Zach Dunn says:

I was equally frustrated this morning when I woke up to read the “informative article” on Forbes.

Last time I got this frustrated over Spec Work was when Jacob Cass’s article on logo design (http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/01/how-not-to-design-a-logo/) was featured on Digg. Commentors were absolutely vicious there too.

I ended up writing my own response to that event about the blatant lack of respect (http://buildinternet.com/2009/01/the-real-problems-with-design-contests/).

Eric Hillerns captured the root of the problem all over again. People think that art/design work is in its own realm, and can’t relate it to the same level of professional as an accountant or architects.

Good post. You fight the good fight.

Zach Dunn’s last blog post..Quick Tip – Consistent Border Weight in Internet Explorer

Mike Samson says:

Hi Brian,

Thanks much for posting your thoughts. There certainly is a great deal to think about here and I wanted to share with you our perspective. Many designers have contacted us directly to start a conversation about spec work, design, and crowdSPRING’s role in the whole controversy.

While we obviously see things differently, we certainly know that our site isn’t for everyone and so we respect your opinion. That said, we think we owe more of a response than that. Feel free to keep reading if you’re interested…

It’s certainly not our intention to devalue design or the outstanding job that talented designers do. In fact, just the opposite. Just as iStockPhoto has helped bring about a change in the industry, we’d like to do the same. They’ve opened the door to millions upon millions of people who previously had no way to get noticed in the creative community. These people are more than willing to upload their work and hope that it gets chosen because, at the end of the day, it’s what they love doing – and that’s why they do it. It’s not for the money – it’s because creative people can’t stop being creative and they look for any outlet they can.

The same goes for Threadless, really. It’s a community of creatives who love to create. They upload their submissions with a hope of being chosen but, at the end of the day, knowing full well that only one will be selected. They do it because they love to be creative. The do it because it’s fun. They do it because they like to be a part of a community.

We like to think that we’re following the path that these other models have blazed. Again, we know it won’t be for everyone. That’s OK. We understand that there are plenty of established creative professionals who are too busy or uninterested in participating – we respect that. However, for every established creative professional who’s made it, there’s a groundswell of untapped creative talent around the world just looking for a way to express themselves and get noticed. This is who we built crowdSPRING for. As a matter of fact, there was a day when you too were just learning design, looking for clients, and building your portfolio. We believe that everyone deserves opportunity.

We are always available to listen to feedback on our site and our business model and to discuss ways we could engage constructively to help the design industry and designers in general. We have participated in some wonderful debates. You’ll find some of our thoughts and a healthy dialogue about the subject here: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1253-the-nospec-campaign-vs-crowdspring

In addition we would like to invite everyone who will be at SXSW on March 15th to attend our panel discussion on this topic. We’ve put together a great group to debate the topic: “Is Spec Work Evil? The Online Creative Community Speaks” http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1481.

Thanks again and best regards,

Mike Samson
co-Founder
http://www.crowdspring.com/

Jon says:

I agree with Jay and don’t really want to say anything else because these sorts of finger-pointing, business model-bashing and emotion-driven rants accomplish very little. I applaud your thorough post, but I hate to say that I don’t really agree with it. I would mention that our current President has no previous experience, but that would take us onto an entirely different tangent. The point exists, however.

Cheers,
Jon

Kevin deLeon says:

While I don’t agree with Forbes’ article, and their all encompassing “snooty” tag, I am not going to lose sleep over these “design contest” business models. It is harsh overreactions like the ones that I have been reading all day on the interwebs that has gotten designers as a group tagged as “snooty.” I mean we are pretty narcissistic and insecure as a group, but does this really mean the industry is collapsing around us?

First of all, no self respecting business with any amount of money is going to drop cash on a logo from a designer that gives no warranties, and has no previous experience. The companies that are probably interested in this are companies that are either ignorant regarding the work(planning, consulting) that goes into the design process or one that simply just wants a “decent” product for the smallest investment, no matter how little thought has been put into it. For the previous group, the situation is regrettable and I guess they should do a bit more homework before buying. As for the latter company…would you really want to work for them anyway?

Another reason I hardly think this phenomenon is worth getting all riled up about is that if all of these designs are horrible, non-scalable, poorly planned pieces of garbage, then I hardly think this is a business model that is sustainable. I mean would you keep going back to a restaurant where you constantly got food poisoning? I am fairly sure I wouldn’t, no matter how cheap it was (although there have been some questionable Taco Bell experiences in my past).

Lastly, this could also be GOOD for the design industry. Yes, I said it. Good! If all of these “design contest” sites contain awful products, crappy service, and horrible ghouls that only care about turning a buck, then that should equate to clients running as fast as they can back to your website to hire you up! Well, that is what would happen in my perfect world.

Anyway, try to get some sleep people…most of us will still have jobs tomorrow…or will we? MUUUUAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Kevin deLeon’s last blog post..All-Spec Re-design

David Airey says:

Hi Brian,

There’s an interesting discussion over on HOW. Perhaps you’ve yet to read it?

http://forum.howdesign.com/tm.aspx?m=452311

Audree Rowe says:

Hi Brian,

Wow, the internet is really buzzing with this issue! I am a creative at crowdSPRING. I was an art major in college, and have been a middle school art teacher. I am currently home with my kids, which is the most important thing to me at this time. The other important thing is that I get to create. CrowdSPRING lets me do that, and I love it.

I really don’t see it as hurting the design industry. I see it as a fun way for people with small budgets to get some creative work done. It’s also a chance for people like me not only to create, but to create with a purpose. I love putting stuff in the world that wasn’t there before. I love that someone will have my design on their t-shirt.

I am also an editorial cartoonist for my local paper. It pays very little. I don’t care. I love having the opportunity to express my point of view. I thank you for the opportunity to do so here.

Audree

Audree Rowe says:

Hello David,

You are right, ripped-off designs can be a problem, and the owners at crowdSPRING are constantly looking for ways to help prevent things like that from happening. One advantage of having so many people involved in a contest is that a copy will often be noticed and reported. If a creative breaks the code of conduct, they are no longer allowed to participate on the site. (And cS knows their real name to pay them… so changing a screen name doesn’t work.)

Unfortunately, ripped off designs happen everywhere – not just on contest sites. Professional designers are not infallible. Companies should do their homework when looking to create their brand. Many of the buyers at crowdSPRING do just that. They know full well what their competitors are doing with their branding, and hope to stand apart.

As crowdSPRING grows, more and more contest prizes are in excess of $500. The pro projects start at $1000. It’s not all about getting cheap design options.

Most of the companies posting on cS are start-ups. They are just looking for something that can get them by until they have an operating budget. At that point, they can go to a professional design firm to get the branding they truly desire. In the mean time – cS is filling a niche in the market.

I have been reading the comments of designers over the past few days all over the internet. I understand their frustration. CrowdSPRING is not perfect. But it is not evil. At this point in my life, as I am on a break from my career and home with my kids… I have the opportunity to create and find clients by just turning on my computer. I have connected with designers from all over the world and learned from them. I have gained clients for off-site work that I never would have gotten without cS.

Audree

Audree Rowe says:

Hi again, David,

I remember seeing that post about dorian4point. I do not know the details behind it. But as I recall it was a while ago. I think crowdSPRING has been working very hard on this issue. I believe they are much more strict about it now, and less forgiving. The code of conduct they recently enacted is one example.

Keep in mind, this is a young company – less than a year old. The incident with dorian4point is one example of what can go wrong with this business model, but it is also an experience I think they learned from. They are constantly looking for ways to make the company work better – for everyone.

And again, you say professional designers don’t want to copy for the risk of being fired. But MANY designers work for themselves. Are most designers upstanding and honest? I’m sure they are. But just as there are some bad apples on contest sites… there are bad apples everywhere.

I know you and other professional designers are frustrated by sites like crowdSPRING and the effect it is having on the profession. I know newspapers are frustrated at the success of bloggers out there calling themselves writers and taking away their readership. I work for a newspaper – I truly understand. Do you think the creatives at crowdSPRING WANT to take away jobs from designers? Do you think bloggers WANT to put newspapers out of business? I don’t think anyone has evil intentions. I think it is a change taking place in a new computer-driven era.

Audree

Brian says:

That article in Forbes represents the pinnacle of the new trash businesses stemming from this new “get rich quick” concept of starting a dot com and “not having to do any REAL work”.

These guys created a business in an industry they obviously have NO EXPERIENCE in and are looking to profit from young designers looking for work in a struggling economy. They should be ashamed of themselves.

It’s a time honored tradition, even at the highest level, Non-Creative types simply do not comprehend what we do. Everyone wants the highest level design and they want it for the cheapest price. But as with everything a person or a company spends money on…You get what you pay for.

I’ve been a creative professional working for a powerhouse agency in New York for about 10 years now. I’ve seen it all. I’ve done it all. I’ve run into a THOUSAND MBA guys who took one marketing class 15 years ago and think they can do my job. I’ve met hundreds of “Marketing Directors” that can’t tell the difference between Times New Roman and Minion Pro. Why does this happen? Lack of education and products and shows that make our jobs seem easy.

How many new products have come out in the last few years that are “LITE” or “ELEMENTS”? Giving non creatives a false bravado in just a small aspect of our industry. How many times do you see a tv show where people make a logo in 30 seconds, or make impossible photo manipulations with one click of a button? People simply DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

Now this stupid site, CrowdSpring… What a horrible business model. lol. If they knew anything about design, advertising, branding or marketing they would know why. FACT IS, REAL DESIGNERS WOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER use a site like that. I would never enter a “COMPETITION” that wasn’t judged by a panel of experts, or reputable trade publication. Designers HATE bake offs, and this site is just one huge, unmanaged one. REAL DESIGNERS DO NOT want their work STOLEN.

Companies try to do that all the time, and after a few years in the BIZ you learn to spot a scheme. A company that has an IN HOUSE agency that is full of scrub 22 year old designers, and they submit RFP’s to some agencies basically to get ideas, and then just pass them over to their in house kids to copy. It happens all the time, and is why REAL DESIGNERS DON’T DO SPEC WORK FOR A CLIENT THEY DON’T HAVE A PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH.

Companies that will use that site, lol. LET THEM. Let the scrubs do the work REAL designers won’t touch. If crowdspring wants to exploit amateurs and waste their time, let them. The companies that use non-professions are just that, non-professionals. Their work will suffer, and so will their business. I say, we let companies like that shoot themselves in the foot while the companies we work for continue to flourish.

Audree Rowe says:

Brian stated- “Companies that will use that site, lol. LET THEM. Let the scrubs do the work REAL designers won’t touch.”

Thank you – we will.

All the best,
Audree

Brian James says:

@ Audree – What you and your fellow Crowdspring designers fail to understand is that companies like CS are trying to destroy your chances, and that of your fellow “Crowdspringers”, of ever getting ANY job in the graphic design industry. I’ll say that again. If Crowdspring have their way, there won’t be any paying freelance gigs left. You know, the jobs that you’re now building a portfolio to go after. See, it’s not you who’s competing against small, medium and large agencies. It is Crowdspring themselves. Using the unpaid services that you provide to them, as leverage to offer “more for less” to THEIR clients.

You are not competing against design agencies, firms and independent freelancers. Crowdspring as a company is. You are competing against 15,000 other members of your “community” in a glorified dog-and-pony show to “win” a few bucks. And while you might not like hearing it, the simple truth is that you ARE being exploited. What you get out of CS is open for debate, but it remains that you are working for a for-profit company, who are offering your services (your designs) for sale on their site, while not paying you. You may be okay with this arrangement, but most aren’t. Most people expect to be compensated for their time. It doesn’t matter if it’s working at the grocery store, washing cars at the local gas station, tightening bolts on a GM assembly line or pushing pixels around a monitor to develop another company’s logo.

Unpaid labor is exploitation, whether the people supplying the labor believe it is or not. Migrant workers get paid a small percentage of legal wages, and while they may not think they’re being exploited – their efforts earn them a modest income after all – I don’t think there’s any of us who would claim that they’re not. We all understand that these poor souls are getting underpaid solely for the gains of their “employers”. Commercial graphic design is no different.

Just because you’re designing brochures on your computer at home, rather than harvesting tobacco leaves, does not change the basic “pay for your labor” principles involved. In fact, judging by some designer profiles on the CS site, working for migrant wages in a tobacco field would be more profitable.

@ Mike Samson – I’ve seen these verbatim comments on many blogs and forums. It is, I imagine, culled from a long cut-and-paste list of “talking points” that you and your partner Kimbarovsky worked on long before launching Crowdspring, predicting the backlash from the design community that you’re now experiencing. Though saying something often does not make it accurate and comparing yourself to Threadless and Istock Photography is a bandwagon fallacy verging on a non sequitur. There are numerous differences between these sites and yours, but I’ll stick with the most notable – Crowdspring isn’t “crowdsourcing” anything. CS is a design contest website, a concept that’s nothing new, as old as dirt, and been going on for eons. I’ll remind you that your logo was designed by 99 Designs, the company you ‘borrowed’ the original design-contest-as-a-company model from. While you often deny this interesting tidbit, the contest is still viewable here http://99designs.com/contests/321

Unlike the author of this blog post, I don’t think you should be “ashamed of your business model”. You should be quite proud that you’ve managed to get what, 15,000 people, to agree to work for, sorry on, Crowdspring with only the faintest hope of ever getting paid for their efforts, their time and their design. While billing 15 points off the top (I recall reading you predict a profit by 2010).

In the right circles, investment bankers perhaps, that would be something to be proud of. Some of the “little people” might not be so enthusiastic.

Andrew Sabatier says:

A crack down on crowdsourcing and spec work is a waste of energy. There’s no need for graphic designers to panic either. A good long hard look at the value of graphic design services might make more sense. Let’s face it, design is a commodity.

Graphic design is highly commoditised, the market is saturated and the barriers to entry are low. Everyone with a pencil or a computer is a graphic designer. Even the casual designer knows to avoid Comic Sans. On balance we all benefit from graphic design literacy. The market grows and as a result tools improve and client expectations become more sophisticated.

Graphic design tools are being thoroughly democratised. Cost is dropping and the onward march of good free cloudware is unstoppable. It won’t be long before services such as Raven, Sumo Paint and Fonstruct are as good as Illustrator, Photoshop and Fontlab. Bring them on I say.

Hats off to Crowdspring and 99Designs, they’ve capitalised on a commoditised market. They’ve highlighted the actual value of what gets traded.

If you buy logo design services you will get a logo. The quality of which is measurable against the ambitions of the business strategy. If the only manifestation of the business strategy is a logo then there is not much of a brand identity to speak of. The success of the brand is then likely to be very limited and the logo won’t be worth much.

Professional graphic designers need to be specialists. They need to develop proprietary methodologies in service of business strategy. Business strategy requires marketing knowledge best bought from specialists. These specialists are unlikely to be found by crowdsourcing. Designers who work in this manner are also unlikely to feel threatened by crowdsourcing.

As for spec work, that is the prerogative of the graphic design service provider. A client who is not prepared to pay for a taste of the process is probably a client not worth having.

Permalink: http://snipurl.com/dnso3

A.

Sergeant Logo says:

Some say that companies should be prepared to pay a fair rate with a good designer if they really want a good logo. Fine. If that’s the way yo want it, then you will continue to see thousands of startups design their own carppy logos and deal with it. You’r enot going to see a rush of funds going into graphic design services because you took a stand.

Elance has paid out over $150 million to designers and srtists since 2005. Sure, many of them are only several hundred dollars, but that’s money that may never have made it to a designer if the rates were fixed by the design community.

The Internet is powerful. It matches budgets with people willing to work for those budgets. It allows people to take risks and live or die with the results. Designers, if you need cash, submit your work to projects on crowdsourcing sites. Businesspeople, if you need inexpensive design work, submit your needs. Both sides take their chances. That’s the power of the market.

Andy Salo says:

I have used crowdSPRING and found it a useful tool in starting a business. Full comments here: http://andysalo.com/2009/04/01/starting-a-company-without-leaving-your-house-part-2-logo-design/

Andy Salo’s last blog post..Starting a company without leaving your house – part 2 – logo design

Adrian Anderson says:

istockphoto: Sales are generally in the multiple of tens but anywhere from $1 to $175 or more(highest i saw on a quicklook) per image – with multiple images from a shoot each able to be sold multiple times.

Threadless: 524 designs – 50,000+ sales per month = 95 sales/tshirt.

Crowdspring: 1.5% actual sales rate (66 designs/project right?) on each design for the pittance on offer. THATS 1.5% PEOPLE.

I fail to see how Crowdspring can compare themselves to istock and threadless. I’m actually wondering whether basic working rights are being contravened here. Community? you’ve got to be kidding me…

Best Graphic Designer says:

Hi,
I was surfing through the blogs regarding web design when I found this…and I was forced to read the forbe’s article..Really a clear case of amateur journalism is all I can say and I am still wondering this happened at “FORBES”. Appreciate your endeavor to bring this issue to the designing fraternity.

ProjectCenter says:

I certainly can understand the threat that something like CrowdSpring offers, especially on a margin degradation level. On the other hand, this model of business is nothing new, and I believe designers can over come this.

Just take the printing business as an example. Everyone had their own print shop and it was mainly a local business model. In a short period of time, clients and designers started bidding out projects, looking for the lowest price. Then came the VistaPrints of the world. In both cases, time always tells the truth, and people realize the shortcomings of such outfits and practices.

ProjectCenter’s last blog post..The Lost Art Of Typography

falci says:

I think crowdspring is great,because it gives the Tennessee grandma a chance… and it also gives a chance to people like Audree, and well,I think it’s great. (I’m also a creative at crowdspring. I’m not good,I just like doing stuff like this,so it’s fun. I don’t see why it would hurt anyone.) Maybe some “true” designers are jealous and irritated just because it can turn out that a talented grandma can easily take their jobs. Not with the pro skills,I know.

Kreatiph says:

rowdSPRING rocks. Why don’t you admit that you are afraid and angry at crowdSPRING for ripping clients from you? That is the real reason concealed behind a load of professionalism crap. I completely hate this. I believe degrees, or any of that crap are NOTHING. Someone somewhere can do things that you guys with your degrees and professionalism can’t. Check out http://www.innocentive.com/ . That is a good example of how rookies find solutions to problems that even PhD’s can’t find. Not that i mean PhD’s are wrong, on the contrary it is good. What i mean is that ANYBODY can be Creative, Inventive. Even grannies.

By the way, i am also a Creative at crowdSPRING and i just joined. Believe me i got so much inspiration from it and learnt so much than i could have learnt from design courses.

Their is just one thing: Jealousness, Envy at crowdSPRING. Eat your ego and let crowdSPRING help out people like us.

Jared says:

Abso-freak’n'-lutely.

crowd spring is ghetto says:

I certainly can’t agree with the cS business model. But if grandma in tennessee wants to get paid a few dollars for her designs I guess that is her choice. If a stay at home mom wants to start a business and doesn’t have the money for a real identity, well then who are we to tell her she can’t. A real designer charges much more than $200 for a logo. But a real designer/client relationship is built on information and trust. A real identity is crafted over weeks not days. Not a lame excuse for a creative brief. I am very curious to see how many cS customers are still using their logo a year from now. Most people hold up apple and target as brand gods. These business models are centered around design and that is what is making them successful even in a recession. Also, most of the creative participants on cS are in countries where $200 is a lot of money – that makes a huge difference in the risk. For the most part it seems to me that it is people with bad taste designing for people with bad taste. Just my 2¢.