Thursday, February 2, 2012

crowdspring accused of ignorance, manipulation, misrepresentation, and exploitation


Following is an excerpt from link
Ross Kimbarovsky, co-owner of Crowdspring, is either, at best, completely ignorant of the practice of design and it’s potential for providing powerful solutions to a broad range of problems or, at worst, a greedy manipulative capitalist (in the worse sense of the word) who misrepresents design, the design community and the role Crowdspring plays in the devaluation and commoditization of design.
His position is on display for all to read on his blog.
Reducing the design process to mere deliverables along the lines of a Chinese takeout restaurant (with apologies to those proprietors), he makes a case that crowdsourcing opens up wonderful opportunities for designers of all levels of experience to work for big name clients by providing a fair and level playing field through his benevolent site.
In fact Kimbarovsky’s model encourages the exploitation of designers by facilitating the process of engaging them for spec work. He argues, as do other’s who profit from crowdsourcing, that, like the revolution in self-publishing in the music industry, it will open up opportunities for entrepreneurial success for participating designers. This is an intentionally deceptive and flawed analogy. Self-publishing affords artists the choice to market their work with all the associated risks AND rewards. Designers participating in spec work take all the risk, with the reward being so minimal that it couldn’t possibly justify the time, talent and intellectual investment they put into their design. It’s design on the cheap, with Kimbarovsky and his partners in crime, along with the clients, garnering the lion’s share of the profits.
Besides the inaccurate representation of the financial benefit to those participating in crowdsourcing, Kimbarovsky ignores, and actually obscures, the strategic value that design thinking contributes to marketing, cultural and societal challenges. The sourcing mechanism, as it’s incorporated into the Crowdspring model, minimizes any opportunity for this type of contribution by designers, cheating the participating clients of the chance to tap into the talent, creativity and intellect of those they’re looking to buy a design from. There is no opportunity for the designer to help the client reframe the assignment and arrive at a more appropriate solution. It becomes all about ink on paper or pixels on a screen.
Crowdsourcing is a base, cynical attempt to clothe exploitation in the guise of benevolence, fairness and free market dogma.

Stumble Upon & Logo Contest Reviews shows why 99Designs, or anyone, is better than crowdSpring


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99designs Review & CrowdSPRING Review – The Comparison!

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99designs Vs CrowdSPRING
One of the hardest things for clients in crowdsourcing is to select the best logo design contest site for their design needs. This is due to the sharp rise in the number of companies that are entering the crowdsourcing business. A few years ago, clients who wanted to crowdsource their design related requirements had only a couple of online sites to choose from. But as the field grew by leaps and bound, many small firms started holding contests of their own.
The intricacy for project holders these days is to find the right comparison between thetop logo design contest sites on the internet. Since many site offer more or less similar services to their project holders, it is hard to sort the differences and select the most favorable option. For instance, one contest site may offer lower bidding rate while the other might be giving freebies along with their services. How do you compare sites like99designs vs DesignCrowd? This is where we help our readers in understanding the differences that can help them make the right choice.
Today we bring you’re a clear and comprehensive comparison of 99designs review andCrowdSPRING review both under one roof. For your ease of understanding and decision making, both contest sites have been compared in a tabularized fashion.
 
 
  Launched In 20082007
  Number of Designers 108,194 107,952
  Number of Open Projects1,466235
  Number of Designs / Project118128
  Number of Completed Projects 114,964 26,523
  Minimum Logo Bid $295$200
  Commission on Prize Money 20%15%
  Success Ratio (Open Projects/ Designers) 1.3%0.22%
 
After going through reviews of both these logo design contest sites, which do you think is the better option to crowdsource?
              

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