The Donut Project

iStockphoto announced yesterday that they would begin selling logos on their site, in addition to their popular, cheap stock photography.

The logos will sell for 100-750 credits, and each logo can be sold only once. Designers will initially receive 50% royalty, with this policy to change after six months. Credits range from $0.95 to $1.50 depending on how many you buy at a time… meaning logos can cost as little as $95 and max out at $1,125 (although the max price is based on the inefficient purchase of 12 credits at a time until you have 750+ credits, so real world situations won’t go over $1,000).

To get great photography, we hire great photographers to create specific images for us, and logo design is no different. But now, like stock photography, stock logos are becoming mainstream. The consumer attitude of “good enough” is spreading like wildfire.

iStockphoto (owned by Getty images) is in business to make money. Period. So it’s difficult to blame them. Sure, it’s unethical (this can be argued for stock photography as well), but really, they exist to make money, just like the tons of other crowdsourcing logo sites on the web. So where does the blame fall for this new trend?

These sites rely on a number of designers to submit work with no guarantee of pay. Designers seemingly line up around the block at the chance of being paid less than market value for their generic-one-logo-fits-all design. I blame these designers for allowing themselves to be taken advantage of, and lowering the perception of our field to millions of potential customers. Sure, this client perspective won’t hurt Pentagram or Landor, but your average neighborhood designer may see some wallet-crunching by their mom & pop shop clients.

When it comes to crowdsourcing, the responsibility falls solely on designers to stand up and say NO. As long as there are thousands of designers submitting to these sites, they will continue to thrive. I personally vow to no longer associate myself with designers who undervalue our industry by allowing themselves to be taken advantage of as style-whores… and I encourage/challenge you to stand up, have a backbone, and do the same.

It’s simple. Crowdsourcing can’t thrive if there’s no crowd to source.

Let iStockphoto know that we don’t appreciate this through the forum they made this announcement here.

This is my entry for PortlandOnline’s online contest to redesign their site. Read on for some background on the story:

Portland Online – A Web site representing the city of Portland, a site that receives more than 2 million visits per month and includes over 140,000 pages, a site the city of Portland is holding a contest to redesign. How much money would you expect to receive for such a job? $25,000? $10,000? $3,000? $500? – Pshhhhh money! LOL!!1! You silly designer, you.

Portland, Oregon is asking designers to strap on their design boots and redesign their Web site for the payment of “a link to your site at the bottom for one calendar year.” A link. Don’t even think of money, you won’t be receiving any.

Design contests are insulting enough when they pay a nominal fee to the winner. Sometimes some people justify it by saying “well, if I win it’ll be worth it!” – not here. Your work is worth $0 to Portland, even if you win.

Needless to say, this has ruffled some feathers in the industry. Specwatch has posted on it with links to others criticizing this policy:
Spec work? Ur doin it wrong
Open Letter to PortlandOnline Refresh Committee
Dear Portland, just say no to spec work
City of Portland’s Message: We Don’t Respect the Creative Community

(more…)

Spec Watch is a new site devoted to revealing the naked truth about design contests & crowdsourcing.

Design contests and crowdsourcing have been marketed as the “future of graphic design”, a “new reality”, call themselves “disruptive” and their stated goal (as per Forbes) is, “to slash the cost of graphic design work and democratize a snooty business.” Critics have been called “Dinosaurs”, “gatekeepers fighting hard to maintain the status quo”, advised to “evolve or die” and other such sentiments. Crowdsourcing and design contests have been likened to a movement aimed to turn the graphic design industry “on it’s head”. Crowdsourcing sites’ management have “welcomed the debate” about spec work, and are very vocal about defending their business model on blogs, forums and some have even participated in a SXSW panel debate entitled “Is Spec Work Evil”.

Spec Watch keeps an eye on, and documents, many of the crowdsourcing design sites across the internet. While in no way unbiased – Spec Watch provides startling facts about these sites and design contests in general. View their site here, or just follow them on Twitter @specwatch for all the content and help fight against design contests, crowdsourcing and spec work.

“CrowdSpring aims to slash the cost of graphic design work — and democratize a snooty business.” 

That is the tagline from Forbes, who has ran an article about crowdSPRING, a web site sponsoring design contests. Forbes fails to provide a journalistic counterpoint to its one-sided lovefest of a company who exploits both young/inexperienced designers AND companies who believe they are getting professional quality work and service. Forbes fails to mention that competing for work in this manner will not help the ’struggling entrepreneurs’ that crowdSPRING so graciously claims to be helping.

How can going from doing ‘not quite enough paid work’… to doing work for free on the 1 in 250 chance you’ll receive a check for $250 and a big thank you by losing all rights to your work help struggling designers? 

OK — so designers lose out. But companies take advantage of this and get great work, right?? Wrong. Design firms are not design secretaries. We (designers) are not monkeys on a computer to make a pretty image while being coached by a client who has no experience or training in creating a brand to portray their company. We are trained professionals at doing what we do and the client suffers by losing the interaction and discussion with the designer. Would you tell a doctor to change the way they are treating your stomach ulcer because your wife doesn’t like the sound of the word ’scalpel’? Is your grandmother suddenly an accountant because she bought QuickBooks? A pirated version of Adobe CS does not a graphic designer make. New companies benefit the most from strong branding and design work, and they are ones most likely to lose out on great work by using this service. Companies end up with detached, sub-par work and noone to run to when the designer stuck them with bad files, because the grandmother from Tennessee has never prepared production work for a printer. 

It’s lose-lose, and Forbes fails to provide that counterpoint other than a small “oh but there are nay-sayers!” It’s disappointing. crowdSPRING, along with other design contest sites that are much larger, are growing at an alarming rate. There are arguments that dismiss this practice as petty, and that it will not damage actual firms because “these clients don’t understand good design, and wouldn’t have come here anyhow.” And that’s true right now. I just wonder what happens in 10-20 years when this practice has been introduced to young entrepreneurs who are now running Fortune 500 companies… and were never taught the value of good design. It’s troubling.

Check out http://www.no-spec.com/ for more information on why unpaid speculative design work is bad for designers and the clients who think they have beat the system.

original link via Quipsologies
photo © Forbes