Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Following on the unethical roundly-lauded success of Threadless.com, there's a new entrant into the crowd-sourced design market: CrowdSPRING.com. Business owners take note: if you need some design done, it's simple. Create an account, give your vague brief, and set a price for the winner that you pick.

Sounds good? Sure does. Read on.

In their FAQs , crowdSPRING states:

"When working with traditional creatives, the buyer takes all the risk - they pay up front and hope their project turns out well. When working on many other sites, creatives take all the risk - they do the work up front and hope to get paid in the end.

We've tried to find a balance that works for everyone. Here, the buyer pays up front and the creatives get to work right away. We promise buyers that if they don't get at least 25 entries to their project then they can walk with a full refund. In return, we promise creatives that their projects won't go cancelled or abandoned for no good reason."

What these FAQs don't reflect is the utter imbalance in who's assuming risk. The buyer sets a price and waits to pick the one he likes. Off in the cloud, 25+ designers work obediently for only the possibility of reward.

Let's illustrate this with a scenario. Let's pretend I want to spend $250 for a logo. 25 "creatives" jump at the chance and get to work right away. They spend an hour apiece, 'cause that's how long good logos take. 

A few days later, I pick one design and the designer gets paid from the crowdSPRING escrow. Not a bad deal: $250/hr to the lucky designer.

Not such a good deal to the other 24 folks. They didn't even get their share of the $250, or $10/hr. And, oh by the way, they just paid an opportunity cost for not doing funded work. In fact, the only value proposition that crowdSPRING offers them is this: the lucky designer will get paid, since the funds are held in escrow.

But hey, they got a portfolio piece and some experience out of it, right? 

I find this site to be particularly disrespectful, unethical and extortionist. Sure, it's the designer's decision whether to accept work on such glaringly unbalanced terms. But to any designers considering this arrangement, I'd encourage them to read AIGA's position on spec work.

PS. Let's not mention the fact that, if you submit only one design, you have no better than a 4% (or 1 in 25) chance of getting paid. So, make more designs you say? Well, that reduces your hourly rate --it's a fixed price racket, mind you--which makes any reward you receive bittersweet.