Crowdsourced Design: Is crowdSPRING the next iStockPhoto?

Last week Business Week ran a story on crowdsourcing that should be required reading for anyone following the phenomenon closely. Earlier this month Getty Images, the behemoth of the stock photography industry and the owner of iStockPhoto, announced it would begin licensing photos found on Flickr.com. Now this is significant news in and of itself. It's crowdsourced photography taken to its logical conclusion. With iStock, the contributors might be amateurs (and some 96 percent of them are), but they are shooting images with the market in mind. When Getty licenses an image from Flickr, they are effectively dipping straight into that seemingly bottomless well of our visual collective conscious. (For some specs on the deal, see Thomas Hawk.)

While last week's Bizweek story used the Flickr deal as a peg, the writer, John Tozzi, used it as a platform to explore a much more important issue:  The extent to which crowdsourcing is hurting professional designers. This year at least three companies—99designs, crowdSPRING, and Pixish—that allow people to shop out design gigs to the lowest bidder have emerged. (Update: crowdSPRING employs a different model. Clients post a creative brief and the amount they're willing to pay; if the price is right, designers submit ideas in response. See Angeline's comment, below, for more detail.) Professional designers, like professional photographers before them, have reacted with understandable consternation. When Derek Powazek (the founder of the excellent JPG Magazine, and as such a pioneer in community-based photography projects)
launched Pixish, his boards were inundated with outraged designers. From Tozzi's Bizweek piece:

Powazek says that within days of the site's launch in February, posters on blogs and forums said Pixish would "destroy the design industry." He has little sympathy for his critics: "If a three-day-old site can destroy the graphic design industry, then it deserves to be destroyed," he says. But to placate them, he posted an extended response on the site and banned logo designs from the permitted assignments.

Powazek argues that the people posting jobs on his site, who generally offer rewards of $100 or less, aren't the same customers that use graphic design shops. Sites like Pixish give talented hobbyists ways to build their portfolios and get exposure, he adds. Professionals scapegoat microstock sites and crowdsourced design services instead of examining why their own businesses are struggling, Powazek contends. "This isn't Flickr's fault. It's yours," he adds.

The experience of stock photography would argue otherwise. While iStockPhoto and the other microstock sites have unquestionably opened up new markets, they've also taken over old ones at the expense of many professionals. Which brings me to the question of the day:

Will professional Graphic Designers see its revenues erode as a result of crowdsourcing?

Update: Tony adds these links in the comments below, but I wanted to bring them up into the post proper because the forum threads therein are as substantive and edifying as they are contentious.

http://www.springwise.com/style_design/more_crowdsourced_graphic_desi/

http://andrewhyde.net/spec-work-is-evil-why-i-hate-crowdspring/

Comments

[kral oyun]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots??

[muzik numberone]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots?

[su deposu]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots????

[Branda]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots?

[haber]

It sounds to me like the clamor for justice and role back is nothing more than a head in the sand attitude and a cry out from stalwarts who are being forced to change gears

[line]

sounds to me like the clamor for justice and role back is nothing more than a head in the sand attitude and a cry out from sds

[haber]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden

[line]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots?

[kraloyun]

"I'm perhaps constitutionally sympathetic to their plight." -I'm in the same boat, Jeff. While I never complained about iStockPhoto, it's been taking a bit of adjusting to accept CrowdSpring and 99Designs, seeing that design is my primary source of income. Yet, licensed work is inherently much more speculative than on-demand work.

[haber24]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots?

[Custom Logo Design]

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[evden eve nakliyat]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots?

[Custom Logo Design]

hi jeff,
I always love to read your articles, good job.

[evden eve nakliyat]

The question I have about photography and the "Golden Mean" is this...Do photographers conciously look for these patterns, or are they just taking pretty shots?

[householdname]

Sorry to say this train has already left the station.

The issue is not about creativity or perceived value, it's about economics. And this (below) is the best analysis of why crowdsourcing is the monster that will eventually eat your job:

"The introduction of outsourcing platforms that makes worker productivity portable and portable global capital leads to global labor arbitrage (which neatly guts the theories of comparative advantage upon which belief in the beneficial effects of modern trade theory is based). In short, exploiting the differences between the wages of the western middle class and those in developing economies is now costless and risk free (which makes it an arbitrage opportunity).

Arbitrage opportunities, once found, typically reset to zero quickly (the differences in prices are brought into parity). The result in this case will be a globally normalized wage where the same price is paid for labor no matter where it is located geographically. Almost certainly, given what we are currently seeing right now, the biggest shift will be in the collapse in the incomes of the Western middle class instead of upward movement among low wage competitors."

---

See also "Pyramids to pancakes" by Josephine Green, Senior Director Trends and Strategy at Philips Design.

[puSOPHIE]

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[Logo Design]

Hi there,
I think i had visited your site before, and also commented at that time to any of your post. But now came to this post I enjoyed reading it, nice job dear.

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I'm a huge believer of the importance of design. I'm not so sure about design + marketing >> engineering. Design should incorporate engineering, not be opposed to it or somehow differentiated from it. It's important to remember that these are processes, not discrete elements

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[takı]

thanks admin...

[Crowdsourcing]

Logo Designers who wish to show their mettle and earn quick money enter into logo design contests on their own free will. But, crowdsourcing comes up with its own benifits and drawbacks.

[logo design]

Crowdsourcing is really beneficial for Small business owners but not for logo designer

[Discount Louis Vuitton]

It sounds to me like the clamor for justice and role back is nothing more than a head in the sand attitude and a cry out from stalwarts who are being forced to change gears.