The Dynamic Business crowdsourcing experiment
Inspired by an interview with 99designs’ founder Mark Harbottle last month, Dynamic Business decided to put crowdsourcing into a real life scenario by using the site to source this month’s cover design. Here’s how editor Jen Bishop found the experience.
It was a big risk to take the final cover design of this magazine out of my team’s hands but I have to say, I’m delighted with the final result. Myself and our art director Chantelle Gregory thought it would be a great one-off experiment. And then we went one further by letting the readers vote for the ultimate winner from our top three choices.
We received 270 cover designs from all over the world with Effendy Chen being the final winner. 99designs, which is the world’s largest online graphic design marketplace, lets you post a brief and what you’re prepared to pay for the work, and then designers compete to ‘win’ the contest and the prize money. If you don’t like a design, you can eliminate it. If you think something has potential, you give feedback and hope the designer comes back and refines the design to suit your needs. We learned a lot from the experience so I’m keen to share it with you here.
The first thing you need to know is that you’ll probably receive a lot of rubbish from people who haven’t put much time or effort into their submission. I certainly spent the first few days seriously questioning why I’d agreed to this. One stock library image after another was submitted, many completely off brief. But the support staff from 99designs were great at giving us advice on how to give feedback and attract better designs.
The next thing you need to know is that this is a time-consuming process. When you’re in a busy day job, to have to keep on top of the designs daily is a chore. But when the good designs come in (and, to be honest, they are the minority), it’s really worthwhile. We had three we would have happily run on the cover and we spent a lot of time going back and forth with those designers, refining concepts and just getting to know them.
While our readers loved the idea and the chance to get involved, what surprised me the most was the groundswell of negative comments we received about crowdsourcing via the Dynamic Business Twitter and Facebook. Many said it cheapened the design profession and that it was unfair some people did the work and ultimately weren’t rewarded for their time. While I can see where they’re coming from, my personal view is that it’s a free market. You can choose to participate in or not.
From a customer point of view, as someone who is used to dealing with professional, talented, in-house designers, I’d say crowdsourcing is a risky business. I know I can give my designers a brief and be confident I’ll get what I need when I need it. With crowdsourcing there are no guarantees. Then again, it can be a lot cheaper. Like anything, you have to go into it with your eyes open and weighing up the advantages and disadvantages.
Chantelle Gregory, who is the art director on Dynamic Business, was initially concerned about crowdsourcing the cover but thought it would be an interesting experiment. “I agreed to go ahead with it because we were going to be featuring a non-biased article on whether or not crowdsourcing is successful and what the pro’s and con’s are,” she said. “I thought it would add a level of depth to the article if we could not only collect experiences from others, but then compare those experiences with our own.”
Gregory found the experience time-consuming, adding: “If you are not willing to put in the time and effort towards communicating with the designers and offering feedback in order to reach the desired result – don’t do it. Once we started offering more feedback, the quality of the submissions definitely improved. Crowdsourcing is very different to approaching a marketing or branding agency who knows exactly what they are doing.”
It was an anxious few days for both of us but by the end of the week, Gregory and I were much happier. “After time spent on feedback towards the end of the competition we had a few really great submissions and were able to refine the ideas to a point that we were very happy with,” says Gregory. “I think we were very lucky when Effendy decided to enter the competition! He hit the nail right on the head and had a great concept and illustration style from the start – exactly what we were looking and hoping for.”
Gregory, who has been a designer for four years, added: “I felt that most of the people submitting work were not professionally trained so you do need to spoonfeed them quite a bit.” She agrees with many of the anti-crowdsourcing brigade, but says: “Crowdsourcing is what it is. It is clear from the beginning that if you want to enter a contest on these sites, that you are entering knowing that there is a high chance that you won’t win the job. Sites like these should be treated like a competition space where you enter a competition for fun and to gain industry experience. But know that there are hundreds of other people entering and that you might not win.”