Designcrowd: Crowdsource your graphic design projects

Designcrowd.com is a platform where graphic designers can compete with each other for projects posted by individuals or companies. How it works? Pretty easy, business post a briefing with the description of what they want and their budget and hundreds of graphic designers from around the world send them their proposes within days. Then, the company chooses its favorite ones and gives feedback to the designers for minor changes till get the perfect design for its needs. Of course, the company pays the designer and the designer sends all the copyrights and the files to the company. If you don’t find the design you are looking for, the webpage gives you your money back. One of the differences between Designcrowd and its competitors is that Designcrowd pays also for participation to the finalist designs, attracting more designers than any other design crowdsource webpage. This has made the company grow faster in the last years and even get involved in some acquisitions of other crowd design companies. The platform covers any kind of creative project, from web design to logos.

The system has clear advantages for companies: they have more options to choose from than a traditional graphic design company can offer, it´s possible to benefit from the creative diversity around the world and even cheaper than normal graphic designers. In the other hand, the system has been criticized for diminishing the quality of the designs, since there’s no certainty of getting paid, artist have less incentive to put extra effort on the designs and prefer to apply to several projects than work hard in one. Another detrimental point is the possibility of recycling ideas for several projects, compromising the singularity of the design. Also has risk for the designers, companies can take advantage of them by just copy their designs and reject their project.

All in all, the webpage has proven pretty successful, even getting selected as start up of the month by the prestigious magazine Wired.

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