Latest entry into the increasingly crowded design contest market is some outfit out of Chicago calling themselves Crowdspring. Despite their lofty claims to the contrary – if we could refer to it as design crowdsourcing, that would be peachy – it’s just another website that boasts a load of folks working for free (in the hopes of winning a cash prize) being paired with clients who think they’re getting more bangola for their buck. Not going to get into the nuts-and-bolts of why the thinking behind this is messed, as I’ve pretty well tub-thumped that one to death. Here. Here. Here. Here. And here.
What’s amusing about this new logo venture is that Crowdspring gone riled up some of the No-Spec! crowd, which generated a heated (and lengthy) debate on the 37 Signals design blog. If you’ve got an hour and a large cup of java, it’s certainly worth a read.
The owner of Crowdspring spent a great deal of internet ink extolling the virtues of other designers working for nothing in order to attract ‘clients’ to his website (quite magnanimous that), while the No-Spec! advocates argued that this wasn’t a particularly good position for someone in the graphic design industry to take. Must admit I found the Crowdspring spokesperson taking a ‘champion of the design underdog’ position to be a whole new wrinkle to the usual apologetics.
All things considered, I’m leaning towards non-plussed – just another design contest site popping up on the interwebs, already chocker with design contests sites, with the usual caveats applying. At the end of the day these Crowdspring cats are no different, better or worse, than the folks that they pinched the idea from (as a point of interest, and giving credit where credit is due, one could argue that Utah based logo design outfit Logoworks were ground zero for all subsequent logo contest sites).
Not that I blame him defending his venture, understanding perfectly the position of the dudes that run these sites (they ‘sell’ a product without having to deal with pesky inconveniences like salaries, health benefits, hardware, sofware and what have you). I understand the client’s position (“wow, like a hundred different designers for a couple of hundred, awesome”), it still amazes me that designers still argue for the right to give their work – the result of God given talent, years of education, investments in hardware and software – away for nothing. Nor do they seem to understand the worth of a logo. Oh, I certainly understand the ‘rights’ thing. I demand the ‘right’ to give away my car to some guy that lives in a cardboard box under the expressway, it’s just not in my best interest to do so. So I don’t.
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Tags: business, Contests, crowdsourcing, industry, spec, spec work
You have written quite a bit about this topic, haven’t you! The 37signals discussion speaks much better about our views than anything I could say in response to this post. But I thought I’d take a minute to point out that as a business that employs 8 full time people in Chicago (soon 9), we do deal with salaries, health benefits, hardware, software, and what have you. We’ve built a serious business (with customized legal agreements for clients and freelancers, IP policies, payment to freelancers anywhere in the world, required escrow in every project, non disclosures, privacy features, notifications and robust communications, project management, etc.). And while it’s tempting to group us with others – our business is different in many significant ways from the companies you’ve written about (as we discuss in the 37signals post). The clients don’t just think they are getting more – they are getting more. We’ve been fortunate that in addition to many SMBs that have posted nearly 1,000 projects in our four months of operation, major brands and agencies have also posted projects. A very significant percentage of them are repeat clients.
I do understand that you and I disagree about our place in the world. We’re OK with that. We didn’t built crowdSPRING to displace existing professionals – and many from time to time work on crowdSPRING. We built crowdSPRING for the underdogs – and you are right – we are not apologetic about that or about our business. We welcome all but know that crowdSPRING is not for everyone.
Best,
Ross Kimbarovsky
co-Founder
Crowd Spring
Of course crowdSPRING is not for everyone as not everyone can afford to work for free for long. Basic maths actually.
[...] usually through blog comments and press releases by co-founder Ross Kimbarovsky – like to portray themselves as a [...]
[...] basic premise of the panel was this – Mike Samson, one of the co-founders of Crowdspring (a design contest platform, based in Chicago, who recently caused a stir after being featured in a Forbes article that opined [...]
i like crowdSPRING! Very professional!