Crowdsourcing: What it Means for Artists

Recently, I read this article in Businessweek from last year about crowdsourcing.  For those not familiar with the term, crowdsourcing is “the practice of using large, distributed and minimally directed groups to accomplish tasks.”

In other words, a company needs a logo, so rather than search for a designer they like and pay them to design, they just put a short brief up on one of these websites, like crowdSPRING, with a price tag attached, and designers compete for the payoff.  It’s spec work optimized- for the businessperson, that is.

As the article mentions, the problem with this type of practice is that it drives down the market value of highly skilled work like graphic design and illustration, and forces artists to compete in an already highly competitive environment just to put food on the table.

Personally, I am very against crowdsourcing of creative talent.  There are many very good reasons why spec work is detrimental, not just to the creative community, but ultimately to businesses utilizing this method as a way to get cheap creative input.  One of the best sites on the web for more information about how spec work hurts is No!Spec.  On a related note, I also love Clients From Hell.

For now, I leave you with a bit of humor- the vendor-cleint relationship in real world situations: