The "designer" gets a little bit of scratch and exposure they never would have gotten otherwise. The "client" gets a design that meets their budget, and which is likely to be much better than what a professional designer would do for the same price. Who's losing out here?
> and which is likely to be much better than what a professional designer would do for the same price
Why would you think a novice on the web with Photoshop will automatically do better than a professional with experience and who is looking beyond making a cool design?
Logos aren't just pieces of art — they also brand a company. Crowdsourcing will never match a professional brand designer.
And why would you think that a novice on the web with Photoshop _couldn't_ do better than a 'professional' with blah blah blah, especially when this new logo is amateur hour at best and utter crap at worst.
I sincerely hope that the entire Internet is being trolled by The Gap on this one, given that the alternative is entirely depressing.
Either that or this logo is legit, meant to last, will work on consumers, and in turn will reduce designer's hourly rates around the world. :)
Is there any doubt that they were trolling with this new logo? It looked like a placeholder from the first moment I saw it, and I know nothing about design (see historious).
You're committing a fallacy in assuming that they have no choice. Even if there are a million novices with Photoshop and two professional designers, they'll still get a better deal than having chosen one professional designer. They'll pay the same money and get two professional designs they can choose from, instead of just one.
* Top5 get points to be ranked in a monthly leaderboard, they'll eventually get paid depending on their ranking in that leaderboard.
* Winning/ranking good will help you get a position in a review board to review other submissions and then get paid.
* You still can participate in bugraces, which generally doesn't take too much time (hours or even minutes) and get paid accordingly.
This is just a small portion of how you can make money. Granted, it is not easy, but if you're good, well, you are good.
Gain exposure? Working with big clients, AOL, ferguson, lendingTree, and a lot more - Plus, If you have a job interview, you still can get a recommendation from TopCoder with a list of your winnings/projects (it's visible in your profile anyway)
I'm speaking from experience here, It's so wrong on many levels to put all crowd sourcing websites in the same basket.
Crowdsourcing doesn't give many people an 'opportunity' to try something new - it provides the client with cheap design.
There's a very clear motivation behind providing design in this way, and the designer is always going to lose out.