube of toothpaste be completely colored green -- did green have some special significance to Indians that we didn't understand? And so on.
I can't help but wonder whether graphic designers who had spent their entire lives in India or China would struggle with designing for American markets in the same way.
Re:Angry? (Score:3, Insightful)
They say most of the designs submitted take no more time from a designer than it would take for them to bid on a serious project. If they're making bids for free anyway, there's really not much difference to them.
the difference is that in the traditional model, you need have some sort of infrastructure built up around you to be successful. you need a portfolio, a suit, a nice haircut, professional references, possibly a job history.
traditional designers object. why? they now have to compete against people that normally would be excluded for reasons other than their skill set.
Re:How to make a decent living? (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is apply this to every industry and all of a sudden it's not overcharging fat cats that add no value that are affect: Suddenly there is no way to make a decent living. The only industries that survive are the ones that require qualifications.
In other words I agree that charging $5000 for 3 logo concepts isn't necessarily reasonable, but I don't want to see only amateurs compete for a single prize pool of $269 either. Effectively most people are working for free. That's not reasonable either. Surely there's a middle ground?
Nope. Welcome to globalization! Billions of third world people just waiting to do what you do for 1/10th the price. Expect your living standard to trend towards theirs, because if it's one thing this planet has, it's a huge excess of available labor.
Re:Angry? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ooh! I like the way you're thinking! Now, just make me up 6 or 7 full-color variations on this theme - suitable for envelopes, brochures, and billboards - and if I like any, I'll buy one.
Re:Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
If the design isn't picked, the designer still owns all rights to it and can submit it again.
Um, you might want to read the "contract" very carefully. Most such contests have wording hidden out in the fine print to the effect that all submissions become the property of the company running the contest. So if 1000 people submit entries, the company pays for one of them, but legally owns the other 999. Read the tiny language that comes with most such contests, and see if you can spot where it says this. They can be clever at obfuscating the wording, but with careful reading you can usually spot it.
I've seen a couple of writing contests run by publishers that play the same trick. The top-rated 2 or 3 stories get a reward, but the publisher publishes an entire book of the top N stories. If the authors of the other stories complain, the publisher just quotes the above passage from the contest rules, and refuses to pay anything to the other "losing" authors.
(This is all in the USA; other countries may outlaw such misleading trickery. But probably not many countries do. Anyone here have any data about this?)
Yet another "XXXX for hire" site (Score:4, Insightful)
There are various "coders for hire" sites and such like that. The sites do well, but they are not truly disruptive to the software industry. This is because few professional programmers will put the time and effort into going there because the rates are terrible. And few serious companies use it because they can't get quality for the prices they are offering. But bored students, the unemployed, a few freelancers, and inhabitants of undeveloped nations will look for work there.
The question is: what percentage of the demand for this product can be met by that market segment?
It may turn out that the average corporation can't tell a good design from a bad one. If so, then graphic designers will start to go out of business until either the corporations realize that their designs aren't working, or until graphic designers realize that design quality doesn't actually matter. I suspect reality lies somewhere in between: cruddy designs are good enough for a lot of the market. Only the best designers will survive to get the remaining high-end contracts.
Re:Speaking as someone in the industry... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Crowdsource CEOs (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm being honest about where rights come from: agreements between individuals. I'm not advocating using violence, I'm saying, we don't have to agree to do things the way we do. That 'private transaction?' Is it really private? Says who? Two parties arguing over the price of a slave would tell an abolitionist that the transaction is none of their business, and society used to agree with the slavers. Now, thanks to people expressing their opinion, we do not consider that transaction a private matter anymore. I imagine that some transactions we presently see as private will, in the future, be seen as impacting others outside the transaction, and thus not private. CEO pay may well become one of those things that, like slavery, we don't consider a private matter.
You may not believe me, but freedom is my goal. You see, money is power, and someone with money can limit the freedom of someone without. I don't want to end the wealth disparity do much as I want to end the power disparity, which I see as limiting freedom. You probably see the power disparity as a natural consequence of freedom, but 'freedom' is a slippery word that way. Do I have the freedom to swing my fist wherever I like, or do you have the freedom not to get hit in the face? How about pollution? Do I have the right to buy garbage and bury it on my land, or do the externalities involved make that your business, too?
Re:The answer to this has been in print since 1913 (Score:3, Insightful)
Monopolies are always bad and competition is always good. Unless it's labour we're talking about. Then competition is just a bunch of scabs and monopoly is the loving embrace of the union organizer.
Government protects the weak from tyranny (Score:5, Insightful)
The rich have been taking from the poor for decades now, real income for the bottom 80% of America has been stagnant since the sixties. In the same period, the top 1% has gone from earning 8-9% of the GDP to earning 20% or more. I am advocating that the poor look after their own interests and stop letting the rich take from them.
That is why we have government, to protect the weak from the tyranny of the strong.
Re:Crowdsource CEOs (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, the debt is repaid when the leaches have given back all the money they took. Then they can have their bonuses back. But why should bailout money be going directly into the pockets of failed CEOs?
Re:An Industry Ripe for Change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gone are the days when you can charge $5000 for 3 logo concepts when some college student is happy to spend 2 hours cranking out a concept in his spare time for the chance at winning $269 - the price quoted on the 99designs logo design page [99designs.com].
Then go ahead and do that! Except you get what you pay for.
Disclaimer: I've been close to the results of both approaches (not 99designs, it was something else)
From the crowdsourcing site you get a nice drawing
From the 5k for concepts you get:
-concept that's a close fit for your needs
-"tech docs and support" (yes, you need it)
- a visual identity for your product/company
So yeah, go ahead and do it. Or you can ask your nephew who's good at Corel Draw to make something for you for $10, that's even cheaper.
And let me ask you something, do you think the AA logo was done in 10 minutes? twitter's? facebook's?
Re:Angry? (Score:2, Insightful)
Could be, I have no favorites between the CEO and the web designer, it's indifferent to me how they split the cash among themselves.
The important point is that in most corporations savings are distributed among several items. Part goes to executive bonuses, some of it goes to dividends, and the rest is used to lower prices.
Lower prices mean increased market share and more sales, which means more profit, and more profit means more dividends and fatter bonuses for executives, so it's natural that companies will always try to lower their prices with whatever savings they get.
Re:Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
> "Real" designers work the same way, often developing several candidates for consideration or being pitted against other designers.
Uh, poor designers work the same way. "Oh, I get a portfolio item, THANK YOU" is not a business model.
The real story is that bad-to-average design is no longer scarce. The tools are ubiquitous, and many people play with them. So you're going to see a tiered economy: the wannabes doing spec work for minimum wage on places like istockphoto.com and the golden glorious few doing high touch client-focused work for $200 an hour. Similar to whats happening in photography and journalism, and for much the same reasons.
Re:You've missed the point (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not a better analogy. It's actually quite terrible. Nothing is taken from the designers that they did not agree to and readily give. The "bitten apple" analogy is completely skewed, otherwise nobody would choose the designers that were rejected once. Their career would be over the second they were no longer in 1st place.
Re:No surprise (Score:1, Insightful)
No it's not. Gravity and evolution are natural laws, whereas the free market is a figment of people's imagination. You can't repeal gravity, but it's easy to repeal the free market by appropriate legislation.
People who are angry at the free market are perfectly rational. Their anger is directed towards their governments, who allow those free markets to ruin their livelihoods in the name of ideology.
Re:Quote: (Score:3, Insightful)
I compare the risk of designers being crowdsourced as similar to the risk of engineering jobs being outsourced. It was only a matter of time before this would start to happen. In the same way that news reporters may be getting replaced by Twitter, the Phone book may be getting replaced with Facebook, and CDs were replaced with MP3s. You just gotta take the change and live with it, all professions will be effected as technology, the internet, and massive scale multi-user interactions become more pervasive and extensive.
If you do consistently excellent work, and consistently meet client needs, you can charge for it. If you are a hack then the pressure will expose you as such.
The thing is, with crowdsourcing and more competition... the clients of designers who currently "meet clients needs" and do excellent work may try the service and soon find, while their designer of choice WAS meeting their needs, and they were very happy before,
They find that people competing in a contest more than just meet their needs and what they asked for they exceed their expectations. IOW, they could get superior results from the contest medium, even if they were exuberant and perfectly happy with a paid designer before.
Or it was less expensive to get the same great result. They didn't have to pay someone who's built a business on providing the service to people.
Suddenly the skilled professional designers who have had years of professional training and huge portfolios great work may find themselves on a level playing field with random people who hardly know about anything at all and just have a natural talent.
I can see why pro designers wouldn't like this. They have a lot to fear really. The profession "graphics designer" could cease to exist, or the expectations of pay could drop, for most jobs, where the crowdsourcing alternative exceeds or adequately replaces them.
Graphics artists might have to go back to school or switch fields, if they went into the job for profits, or were used to the fact the explosion of the world wide web and e-commerce made the design profession so important and lucrative....
Only to the extent a job really does require special ability, special skills, or peculiarly uncommon knowledge to perform, will they have any sort of robust protection against crowdsourcing, outsourcing, etc.
Crowdsourcing only works for abilities the masses have and that the masses are willing to share/compete for an award using, rather than receiving payment.
99designs should work just fine and have great results, even if every professional designer in the world vows to never compete or submit any design on it.
Re:Crowdsourcing is iffy at best. (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's the theodicy of price, quality, and speed (pick two)"
You guys always act as this is some kind of law of nature or something. By now, it's just a saying, and sayings may capture some common sense in some situations, but they carry very little weight in any argument.
You have a point, and I have an idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Thinking on this further, I agree that last one is the most accurate. The apples that don't get picked are still as salable as they ever were, no one is getting something for free. To beat this analogy into a greasy horse shaped patch on the ground, apples were previously only sold in apple boutiques where you bought apples from elite growers and if you wanted different apples, you had to drive to a different boutique. Now the apples are sold in a farmers' market where anyone can set up a stall, even crabapples. You can peruse many different kinds of apples and everyone is putting in a real effort shining themselves up and barking at you about how tasty they are. Naturally, the apples liked being sold in boutiques because it made them feel special, not like some basket weaver selling his wares on the corner.
In my opinion if the apples want a better deal, the apples should form an apple cooperative of their own, enforce some reasonable standards of quality and service, perform some training, marketing and networking services and basically add value and (importantly) distribute that value equitably among the apples, cutting out the middle man apple sellers entirely.
Re:Stop Working for Content Mills (Good Luck...) (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the parent was joking, who knows.
From my point of view the word niggardly is a bit obscure, rarely used and bound to be misunderstood. I think it is best avoided. There are plenty of other words with the same meaning. The dictionary entry you reference above indicates that misunderstanding can arise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Quote: (Score:3, Insightful)
but only one winner gets paid
Of course graphic designers are going to get angry.
I read it as "only one winner gets laid" which made me think of the following analogy: It's like that girl who goes around accepting drinks from all the guys at the bar, but only goes home with one of them. Sadly, that's still a popular business model.
Re:Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
My design firm charges by the hour. If you want a logo that we did in an hour, we can do that, in an hour. The prices is one times our hourly rate. It is not going to be the best logo, but it will only take us one hour.
If you want to have two planning conference calls, a focus group, then six rounds of comps and five final versions for various mediums, a favicon, a 125x125 banner and more, then it cost as much as time as it takes.
If clients do not like this, then can negotiate the world of crowd-sourceing, getting a cousin to do it and mocking it up themselves.
The problem with all that is that if you want a change later on, you are on your own, If you need a two color version for a silk screen, you might be SOL. If your cheap logo is not 100% vector, good luck putting it on a billboard or wrapping a vehicle.
Just as anyone can work on their own plumbing or get some cheap person to do it, there will always be a market for creative professionals who know what they are doing.
If you are losing work to the design sites, you don't want those clients anyways. Or you can let them get their logo from a contest, then design their business cards, website, make money brokering their ads/print/etc/, and create a long term relationship. That could happen as well.
What if IT workers were paid like that? (Score:5, Insightful)
They hate it for the same reason that the music industry hates the Internet, they lose control of the marketplace and are unable to charge a premium for intangibles.
It's not "a premium for intangibles." It's the opportunity to get get paid for your time vs the expectation that you'll work for free unless your work is utilized.
What do you do? You an IT worker like most of the site? Let's say you troubleshoot systems -- how about we say that you don't get anything old fashioned like a salary or an hourly wage anymore: instead, you'll compete with others to see who can find/fix the problem first. The person who does that gets paid a flat rate. Everyone else gets nothing. Or, let's say you write code. You and one hundred other coders provide to spec. First one gets something, everyone else doesn't. No messy employee-employer relationship -- that stuff is for communists and music industry racketeers, right? Just pure market transactions. Beautiful, right? Certainly nothing you could have any complaint against -- in fact, if you really believe in your comment, truly and deeply, back it up: suggest that arrangement to your employer tomorrow.
After all, you wouldn't want to be like a music industry dinosaur, and frankly, if you're drawing either a salary or hourly wage off of it, you're exactly as much like the music industry as a graphic designer.
Re:Quote: (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with your argument is many clients (new / small businesses) don't know the value of working WITH a designer. This is kinda like when a person walks into Wal-Mart to buy a socket set. It looks shiny in their toolbox, and they don't know any better until it strips out / twists / breaks when they need to put some real pressure on it.
Wal-Mart has driven countless small local businesses into bankruptcy while making a mint selling this crap.
Personally, I think this means that as design becomes just another commodity you are going to see serious downward pressure on the fees that all but the largest firms can command (think of Dell, HP, etc as the commodity side of that equation and Apple (ironically) as the high end). After all, I read an article about companies outsourcing design to India (I'm looking for the article - I'll post later).
Watch out for the designer mafia... (Score:2, Insightful)
I work for a small non-profit and charity and we've just recently put together a little t-shirt contest [vancouverpolicemuseum.ca] to build our community and get people involved. In short order, we got two separate emails from designers complaining about how our contest "cheapens" professional design.
Anyway, we had a little fun sending a reply back. I've posted it here: http://www.cogno.ca/b/ [cogno.ca]