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Ok Then, Get Me My Logo Without Exploitsourcing

Mar
31
By Aviel Ginzburg
Tags:crowdsourcing, design, exploitsourcing

As part of the process for designing a logo for Deal Whale, we decided to put together a 99 designs contest and source some design ideas via a guaranteed $150 contest. It sounds innocent enough, and the exact first step you might expect from a company founded on the concept of crowdsourcing. But as it turns out, we weren’t crowdsourcing at all. We were “exploitsourcing”. And it’s a damn touchy subject.

What is exploitsourcing you might ask?

According to Andrew Hyde, founder of pick.im among many, many other awesome things, exploitsourcing is:

“Asking a community to individually complete custom work for the chance and main motivation of non noteworthy payment.”

By that definition, we definitely were exploitsourcing, and it’s a serious problem in some instances, but I think in our case, that’s largely beside the issue. We had a need, and from our vantage point, services like 99 designs were the only things out there that delivered on it.

Working in the agency world, on tough deadlines with tough customers (sound familiar startups?), logo design on important projects often works as follows:

  1. All(most) of the designers put together a concept.
  2. Everyone gets together and talks about what they like from each direction.
  3. They assign one designer, who from there on is GOD, the task of making the logo.
    NOTE: This is often not the designer who made the “favorite” design and he/she may go in a completely different direction, but at least everyone is by this point somewhat “informed” about what works and what doesn’t.

I like this process. It works. And I want my logo to go through those steps, even if I don’t have an agency working on it.  Granted, many people skip the first 2 steps, but I find them to be very important.

In our case, as a 2 person startup, I’m the designer, so I’m going to be doing #3 (if I didn’t have design skills I would hire someone). But regardless, I still want to take care of steps 1 & 2.

As it’s playing out for us:

  • Step 1 is a 99 designs competition.
  • Step 2 is internal/external conversation and voting on Backstage to figure out what designs people like and why.

So what it comes down to then, is that we had to exploitsource, because as far as I can see, there’s no other option for step 1 that fits my need.

All that being said, Andrew Hyde is doing great things with Pick and so is Solvate, but in my mind, that just solves step #3 as far as logo design is concerned.

I would gladly use a service other than 99 designs for step 1, but I just don’t see one.

Ideally, rather than putting down a $150 prize on a logo concept, I’d like to put down $150 for a group with 5 entrants (who apply and I accept based off their portfolios), who each get a cut of the cash if their design concept isn’t completely bogus.

Do any of you want to build that for me? Please? I don’t want to have to build it myself.

  • At DesignCrowd you can select specific designers to work with by sending them invites. Each invite guarantees the designers $15 or $20. At the same time we open the project up to other designers. We call this hybrid-crowdsourcing. The number of paid invites you have is dictated by the size of your budget. A $200 budget has 2 invites. A $400 budget has 4 invites and so on. We find this model is fairer for designers and attracts a higher calibre of designer. Please see our designer directory here http://designers.designcrowd.com or this article on how to invite designers on DesignCrowd http://www.designcrowd.com/help/article/can-i-invite-designers-to-my-project
  • What for me determines how exploitative it is is a) is it a full treatment (all sizes, B&W plus color), or just a single concept work, b) if it's not a full treatment, is the additional work if their design is chosen compensated at market rate? Getting a full package for a nominal contest price is exploitation, win or lose.

    Getting a concept piece is just a really competitive bidding war - the true pros won't play, they don't have to. The established pros already have people who know their work and solicit bids from them and just a few others, not hundreds of others. Up and comers might try 99 Designs, but if they find themselves losing but seeing their work repurposed elsewhere without compensation it will get ugly fast - artists talk.

    IMO, if you, use 99 Designs to find the logo artist with the concept piece you like, and then work directly with that artist through an agent for the full set of logo treatments you need, it's not total exploitsourcing, its just nastily competitive bidding. A shade of difference.

    In my field, I never bid consulting jobs against people from India and China, because they will always undercut me on price and time, and people who will accept those bids will accept that quality, or lack thereof. You have the same factor at work here. You can get it cheap, and maybe find that diamond in the rough who will do contests because they are just starting out, or you can go more expensive and get known quality.
  • Melissa
    crowdspring.com is another option, same contest oriented logo idea. In my experience it seems like you get 3-4 quality submissions and you work with those designers through comments to improve the quality of the logo before the end date of the contest.
  • You know the woman that did Nikes logo was only paid 35 dollars. They were a startup at that point. It doesn't matter if you use some designer out of college getting his feet wet, a online service that sources people to design for way under the average cost of a logo or an agency. You get what you pay for. I work with startup companies on pricing structures that all them get started, and let the logo do what it does, represent your company.
    I wish I could get my dentist and lawyers to competitive bid for my money since they are trained proffesionals also.
  • I hadn't heard of 99 designs, but let's face it, artwork is contest oriented. Whether you're hanging your stuff in a gallery, or doing advertising design on spec (it actually means "specification" not "speculative".) But as far as speculative work -- builders do it, salesmen do it, even doctors do it (though they've been able to artificially limit supply.) Virtually all startups are doing it too.

    Competing is good, and competition gives better results. That said, I'd like to see a service like you said, or where you could reward the top 5 in a track-and-field style staggered payment system or somesuch.

    I'm tempted to go to 99 designs myself, but instead maybe I should launch my contest in your blog comments... nah!
  • 99designs paid out over $704,000 to designers all over the world this past month alone - that's a lot of of opportunity. Here are some designer profiles: http://blog.99designs.com/category/designer-profiles/

    Cheers,
    Jason
    99designs.com
  • We also used 99 designs and then iterated on the winner with an agency (as we do not have a fabulous designer in house). I understand the no-spec sentiment, but dearly love the quantity (and quality of some) of the logo designs I got from 99 designs.
  • It would be a pretty cool site. Wish I had the time to put it together, too.

    Seems like when the process is used with 99 designs, it's even more exploitative than usual... after all, you are "using" the work of the losers.

    To me, it's all the same as the "no spec" sentiment from a while back: http://www.no-spec.com/

    Design isn't like acting, though, there's no Screen Actor's Guild watching out for the profession. It's ultimately up to the individuals to not work on spec... not much the rest of us can do about it if they don't.
  • As far as "using the work of the losers", that's a really good point, though the whole system sort of breaks down in this case since the "winner" is merely the person whose design concept is most likely to be iterated upon.

    All that being said, it would be reckless to make the decision without asking others what they liked wouldn't it? And it's not like you *forget* what they did. So how can you really *not* ever use the work of the losers in any competition?

    What it comes down to though, is that places like 99 designs exist for a reason, there is clearly a market there. Just maybe there's a more ethical way of serving it without abandoning crowdsourcing and competitions.
  • You have plenty of options. They just require more time and money.

    Recycling costs more time and money. Riding the bus costs way more time. Buying cloths, shoes, and electronics that weren't made by workers who endure conditions you don't approve of probably requires more time and money, too.

    Oh, what you want exists. LogoLoft and LogoWorks are both in that neighborhood. But you'd still get better cost-value-time ratio with 99 Designs.
  • Very, very true.

    But I've actually seen those services and they don't fly for me, largely because they lack the competitive aspect (applying to get to make the logo and a ticking clock), which I think is critical to Step 1. At agencies, it ends up being competitive as hell, I don't just want 5 schmucks handing over some ideas :-) I want them working as hard as I do for every single (possible) buck.
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