Crowdsourcing – yay or nay?

Crowdsourcing is becoming increasingly popular nowadays, as fewer companies want to pay big money for good design. By crowdsourcing a design, a company can cut out trying to find a design team to suit their needs and offer a project to the masses with them competing with one another to complete the project. Once completed the company can then choose their favorite design and reward the designer.

While it might seem a much more fruitful option, in many ways this can create problems for the client and for designers.

While many of the best options created could be from someone who has studied and trained to be a designer, the project is also open to those who haven’t. This might seem like a fair option but in the end it takes away valuable work from those who have worked hard to get into the field and who have experience. And most of the work submitted will be rejected, meaning a lot of time wasted for many people.

From a company perspective, if they are unhappy with the designs submitted, revisions can be much harder to make due to the wide scope of individuals involved, whereas working with a small company, the solution can be made bespoke for their needs.

Creating a closer relationship with the client, means that you know more about their needs and what they like whereas issuing the brief to a diverse audience means that it can be misinterpreted and the project cannot evolve in the way it would one-to-one.

The lack of a client-designer relationship can be a great loss, as it denies the client the opportunity to work with some great designers that could give them a reputation for taking care and consideration with the image and values of their brand.