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Why Designers Hate Crowdsourcing
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."
but only one winner gets paid
Of course graphic designers are going to get angry.
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.
so designers are complaining that no one is willing to pay for their shitty work & would rather have choices up front instead of taking a gamble?
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.
Piecework is basically bullshit. It's effectively hiring 10 people to do a job and then only paying one of them (at most). It's basically using the fact that they're "Contests" to stiff 99% of the people in the business.
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.
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. Basically, the established design professionals are used to being able to charge more than the value they add to the product because it was too hard to find good alternatives. I am not saying that experienced, quality design professionals do not add significant value over most of what you can get from crowd sourcing sites. It's just that they want to charge more for that value than what it is worth in today's marketplace. When it was hard to find people who had a natural talent for design for a particular product or market segment, it was worth paying more for people who were proven at creating good designs for many different areas and additionally had experience in what types of design seem good in development, but turn out to be bad ideas in production. Now that it is easier to find people who are inexperienced, but have a natural talent, that experience is less valuable.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
A bunch of people working in a saturated job market are pissed off they might have to compete for jobs in a different manner?
Sounds to me like they don't want to actually produce a product and have the customer pay for the one they like best. They would much rather sign the customer to a contract and make money whether or not the end product would have made the customer the happiest.
Seems like a win-win for the customer and the market. The customer gets the product he wants and the people that make superior products get business and likely setup future business as well.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
By allowing anyone too download a professional level editing program free of charge it's no longer necessary too have a formal education in order too enter the graphics design field. While this sounds great in theory it's pretty apparent that those who have taken the time and disipline to actually become proficient in there profession. However, there being crowded out by comparably unskilled students who are willing to work for a latte and their name in print.
If this continues, you will not see a single person their who has a degree above a high school diploma.
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.
I've watched several people use this service with minimal success. It's a ridiculously inefficient method to commission designs: everyone is racing against the clock, and not generally inclined to invest enough time in their unpaid work. Thus, the vast majority of work is wasted.
The thing is, visiting the personal sites of some of these designers submitting absolute crap showed some fairly good work. They simply don't get enough time, motivation, or communication to produce something interesting.
I recommend people trying to save money find a designer in the third world (most on 99designs are from PI/ID/IN) with a portfolio they like, offer half upon completion, and do a few iterations with the same person, giving them more than an hour for revisions.
You will undoubtedly get a better result.
Designers, like everyone else in service industries, are competing against everyone in the market. There's no more hiding. You have to demonstrate value. It's not easy to show non-designers what the value of good design is, but good designers are effective communicators; if you can't communicate your value to clients, you shouldn't expect them to pay the rates many designers are used to charging. On the flip side, I'm reminded of this reminder of the value a truly skilled, experienced designer can deliver.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
But...the unwashed masses might PICK THE WRONG FONT...the horror...the horror...
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out....
Attributed to Jack London, but there's not really any proof he wrote it.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
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.
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.
Web designers are to 99designs.com
as
Brittanica writers are to wikipedia.org
or as
News reporters are to news.google.com / facebook.com / twitter.com
Now anyone who can (barely) use Adobe Illustrator can steal a bunch of templates, modify them a bit and open shop as designer.
It's worse if you've got to work with marketing fuckwits and you're the only person who has been to art school. They come back with crap like 'Well, everyone has opinions.''
Well, that's true. But some of us have knowledge and experience.
A good designer can help create an effective visual metaphor to help commercialize a product, and do it consistently, on demand. An amateur cannot.
Today's graphical tools help a lot of fools with middling talent make a living, and that makes it for the truly talented people to command the price that makes their work valuable in getting a product to market.
A related field is photography. There are bags of photographers who do nothing more than leave the camera on automatic. They spray and pray and sorta, kinda deliver something but ....
I don't know why this is on Slashdot. This doesn't have anything to do with traditional nerd stuff. It's a way of doing business. I'm not complaining, because I'm a "business nerd", but I thought I was the only one. That being said...
It's simple supply and demand. Everybody and their mother is a designer, and many of them are actually pretty good. There's no real reason why designers should be able to ask for the outrageous rates that they traditionally get, if there are so many other people willing to do the same work for cheaper. As a consumer of design work, I don't get any additional value from paying more for an experienced designer. The design is the product, and I don't care who produces it. Sure, the traditional designers that are used to commanding ungodly rates are going to be upset, but such is life.
I don't respond to AC's.
While clients may or may not be getting "Walmart-quality" designs, they're certainly paying Walmart prices. Logo payouts can run as low as $211, while a webpage design package starts at just $499--rates considered absurdly low by some in the business.
Hate to be the one tell you artists this, but that's hardly low. Lots of people simply google for attractive website templates and pay $50 them, or some small amount to get them exclusively.
For those who want more custom work, places like vworker, freelancer, etc. have an abundance of people who'll do graphic design work for peanuts. True, it may not be as fantabulous as something costing thousands, but you can get a logo design for $20 and for 80% of the people in the marketplace, it's good enough to have your company's name in some sort of distinctive design.
The world is lousy with art students and third world people with cracked copies of Photoshop. Graybeards from the 80s are annoyed that this work is no longer geographically bound and the Internet has made cheap labor abundant. Not everything about the Internet is good for every person.
Advice: on VPS providers
This is not unlike what happened to the stock photography market. Flood the market with cheap creative content. Some diamonds, some crap, no $$ for the creator. The art brokers do fine, it's the creators that get screwed.
I've run a few projects through crowdspring. I try to be really responsive with submissions, I've seen designs go from "meh" to "completely fantastic" with only a few revisions.
Looking at my history, the people who I seem to pick seem to win a decent percentage of the time.
For larger projects, or projects where the stakes are simply larger, I'd want to build a relationship with a designer, or design house, rather than go through something like this.
paul reinheimer
That I should go check Renta-A-Coder to see if there is any well paying work available!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
As a designer, I have to laugh at what I'm seeing on that site. Sure, there are a handful of decent concepts (aka, the beginnings of a good logo/identity), but a huge majority of it is just garbage. There are some basic guidelines that should be followed when doing any logo design, like how well will it translate at different sizes. Or can it be easily adapted to a one- or two-color spot version for print and promotions. What I'm seeing is way too many people going overboard with gradients and bevel/emboss filters, combined with piss-poor type treatments.
I don't hate the site because of how it works. I hate the site because of all the bad work I'm seeing there.
I'm not a graphic designer, but my dating history is littered with them... One thing I've learned is that generally clients don't know what is good -- even when they think they do, they do not. Crowdsourcing completely changes the process, where now the client ultimately takes on the role of the supervisor at a design firm. This is a role they have absolutely no training to do and, as the article points out, they also may not have a dialogue with good designers.
The results of this will be ending up with work that fits the faux design supervisor's tastes, often leading to people choosing things that are awful and having no idea they chose something awful. I was just looking at bancomicsans yesterday, and you have to realize that people who used Comic Sans as the font for their business's signs actually thought it was a good idea. Even as a pretty artsy guy (which is probably why designers ask me out) who recognized when his CS project's title had uneven kerning, I still know enough to resist the urge to DIY and hire a good designer to handle it for me. Crowdsourcing is not the route I'd take; you're essentially paying less money for a much higher chance of making your product look horrible, and you look like an idiot.
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.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
If you want to earn a living in the design business you anly have a limited amount of hours a day to do that. That means you can't afford to work for free, which is essentially what you did if yiu don't win. I know that this is what's happening when big ad agencies "pitch" to a client, but they make it up by adding these hours to the bill for the next client where they win a pitch. On sites driven by cost competitiveness like 99designs this will be difficult. And then i don't want to work for a client who doesn't have the slightest idea what they are looking for. Try getting hand made shoes by asking different vendors to make a pair from which you will choose one ... or ...:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY
than asking multiple companies to submit bids/concept work for my project then only selecting the best one? That's nothing new.
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.
The only people that complain about disruptive innovation are those directly affected by it.
Yes the "how low can you go" is innovative. Good thing the Wal-mart model worked for all those places were small business went out of business and choice decreased. Not to mentioned exploited workers designers employed by Wal-mart.
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 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?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
As a person who is on the customer side of this equation, I absolutely love crowdsourcing.
My company's last call for a designer was to redesign a section for one of our corporate websites (Think a sub-department of one of our departments). We went to a couple of major designers who shall not be named, and asked them for a quote. They wanted around $15,000.
Using a couple of crowdsourcing websites, we got in contact with a 19 year old kid going through college. He did a quick 15-minute mock-up, I got a go ahead, and we worked it out to $4,500 when he started, and $4,500 when he finished. In the end, we were extremely happy with what we got. He got paid more than he normally would, we got exactly what we wanted, and we saved $6,000. It was a win-win for everyone.
Graphic Designer here, so consider me biased.
Currently, design works just like most other professions. Company needs work done, they send out a request for people to quote on that work. They shortlist a few potential options and sit down with them to go over things in detail. Designers provide a proper quote on the project and then the company decides who to go with.
Really, the same thing as needing to buy a new mail server, getting a few quotes from some vendors and then deciding on one.
What these sites are essentially doing is making each of the vendors go to your place, install the new mail server, and then you only pay for the one you like - but keep everyone elses servers as well.
It can be fun while you are in school, or trying to get your foot in the door, but eventually you realize that you've just spend a full day working for nothing. The worst part is that the client could go through the submissions, copy all the ideas down, decline them all, and send it over to their secretary to redraw it out for 'free'. Design is about ideas and form, it's not really something tangible (I built a car!) it's a hard thing to quantify, and a lot of the time to get paid for.
Spec work is a bad idea in any industry, and 99% of the time leads to the person doing the work getting screwed. That said, if people want to partake it's their choice and none of my business.
This happened about a decade ago in my field (translation) with sites like proz.com and later translatorscafe.com - there are other sites doing the same thing, but these are the two largest. It's a bidding race to the bottom with India and China.
And those of us who live in the US and Europe have been complaining about it ever since.
But then you get to a point where you realize that you don't want that kind of client anyway. And there are still many clients out there willing to pay the rate you want/deserve.
whatever.
you say that as if graphic designers aren't just english majors with pirated photoshop and illustrator.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yes, watch out established graphic designers ... it looks like you've met your match.
http://99designs.com/other-design-tasks/contests/credit-card-design-49350/designers/443787
http://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/classical-website-logo-49362/designers/443787
Threadless has been very successful crowd sourcing designs for shirts, wall clings, etc. I have seen Hanes and other big names try and get on the 'clever/funny t-shirt' money train, but their stuff is horrid. I don't think any design 'team' could ever do better job with this type of thing than one person with some decent software, a Wacom tablet, and a really great idea. What's more, Threadless pays a few hundred bucks the most highly voted designs.
Nude No More!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
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.
To call speculative contests "crowd sourcing" is misleading. Wikipedia is an example of an efficient use of crowds. The contest sourcing in the OP is not, instead creating a vast waste of man hours of work for all the loosing entries.
Crowd sourcing isn't the issue. Contest sourcing is.
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.
My first job out of college many years ago was as a tech writer. I got 'synergized' into also being responsible for producing marketing materials (because I had a Mac, and had figured out how to use Adobe Illustrator and Quark and etc.). It seemed potentially fun at first. I read a few books on graphic design, and pestered a couple of buddies of mine where were employed as actual designers for tips and critiques of my first efforts, which they thought pretty impressive.
The people at work, however, hated it. I learned that at my company, no one else was a tech writer, but EVERYONE was a budding artist, whose many opinions on aesthetics HAD to be listened to. I took to doing three comps for any project, one of which was always the butt-ugliest, most garish, negative-space-ignoring piece of crap I could muster. Guess which one the President and Director of Marketing -always- picked? Everyone thought I was a genius.
I'm kinda curious how this will work out long term, I'd think this wouldn't get very good designs since people wouldn't do that much work when they probably won't get paid.
On the other hand if you've worked X hours already, than it's worthwhile to work X+1 to make sure you're the best design so you do get paid.
It reminds me of an economist trick of auctioning off a $20 bill. Basically the idea is just that, auction off the $20 bill, except not only does the winner have to pay, but the second place bidder as well.
So if I bid $18, and another student bids $19 than I'm still paying $18 but I won't get the $20. So I now have to bid $20 just to get the $20 bill and break even, and the other student has to bid $21 so they're only losing $1 instead of $19 and so on until one of the participants smartens up and decides the bill isn't worth the cost.
Anyone know of any other industries where such a big proportion of the work is done in the bidding process?
I stole this Sig
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.
Anyone can submit their near finished pieces of work to the contests
You would have to be a fool to accept those terms. Responding to an RFP with a proposal is one thing, but doing most of a project on speculation is just dumb. Leave it to hobbists and script kiddies.
once again enables a change that shines a harsh light of the dark corners of an industry, and the roaches don't like it.
Surprise~
If companies are getting the quality they like, maybe 'profession' designers are getting paid to much? Maybe companies are realizing that thousands of dollar for a design that might be used for a couple of months isn't worth it?
Graphic designers fill a need, they don't create one. Welcome to reality.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unfortunately, this is the future state of the world for anyone who doesn't do some tangible that can't be easily moved somewhere cheaper. If you want job security, do something that requires a security clearance (can't outsource that very easily) or which requires physical presence. Otherwise, this will be you soon enough, too.
Look at it from the other direction. I have a very skilled friend that's having a hard time making money off the graphical design business because he hasn't made a name for himself yet. He uses that site to collect money to pay bills as his contributions are just as likely to get picked as someone with a big name because the exposure is similar for all 'contestants'.
I've worked with people who've used crowdsourcing. I've found that the quality of work ranges from decent to awful. Predictably the most professional work seems to come from the US and Europe. The problem is, that you're dealing with a serious hive mentality. You provide some simple details and choose from overly simplistic definitions to describe what you're looking for. Outside rare exceptions the concepts are contrived, frequently overly literal depictions of what you're looking for. And once you start narrowing down the selection then everything goes to hell because people start copying those chosen designs. So you end up with dozens of designs featuring only minor variations. There are other problems, like general lack of refinement and poor font selection. Then you've got larger risks, like the possibility that the work you selected was copied. I've seen quite a few samples that were heavily derivative of other work.
I'll concede it's a good resource to have if you run a small time business and don't have the money to hire a proper designer. Of course, you run the risk of getting only low quality work because you haven't put up enough of a reward. But it might not be any worse than you'll get from some unskilled, but cheap, designer.
The big issue I have as a designer is that it undermines my work. It's already a huge source of frustration trying to convince business idiots of the value of proper design. I frequently encounter consultants and middle-managers who are so-called experts on web design. They know all the buzz words. They know how to basically copy the layout of a site they frequently visit and force it on a client. But they suck at implementation. That's where the value of a good designer comes in.
Not convinced? Look at Apple. Regardless of your opinion of the company it's undeniable that they know how to design a reasonably intuitive interface and they've managed to do an excellent job of integrating software and hardware. But try convincing some idiot of that fact when they want everything done on the cheap.
Anyone who thinks designers are overpaid doesn't really know the first thing about the industry. Even ensuring job security is a struggle. The big trend I've been seeing over the past decade is a big push towards freelancing. Companies would rather not deal with all the taxes and expenses of a full-time employee and it's a lot easy to let them go if there isn't enough work to go around. Crowdsourcing only makes things worse because you're doing work at the risk of not being paid. It's like when a potential client expects detailed design work and an expensive proposal for a pitch. Although that scenario is still more promising than crowdsourcing because you're usually only dealing with a handful of competitors and there's a chance of on-going work with this client. With crowdsourcing once you've done that piece you're done with that client, no long term relationships to form.
This is why it's important for designers, like anyone in any profession, to provide more value than just design. A lot of people can produce good design. Not everyone can apply real substance to their work, a real understanding of the client, the audience, strategy and implementation. Of course, the trick is being able to convince potential clients of your value.
Acting as a middleman between business owners and graphic designers, the 99designs site hosts contests in which clients post their needs--website design, logos, print packages--and designers compete to fill them. Instead of bidding for the job, designers submit finished work tailored to the client specifications in the contest listing.
Anyone who is stupid enough to spend their valuable time crafting something like this for someone they've never met, without guarantee of payment, deserves to both waste their time and not be paid. Unfortunately, spec work hurts everyone involved. The client usually ends up getting something that really just isn't right, the designer usually doesn't get a job or any follow-up work, and by doing spec work, the value of that industry's services is diminished because new clients think they can just throw their criteria out there and get free results.
http://www.no-spec.com/ is a great resource that addresses the topic in detail from many different angles.
".. or they'll leave the field itself."
so?
If they like it, they will still do it has a hobby. If not, then someone will provide the designs that a company needs.
'real talent' has nothing to do with how much money one makes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The outcry is not in the financials or loss of revenue. Whether it's one logo at $1000, or 10 logos at $100 each, there's tons of money to be made in the design industry if you're talented. Young talented up-and-comers with less experience will always be cheaper to employ. There will always be overpaid hacks with an over-abundant feeling of self worth. The same is true in any industry.
That's not the issue. The problem designers have is that crowd-sourcing devalues their trade/skill. Design isn't easy. They went to school just like any other profession, but this is not about entitlement. It's about recognition. Design isn't just making something "pretty". It gives the impression that anyone can spend 30 minutes in Photoshop or Illustrator and come up with a good logo. Nevermind the fact that a logo is only one *small* part of a complete identity system. I've seen this crowdsourcing services. They're crap. You get what you pay for, but that's not me being bitter. (I'd be doing the same thing if I was them)
Any kid can pirate a copy of Photoshop and call themselves a designer, just like any kid can pirate a copy of Visual Studio and call themselves a developer. What makes these amateurs different from the professionals? What's the value in paying a programmer $90,000+ a year for the same service?
But then you get to a point where you realize that you don't want that kind of client anyway.
Sure. But look at the other side of the fence. I am a software engineering student with little money and little graphical skills. I do have quite a few of my own software projects that I've coded (or am coding): Mostly to have references that I can use to apply for progamming jobs after I graduate but I also like the thought of people using what I've created. Now, these pieces of software look quite crude. The GUIs are very functional but that's it. I can't invest enough money that I could buy designs to them from some local company. I do have a friend who could do the job for small-ish sum but I'm put off by the idea of buying graphics from my friends (there'll be all kinds of extra considerations if I'm not satisfied, etc.).
This was the first time that I heard of 99designs and I think that I'll begin using it. I can probably invest a few hundred dollars a piece on getting someone to come up with some cool backgrounds, etc. for my projects. (My projects will look prettier, users will have nicer software, someone in India or something will earn a few hundred bucks... Everyone wins.) This doesn't take away any money from existing designers but will be work that wouldn't exist at all without such a service. I'm sure that there is a lot of other people like me who have decided to buy something only after hearing of this service. Designers can then choose whether they want to compete for it or not. I know I won't have trouble sleeping if several people will submit me designs and I'll only choose the best...
Though I am far left, pro-unions, etc., this seems to be capitalism at its finest. Competition and low prices spurring new creations that wouldn't exist without it.
There are many types of clients. Two big groups are those who want a serious long term vendor relationship and those who simply want a rock bottom price and are often willing to give up the value that would come from long term relationships (knowledge of the account, knowledge of the business and customers, etc.).
For those who are always looking for the rock bottom price, they are very taken care of by companies and web sites like 99designs; designers, like all companies selling a product need to segment the market place and find those customers who are not only motivated by the price.
There is other value for a company to use 99Design including getting to see creative from a variety of sources..
http://www.hawknest.com/
No company should have to idle some of its resources while waiting for a logo, because it is not a critical component. Every company needs a product or service to sell, whether it has a logo or not. Developing this product or service is on the project's critical path. Any company that needs a logo before it can sell anything is a bad business model.
/. led me to believe that first one didn't go through. Sorry.
Not true. A real designer is chosen based on a portfolio of work. The work in that portfolio is generally either student work, past paid work, or personal work.
If someone likes my previous work and feels i'm right for the job, then they sign a contract and agree to pay me a certain amount. either hourly or per project.
Working in the "contest" format or doing spec work tends to financially rape designers. It's BS.
I got 99 designs but a bitc^h^h^h^h professional quality piece of work ain't one
Bottles.
In advertising, it is common for several companies to work on an idea for one client, pitch a proposal, and only one wins the deal, the others lose out. That's the industry. Because of the high risk - lots of work for no pay, it is only fair that when payment does arrive, it is large enough to compensate for all the unpaid work they have done over the past.
Any good deal leaves with both sides felling satisfied:
The designer wants to make as much money as possible, and produce a great design that adds to their portfolio and wins some future clients.
The company wants to have the best design work possible for the lowest price they can get away with.
They both want good design (although they may argue over what, exactly that is)
For payment, where their is a big disagreement, both sides must agree to meet somewhere in the middle where both sides will accept the deal.
The problem for emerging designers is getting noticed, getting established, and companies know this. Thats why new designers often get stuck doing free work, it will "give them exposure", their clients promise.
So, the designers manage to scrape by for a few years, happily exposing themselves to anyone who will provide the opportunity.
Eventually, the designer gets sick of working 90 hour weeks for nearly nothing. Exposing yourself to the public might be fun, and it is a great way to develop the skills needed for the profession, but it just doesn't pay the bills.
When the next 'no payment, but good exposure' job comes along, the experienced designer either turns it down, or demands fair payment and doesn't land the deal. The companies know that this particular source of free labour is exhausted, but there are plenty of new, less experienced designers out there who will still produce acceptable work for free.
The problem, however, is that these young designers don't have the experience and the skills, so their quality isn't there.
Overall, the quality of the design work goes down along with the prices. Students stop pursuing design education because of the abysmal pay, so the quality drops further.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Logo Design always has taken less time than a full ad campaign, it was the 5000 dollar Lamborghini oil change that the industry needed to keep paying designers 100k's a year. That whole scam pretty much stopped about 2 years ago. I've recently dated a graphic designer and if she can bang out 3-4 of these a work day for a 3rd rate agency what can a whiz kid do, 20? Getting paid 200-300 bucks for 2-3 hours of work is s till pretty fucking nice if you ask me.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
If a designer is frequently competing on 99designs, they are probably unemployed. Of course those people are going to get angry.
High-end design is an extremely intricate, time consuming process that you really have to put your heart into. Rather than a proper design process with one on one consultation, concept development, drafting, etc the entrants have to create a design based on a short project summary in hopes that theirs will get picked.
Many of the 99designs entries I've seen are just flashy, trendy designs that really do not serve the marketing purposes they are intended for. They often look great, but do not create an "identity". Artistic but non-professional. That is not the fault of the designer - it's a fault in the system.
In short, if you're a designer and you are using 99designs for anything other than practice, you are wasting your time.
For every "winning" design payout, there are 100 losers who worked for free in the *vain hope* of getting a payout. And what does the winner get? About 1/100th of the money he'd get freelancing.
Sure, it works well for small scales, but when design students leave college, they'll expect to make more than the pittance these sites are paying.
In short, it doesn't scale, and it isn't sustainable.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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.
It's a free market; if you can't complete, suck it!
Please mod parent up while I hunt down my /. login. (It's been a while since I logged in; I've been too busy working hard for less money in these straitened times -- and that's before 99designs came along! I'm serious, I don't have as much time to post on the intertubes any more!)
I agree: I think the quality and standard of the majority of professional design (i.e. those working for medium sized client companies which, I believe, makes up most of the market) will be badly affected by this.
If there was a website like this for programming jobs, the commentators here would be on the other side of the fence...
The graphics designers aren't the grocery store, they're the apples. They're upset because the 99designs model lets us pick the shiniest apple, and throw the rest out.
It's the same reason hookers dislike free* blowjobs - it's bad for business.
*
You still have to buy her dinner, so it's comparable to these cheapish designs.
Lately I've noticed a trend on Slashdot to tar workers as being overpaid and making obscene profits. (For example, in the recent article about newspapers and paywalls - where some commenters assumed journalists were living large, although none of the journalists I know are well paid.)
Not only do I think they're wrong, but even if it was true that workers are overpaid, it still doesn't justify underpaying them. I mean, if you're earning $50 an hour, and someone comes along and wants to pay everyone $3 an hour - what's your response to that? That $50/hour is way too much? That still doesn't fix the fact that $3/hour is still far too little. It's unfortunate that so much of the Slashdot community immediately jumps to condemning the worker with inaccurate assumptions whenever something bad happens in their industry.
Here's how I see things playing out. First, a lot of professional designers boycott these kinds of sites. A few weeks ago, I was on a design site and they had posted an article about some design contest posted by a local company. The comments section was full of designers mocking the company for underpaying anyone doing work. It makes me think that the design contest / crowdsourcing system will ultimately be filled with amateurs. Professionals will avoid them not only because they're seen as bad for their industry, but also because it's darn hard to get paid for their time. If you're only making money on 1 out of 10 contests (because you're better than the average designer), and you spend 5 hours on each design, then you'd better be making enough money to compensate you for 50 hours of work. So -- let's say that people end up with inferior designs because they're done by naive amateurs. Now, companies still have to pay someone. Even though they only have to pay one person, it might not be worth their money to pay someone for an inferior design. Or, maybe they'll be allowed to pick no design and pay no one. There's still a time-investment. Maybe the company will eventually discover that it isn't worth their time to even attempt these things when none of the designs are workable. (I actually remember Fog Creek complaining that they crowdsourced their new logo - and weren't happy with *any* of the designs that were submitted.)
Perhaps designers in China or India might pickup the ball, since the cost of living is lower there. I don't know. Who knows whether crowdsourcing design in this way will end up being seen as a good way to get a cheap, inferior design.
>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.
Sure, but what if "amateur" is exactly "good enough", and eventually better??
After all, you might argue that Linux started simply as "amateur Unix" ...
I cure interstitial advertisements by hitting the browser Back button. It works every time.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
First, they came for the designers, and I said nothing...
"This business model reduces their profession to amateur hour"
I don't know how many graphic designers you've had to deal with, but of the few I have personally dealt with, it's ametuer o'clock, and the clock's batteries just died. My wife works in the public sector, and has had to hire contractors for graphics projects before, and in multiple cases, the responses she got were abysmal.
There are definitely good shops out there, but the landscape is hopelessly riddled with amateurs posing as professionals. I think these are the people that are mad. If you're any good, there's mounds of money to be made amid the sea of mediocre competitors.
Designers should not be angry, they should be excited.
Because what 99 designs and similar sites really do, is far more like dating sites than anything - they build relationships.
What 99 designs does quickly is help you find designers you like. Then after that point you can continue to work with the same designer - probably paying them more, but if they are producing work you like you don't mind.
It makes the initial sale bring in less revenue but can set you up for more recurring work.
Anything that makes it easier for customers to find (and like) you is a GREAT THING.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm the meanest man that ever had a brain
...
All I scatter is aches and pains
I'm carbolic acid and a poison face
And I stand flat-footed in favor of crime and disgrace
If I ever done a good deed, I'm sorry of it
How does this guy get marked INSIGHTFUL for this comment and everyone who points out how he doesn't know what he's talking about gets marked troll? I've seen some wonky moderation before, but seriously, wtf?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
> This business model reduces their profession to amateur hour
Only if there is no other way to get the job done. If you're willing to pay more, you can still contract someone using traditional methods.
As I see it, it's perfect for those consumers and suppliers because they deserve each other. It still boils down to, "You get what you pay for."
If you want to hire Staples "tech" guys to work on your PC for cheap, and they fluff it up, or sell you something you don't need, or give you the run-around when the work isn't done correctly, you got exactly what you deserved. Where I might charge more, you'll get better quality and support. I don't object to the Staples guys or feel threatened by them; they can have the cheapo customers, who are simply more hassle than they're worth. Likewise, the customers that would expect reputable designers to work for free are better served by people that would work for free.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
Computer programmers hate programming shops in India.
Factory workers hate factories in China.
Big music labels hate cheap online music distribution methods.
Everyone hates competition that will result in them having less work/sales. Doubly so when said competition implies there's not really much too your job anyway and an 11 year old can do it.
Of course not everyone dislikes such competition on price alone - some people don't mind competing on quality, etc.
And we spend real money (in the form of the time our employees who could be doing other things meaning we'd need fewer) writing up RFPs for various things and often implementing a demo version of whatever it is, with no obligation on the potential client to pay us anything. Which isn't that far off this.
The only people affected are those who are not truly talented designers who are actually able to communicate with their clients, and companies who have idiots for marketing heads.
Why should anyone else care about either being affected? The former is in the wrong industry and the latter gets what they paid for (in all the ways that can be interpreted).
And then they came for the scribes, and I said nothing...
And then they came for the bilge-pumpers, and I said nothing...
And then they came for the well diggers, and I said nothing...
And people adapted, and nothing remarkable happened as a result.
Boohoo, another industry that only the truly skilled can compete in. Cry me a river...
Why do you consider them over-priced? It takes skill and education/training to become a marketable graphic artist. How are you measuring over-priceness?
Table-ized A.I.
./ developers shouldn't feel so confident the general massification of 'on the cheap' labour won't affect 'em. You think the recent wave of certification of any simple process will protect you ? "Hell, in this profession, you need a fucking certified DBA to create a fucking column on on a fucking table, so I am not threatened..." It's partial true: due to the fact that many people try to be a design 'star', and few attain it, it's a much more overcrowded work marketplace... while on the other side, we are an 'industry', where stability and persistence are more valued... in many countries, people don't think about 'design' as a profesional career.
But think again: just a few years ago, a web developer was paid to gold... and today, you're just another worker among many.... in a few years, your office will be right next to the janitor's....
As a public contractor, I've seen the ways of another general trend: you compete at first against people who have more or less your same skills... but, markets change: the achievements of yesterday are the basics of today, and the chains holding you tomorrow, you must either improve professionally, or get out... And then you aren't protected at all: I guess all developers have noticed the arrival on the market of an underskilled but cheap generation of workers, who got on the train after the 'golden age' of computing ended by 2000...
Another point: ./tters mention the lack of specifications as the main drawback for clients in crowdsourcing: as a public contractor, I just thinks it's naive to thinks specs should be granular: that's just not how things work.
Any outsourcing does this. It seems to be cheaper to a company because there's less committment, especially as far as benefits and worker's comp and all that. But having a dedicated team on a project for 3 or 4 years is the only way a big project gets done.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Exactly. This is yet another reason why crowdsourcing both can't scale, and isn't sustainable. The people who dismiss this as just "the market at work" and an inevitable turn in the market aren't thinking it through well enough and considering all parties interests. It may work great in 10% unemployment for a few companies, but how can it go anywhere beyond that?
AccountKiller
You'd rather have a few valuable deals than a large amount of low-value deals.
Sensible economics, it seems.
I do that myself - my business' sales volume is lower than it could be, but I don't want to overwork myself chasing a bunch of low-margin/higher-overhead deals
Tech-specific, this seems to be the business model for Apple Macs as opposed to the various Windows PC builders
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
In economics, highly-paid superstars come about when being slightly better is enough to make a big difference for whatever reason.
You seem to have a interesting explanation as to why something like that applies in a particular field.
Economies of scale because there are more people to spread that higher cost over.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It seems like many of the people who participate on 99designs site are actually poor and from poor countries. $400 might seem like peanuts to the SoHo starving artist, but it ain't when it's half a year's salary (doing work that won't kill you, either).
What a sense of entitlement. It seems like designers are saying "don't allow people in third-world countries to make your designs! They are inferior ! Better that _we_ make $5k than _they_ make $500!"
For someone like me that is currently studying graphic design, I think it's a good opportunity to improve your skills. Sure, there are many other projects that I could undertake to achieve the same thing, but not many provide clear cut specifications like this site. They even give you a deadline for when you need to get your submission in by. Apart from uni/college projects, I can't think of anything else that would take students so close to a real world scenario. In fact, it is a real world scenario because they are real companies with real requirements.
"Labor can be analyzed like other markets" - my first economics professor.
Guess that sentiment swings both ways, eh?
I too doubt if the small-scale large-volume greed of some unions is really a socially effective answer to the large-scale low-volume greed of some business owners.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
At a bare minimum, that would be the function of government: to maintain a properly functioning market machine.
I figure - take that, anti-government types.
"The ultimate expression of business without government control is the Mafia".
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"This business model reduces their profession to amateur hour"
All professionals begin as amateurs remember this please, do we tell our kids to give up when just starting a journey to develop skills? Professionals tend to over-rate the value of what they produce, we all know how "professional" many people are in their respective industry when you are actually working - that is not very. Take a look at the game industry - cutting corners reducing the value of their products while whining about piracy.
The truth is most people are self-obsessed idiots who over-estimate their worth.
Let me preface this by saying that I know it's probably going to sound fruity among the Slashdot populace which thinks that it needs to be quantifiable to be worthwhile.
I have two points to make. The first is one of what Werner Herzog calls the "Inadequate Imagery" of our time. To quote Herzog on Herzog, "I have often spoken of what I call the inadequate imagery of today's civilization. I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn out; they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution."
You can find the quote further elaborated here.
Businesspeople think in numbers, sales figures and short-term profits; not in visual aestheticism and subtlety. Presented with many, many options for promotional materials, they will usually choose what is safely cliche and what they think is "good enough". The point I'm trying to make with this is that crowdsourcing does not find the best (and not the best for the business, either).
This brings me nicely to my second point, which can also be summed nicely in a quote (which I'm paraphrasing because I cannot find the source at the moment): "Advertising is a unique business in that your wealthiest client can demand your worst product while your poorest client must humbly accept your best."
You are the poorest judge of yourself because you can only perceive yourself as you always have. A business is the same way: you can say that your business is about this and about that, but your customers' perception of you is your only true face. Crowdsourcing typically involves a business micromanaging every detail of a project in which they have no expertise ("we want a bold logo with a strong corporate message about blah blah blah, and it has to have these colours and these shapes and these words and blah blah blah").
A good designer and advertiser will develop an actual, face-to-face relationship with the business, be able to perceive it with fresh eyes and use their expertise to design the best possible outcome for the long term.
don't forget sense of entitlement.
I once had a graphics designer go completely ape at me when a buddy of mine asked how to put up a website, and I carefully explained to him how I could get a 'website' up and certainly work out the infrastructure side of things, but it would be a basic piece of HTML with no style or design etc. but yes I could show him how to get something up on the web. The graphics designer at the table immediately flipped his lid and started haranguing me on how thats not a website, its people like you ruining the industry, blah blah blah.
He also didn't understand the concept that without routing and switching guys like me (nevermind the server admins, which I also know a fair chunk of, enough to do most SMB/soho scale requirements) his beautiful designs would be seen by a total of 0 people, but nevermind. This is also the kind of moron who said loudly in 2001 that digital cameras would never catch on with 'real' photographers.
Needless to say he makes a lot less than us digital plumbers.
Like the one on this page:
http://www.ogc.gov.uk/
(just turn it through 90 degrees)
Allegedly it cost 14k
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1901656/OGC-unveils-new-logo-to-red-faces.html
Could have been worse; could have been this one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2007/jun/05/howlisasimpsontooktheolym
(£400,000, that one).
Is that you're just suggesting another sort of boutique. If the apple buyers wanted to buy there, they still could, but they don't.
The only real solutions are to have a lot of people exit the business, or accept reduced revenues. The former is rather unlikely, especially with a big pool of potential designers from the developing world. The latter is probably mandatory, given that to those developing worlders a couple hundred bucks for a logo is a nice income.
There will still be boutique design firms, I'm sure, but not as many.
I recently sponsored my first two 99Designs contests, and it was (for the most part) a throughly pleasant experience. I paid $250 (plus fees) for a great logo. My local designer would have charged me $750. Oh, his absurd logo price schedule: $400 for non-profits, $750 for normal companies, and $1500 for big fish. Yea, you read me right. Nothing to do with effort. Based on ability to pay - charge what the traffic will bear. Is that a better system than 99design?
(The one negative was excessive nannying by 99Design staff and the "sour grapes" reaction by some contestants when I permitted a design to make use of a tracing of a photograph. The designer disclosed that to me, I gave him permission, and it turned out to be the winning design. Unfortunately, 99Design suspended the contestant for 7 days. Thank you very much, but let ME manage my legal risk. But they did pay him the prize money. Now, had somebody pointed-out the tracing before the contest was over, or at least before the winner was chosen, it would have been USEFUL to me. Instead, they waited till it was all over - and so it was just obstructive. In fact, I will probably have the traced part of the logo re-done, using the original tracing only as inspiration. I love the DESIGN CONCEPT and it is a starting point. I would have never come up with that logo design myself, and the tracing is just one element that can certainly be re-drawn from scratch. Contestants and 99Design staff DO NOT KNOW whether the logo will be used commercially as-is, and shouldn't make assumptions.)
Yes, there are poor-quality Chinese and Indian (gotta pick on SOMEBODY) entries. And they were obviously low-quality I eliminated them early on. I never eliminated a DESIGNER (something you CAN do), and in fact one of designers of the early low-quality entries listened to feedback well enough to ultimately come very close to winning. BTW, the Chinese designers tend to have horrible typefaces, so they get eliminated on that if you have any taste at all. Yes, some of the designers have poor or no English skills, so that feedback is nearly impossible. But they still see other's designs and your "star ratings" of designs (unless you run a "blind" contest) and so they still can see the direction you are going. Myself, I prefer to work with the designers that have excellent English skills making feedback effective. There's no lack of designers with excellent English skills.
It's important to provide feedback. I gave plenty, and the designers appreciated it.
Sometimes you get a great result through feedback and iteration. Sometimes a great design just drops out of the sky. The winner of my logo contest worked his ass of making change after change at my request. My second choice just swooped-in with a beautiful, simple design that required just a single iteration - to change the colors in the company name. I told him "don't change a thing - it is perfect". (The second choice was really a much better logo - it just wasn't the image I wanted to project. Great for a Fortune-500 bank or investment house. Not playful enough for an iPhone software development company.) The second-choice probably didn't take the designer much time. Three simple shapes that overlap to form the logo. I think he just got an inspiration that took him a half-hour to draw. Both approaches are valid, and 99Designs allows you to choose.
In fairness to contestants, once I had leading choices, I stopped making requests of other contestants. No need to run the ragged for nothing. I imagine most contest holders (or at least experienced ones) are pretty fair to contestants this way.
Next time, I will try running a "preliminary design" contest, and a second one (or contract with the winner) for a finished design. Tell the contestants right-off, I'm not looking for a finished design, but design concepts. I think it's useful to be a bit creative with the process. This is the way it often works with a single designer, anyway. You get rough sketches, color palettes, etc. first, then final artwork later. 99De
... that Apple's products are totally bullshit and that it's just their marketing that makes people willing to pay their insane prices, I say... BEHOLD THE POWER (and value!) OF GOOD DESIGN!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Good graphic designers do good work, and should (and generally do) get paid well for doing so. The problem is that most client have no real ability to tell good work from mediocre work. Something that looks bearably OK, is not dramatically unattractive, nothing is outright wrong about, may well be "good enough" for a client with no eye for design. But in the end, it won't be something memorable that sticks in the minds of consumers and helps differentiate the product or company it's attached to. The distinction between adequate and brilliant can be subtle, but that subtle difference can make a BIG difference in the longer run.
Similarly, and maybe more familiar to slashdot readers, the very worst programmers can write some lines of code that "look" pretty much the same as what the best programmers can write. The failures and problems of bad code won't even necessarily be obvious on first impression. The code might well do the one thing it initially needs to, but just be fragile, difficult to maintain, break as soon as unexpected cases arise, etc.
Distinguishing good from bad often requires expertise. Exactly the sort of expertise you should be willing to pay for.
Buy Text Processing in Python
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.
Tweet, tweet.
$269 is a small fortune to people somewhere like, say India or China. What you invariably get in this sort of situation is:
- Often times its takes a great designer to educate a client on the finer details of branding, but in this case I can see clients picking a crappy logo (And yes, they will be happy, but they will have a crappy logo and not really know it)
- Fair pay in the west will be affected as yet more work moves into the hands of third-world and developing countries.
- But more importantly, in situations like this, you get people submitting plagiarized work. Think about it, you live in China or India, and $269 is a month or two worth of wages... what are the odds of some less than ethical participants submitting ripped off logos, etc?
I don't follow. Presumably you knew that it was a contest before you started producing something, so you shouldn't be angry that you didn't win (unless you're a perfectionist). If this model yields cheaper design services, then so be it. There will still be a market for professionals, just not as big.
Whores hat sluts. 'Twere ever thus.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Guys, our porches and fancy holidays are in danger! Some hack company has figured out a cheaper way to supply the emperor with his new clothes!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I agree with what you're saying, but it seems to me that the situation you presented would solve itself. The true talent gets fed up and leaves sites such as that, all that's left is the same old crap. Maybe the masses who wouldn't be able to afford good art gets the crap, and the people who want quality art pays a professional. Either that or there will be a few talented people who find a niche in that market and are truly talented, and able to succeed on a site like that.
I just hope that they won't be as pathetic like the RIAA and sue people seeking yesterday's fees. No more middlemen! Internet has changed the world and business models need to adapt. If you are a super designer, you will still find high paying contracting work. If you are a talent, be it music, movies, whatever - you will still get paid (maybe little less than before, but say thanks!). If your'e not, go join the crowd.
Nobody is forced to submit. You don't have to work for free. You can simply choose not to.
Free market at its best.
If you can make your process require less fewer skills, you can pay less for the labour to enable it.
Hence robots welding cars. Hence McDonalds having a very clear procedure for EVERY task in their restaurants, very clearly laid out in the three-ring binder, as well as timers on their clamshell grill and pictures of hamburgers on their point of sale tills, and most importantly, factories that produce pre-prepared food items ready to shove in the grill or the fryer.
When mechanisation can magnify the efforts of a few skilled people so much, the labour market inevitably takes a nosedive.
As a race we profit immensely from our ingenuity, but these profits are concentrated in the upper strata of society while the lower strata benefit almost solely as a function of generating these profits.
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.
Short answer: nope.
Long answer: the American culture is well known throughout the world. Most IT guys / designers from the 3rd world have early-childhood exposure to American movies, American TV shows, American sitcoms, American fast-food, American cars, and American consumer goods. While of course the exposure rate may vary wildly, given the sheer amount of Indians (or Chinese, or Russians, or Brazilians, or Eastern Europeans, or Arabs - pick your favorite) you can bet there will be enough available 3rd world talent having a deep understanding of the American culture.
On a personal note, the first time I've arrived to the USA (in 2000, NYC) I was quite surprised how familiar everything looked to me. I'm from Romania and I had no problems at all in NYC while I did have some cultural shock in Hanover, Germany (I kept visiting CeBIT, the world largest IT exhibition). As a post-communist Eastern European, integrating in the American fabric was an instant feat, but the German fabric needed some serious readjusting.
Food for thought...
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Automation, globalization and overpopulation devalue human labor. Film at eleven.
I work for a small non-profit and charity and we've just recently put together a little t-shirt contest 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/
Something I rarely see addressed when crowd sourced design is brought up is quality. I'll be blunt, it sucks.
If crap design (or code for that matter) is good enough, then crowd sourcing is Teh Aw3s0m3!
If not, then hire a real designer to do real work.
It seems to me that the wealth accumulation could be explained by less wealthy people having more children and wealthy people having less children. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox. Thus, if we assume any correlation between the wealth of the parent and the wealth of their child, the proportion of children of the less wealthy will grow relative to children of the wealthy.
These modern times may be the first time where the tyranny-of-the-majority democratic government is officially the tyranny of the less-wealthy, taxing the wealthy to transfer wealth to the bottom half of the wealth spectrum. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1. If taxes increase, at some point, the wealthy productive members of society will move to a more tax friendly country.
By the way, why do you think CEOs do in fact make as much money as they do? I for one wouldn't trade my life for theirs. Do you have any idea of how many hours most CEOs work? There are not a lot of people smart enough to run a company who are willing to make such tremendous personal sacrifices. It makes sense that you would have to bid up their salaries to compete for such a limited supply. Alternatively, is it really that hard to fathom that productivity is distributed quasi-normally, and the CEOs are the producers on the far right?
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
Most non-technical users cannot use HTML. They just can't do it. The money would be better spent creating a CMS. TED is correct, they should move that way, if they are serious about updating and marketing.
I've worked with folks who want the "cheap" route of just modding HTML. From a business process standpoint, it does not work because they spend all their time trying to learn (and fail) HTML instead of their core business. Worse, they resent the whole process. In the end they always go CMS. After wasting money, and time, on trying to go cheap.
The $30K quote for something like say, heavy Joomla customization is pretty decent. I've seen stuff twice that much, depending on features/requirements, that were a bargain.
Next week on slashdot - why horse and buggy drivers hate cars.
They should change their name to kitschdesign.com and sell their wares at walmart.com.
It's a mistake to think that using someone on 99designs for $240 will necessarily lead to a vastly inferior design to a professional who charges $5000.
The correlation between quality and cost is not as strong as people seem to think. The industry is full of snake oil, and driven by the idea that you need to invest huge amounts with professionals to get a piece of text in a near standard font to look optimal.
It's only fair that the industry is "found out", like other industries. A lot of people with no reputation, no experience, and no education are capable of producing high-quality designs.
I don't think the problem is that professional designers charge too much. They can unlock a ton of value and be worth their weight in gold. How much do you think the deceptively-simple Nike swoosh logo brought in for the company?
But the fact is not every business is in a position to have a logo be worth millions or billions of dollars. For a small business like mine, there is simply no way for me to justify spending $10,000.00 (or whatever a pro designer would charge these days) on a logo. But I am exactly the target market 99designs!
In the old days, small business owners like me would make our own shitty logos or call in a favor from a family member or a friend*. When I make a logo, it looks like it was done by a 3rd grader, and I recognize this, but I'm still not shelling out 5 figures for a goddamn logo to put on my letterhead and website.
On the other hand, shelling out $250 for a bunch of logos and I get to pick out the best one? That's perfect for me! I can do a logo for each apartment building, even.
But the traditional designers should be whining about 99designs and customers like me. Earth to traditional designers: you were never getting my business in the first place. You have lost nothing here.
* Total side note, I've never understood the general slashdot disdain with helping family members with their computers. I love helping family fix their computers, and I don't even know what the hell I'm doing (I have a degree in CS and worked for about a decade as an enterprise architect... I've never fixed a computer professionally in my life... in fact, the only people's computers I ever fix are my family's). Want to know why?
My father has 30+ years experience as a corporate attorney. Guess who I call whenever I am negotiating a deal? Yeah, that's right, the guy who does multi-billion dollar deals over breakfast. And if he ever has any question about computers or gadgets or anything with a transistor in it, I'm on it right away.
My uncle has 30+ years experience as a Neurologist. My wife has Multiple Sclerosis. Guess who we call whenever we have any question or need help with anything relating to her health and need an unbiased opinion? That's right. He frickin' analyzes every one of her MRIs for free because he cares so much. And whenever he has any remotely technical question, guess who is right there for him? Oh, and he recently had his identity stolen. My wife used to do credit policy for a large national bank. Guess who guided him through the process on untangling that mess?
The list goes on and on. The point being, help you family out. When the day comes that you need help, you'll be glad you did. And by "you", I mean "slashdot readers". Not the dude I was replying to, specifically. I have no idea how he treats his family.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
DesignCrowd just launched Design Crowdsourcing 2.0 - crowdsourcing where multiple designers get paid. Customers hand pick designers and send them invites of up to $50. The winning designer then gets the lions share (sometimes $1000). Apparently leads to higher quality results and no upset designers ...