Crowdspring – buyer-side market with average results

Recently, I needed a logo, business card and letterhead designed for a new project I’m working on and decided to use Crowdspring (http://www.crowdspring.com).  Crowdspring is a design competition site that is largely aligned with buyer interests.  On Crowdspring, you specify your design requirements for the appropriate medium (print, web, packaging) along with a price.  Your request goes out to designers who then work on your project for you.

Through constructive feedback garnered through the communication channels provided by Crowdspring, designers “improve” their design as you critique.  You quickly weed out the poor designs from the ones worth pursuing further until you have your perfect design.

Crowdspring guarantees a number of responses or they provide a refund.  What they don’t tell you is that a designer may throw out 5 mediocre designs for you to consider and each qualifies as an individual response.  Therein lies the “rub” so-to-speak.  Depending on your bid price, you’re bound to get a varying caliber of designers – and rightfully so.  A hotshot designer is competing with at least a dozen to 2 dozen other designers (known as “creatives”) doesn’t want to waste time on several projects only to find out that he’s lost on all but 1 of the projects.

With my project, I found 80% of the submitted designs to be extremely poor – the other 20% were worth pursuing further.  Considering that Crowdspring takes your payment upfront and charges a 15% “commission” as well, you really have no choice to pursue alternative design channels.  For logo designs, the guarantee was 25 responses which at the outset looks like a fair deal but quickly turns otherwise considering multiple submissions from single creatives.  Pair this with rough prototypes for the initial versions and you get to 25 pretty quick.

Ultimately, I found a design that was professional through an seemingly out-of-left-field designer who submitted at the very last minute making the experience a “close call” and while I’m happy that I got my money’s worth, I’m weary to go through the process again.

Instead, I’d consider 99designs.com, another “design competition” site that has lower rates, higher response guarantees, and a larger base of creatives.