Comments on: Crowdsourced Graphic Design Marketplace: DesignCrowd

By: METZ

METZ — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 07:14:02 +0000

The designs submitted are way below standards. We chose a Guaranteed Project option by mistake and now we are forced to choose designs that are terrible and to pay for it! Even worse, Emily from Design Crowd actually tells you that you don’t get to have your money back but they can extend the deadline further for you so that you can get more submissions without considering that the client also has time running on his hands! In our situation, we gave the contest 10days and we received 95% of really unfavorable designs. And even the 5% we had to force pick was because we had to pick the lesser of evils to get it moving!

By: Lisa

Lisa — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 03:06:22 +0000

DesignCrowd is EXTREMELY biased towards the clients. They do not care how much time and effort designers put into their work. DesignCrowd doesn’t reinforce any timeliness of client responses and feedback and they don’t even make sure that clients pick a winner at the end of the contest!! If you really want to know for yourself, go ahead and create an account on DesignCrowd. You will see several “closed” contests that are waaaayyyyyyyy past the deadline but have no winner chosen. What about all the designers who spent all of their time doing work? The least DesignCrowd could do is enforce a policy that clients HAVE to choose a winner, especially if the payment is guaranteed. It is unfair to everyone BUT DesignCrowd because they make money either way. There is nothing wrong with spec work as long as the company who is the middleman does it fairly.

By: RonAldo

RonAldo — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:48:43 +0000

i tried it and i loved it!

didn’t win my first project but was payed a participation payment. they still look to be growing but i think there is more here than just the same old specwork website.

By: Catherine Azzarello

Catherine Azzarello — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:40:56 +0000

NO NO NO and NO again!

I don’t have time right now to launch another lengthy post about WHY crowdsourcing/contests/spec work is bad–for client and designers alike. But you can investigate the following links:

http://www.no-spec.com/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/07/interview-with-specwatch-the-naked-truth-about-design-contests/#comments

By: Dumm

Dumm — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:20:48 +0000

good. i will try this

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:19:27 +0000

$250 for website designs?
$70 logo projects?
Pure evil.

By: Steve-o

Steve-o — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:34:42 +0000

I like this. Very powerful. A number of advantages over outsourcing marketplaces and design contest sites.

I particularly like what they’re doing with participation payments. Is subtle but seems like they’re actually making an effort to make design contests sustainable and fair. Don’t think it’s quite there yet (participation payments are $20). Could be a bit higher but when some projects are 0.5hrs work that will at cover cost of time in.