[tbgvi]

Not sure where to even start on this one. Spec work sucks, it wastes designer's time and the end product often doesn't turn out great because they have an incentive to spend as little time as possible.

But I have to say, this is even worse. Looking at point #4, they actively went out and tried to get as many designers as possible to do free work for them. From their post:

"The response rate was staggering, with around 85% responding and almost an equal amount actually submitting designs. The most time effective way to do this is to download an auto-text completer which allows you to save a message and quickly populate any document with it by selecting a shortcut."

Congratulations, you just figured out how to minimize your time spent while maximizing the hours wasted by the 'losing' designers. Or, in their own words... "For a minimal amount you are able to tap the creative abilities and talents of a multitude of people across the world. Why pay one designer 10 times more for a product you may not like?"

Edit: Not looking to get into a back in forth here, so I would recommend this to anyone who thinks design contests are a good idea: http://www.no-spec.com/faq

[jharrison]

Whose fault is it if a designer chooses to engage in a contest and they end up spending their time in a losing effort?

We all have to compete but rather than disparage a business owner for being a good steward of their money could you instead present a valid argument for using a designer as opposed to a contest? Some good reasons why a designer, that might hypothetically cost 10x more than a contest, would be better money spent in the long run, would offer a lot of value to this conversation. I feel like the last quote in your post is valid. Why would someone want to pay a lot and possibly get nothing for it? Is that not a waste of the business owner's time and money?

I'm not trolling. As a business owner on a limited budget and with clients in the same boat, I'm genuinely interested in the answer.

[justinph]

A good designer would treat it as an actual design project rather than merely a "make it pretty" project. A good designer would step back and examine the actual business and functional problems and evaluate ways in which design could solve them. They'd work with the client to translate those problems and solutions into a visual and functional design.

Rather, in this project, it sounds like this Andrew.Tweed (the OP) attempted to solve all those problems himself, and then went shopping (shadily, I would say) for a photoshop monkey to solve his only issue, the "make pretty" part.

One of the other things you get working with a real designer is an actual relationship. When you need some collateral designed or work on a new project done, a designer that knows you and your business is invaluable. I wouldn't say it's impossible to find with some guy over the internet you paid $3000 to make your website, but I'd say it's less likely.

This may have been effective from a narrow viewpoint, but a real design process it was not.

[horatioplink]

The part that's so frustrating is that thomvest (and lots of other companies) is in the business of creating relationships and yet they don't understand how having a relationship with a designer/agency will benefit them.

[lwhi]

I completely agree.

If a company treats the people involved in its business relationships as cheap, expendable commodities - the company is not going to shine.

[reneherse]

And it's an investor/partner/employer to avoid

[lwhi]

A good designer wouldn't participate.

[rhizome]

Would you feel the same way if you thought you were hiring a designer and they sold you what amounts to a template that they've used for a hundred other clients? After all, the designer would merely be a good steward of his time by maximizing the value of work already done.

Selling the same work to multiple business owners is the flipside of spec'ing out to multiple designers. Think of it as a contest to see who the best businessperson is, by seeing who can derive the most business value from the same design.

[farlington]

Great point. It's interesting to think of crowdsourcing websites as just another channel through which designers can sell templates.

If the customization/client service end is kept to a minimum, a 10% conversion would probably be a pretty nice, relatively hassle-free business. There'd be an initial investment of time in developing a stock of templates to use, but after that, a designer could probably profit off the same work for quite some time, with a minimum of effort dropping in logos, changing colors and swapping stock photos.

And for every 'contest' won, a 99designer would make way more than they could selling a single psd template—not to mention having a much more aggressive sales strategy and zero advertising costs.

It kind of makes you wonder who's exploiting who.

[hurricane]

Hi tbgvi,

Thought the article made it clear, but we specifically went out and got designers we thought were good, especially from competing platforms. In total I believe that it ended up being around 10-15 messages that we sent out. I thought the auto-text completer was a useful tool for things I would be repeating anyway.

Also in the post you will note that we tried to stress giving feedback, if you don't like something you don't waste a designers time and you move on or they will come back with something else.

I understand designer's frustration with crowdsourcing, but this post was for other startup folks who don't/can't spend a great deal on a designer.

Finally, this wasn't a minimal time process. I spent a few hours every day for a few weeks responding, giving feedback, and iterating. It would have been much more simple to offload this to a designer who took care of everything, but at the end of the day I was happy with the result.