Crowdsourcing Web Design
Crowdsourcing Web Design Changes Everything
It used to be that designing for a site meant selecting a web designer and being limited to the talents, ideas and inspiration of that one web designer. Then came crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an “open call”. This works great for web design… if you know what you’re doing (if not, the crowdsourced designers won’t either and its probably best to have a traditional web designer walk you through it all).
Before you start Crowdsourcing Web Design
- Decide which design crowdsourcing site to use. We use 99Designs.com ourselves, but there are others too.
- Be ready to go public. This is a public process. Most crowdsourcing sites allow you to set up a private contest, but it costs more.
- Have a clear vision of what you want your design to convey.
- Make sure to write a good design brief. The design crowdsourcing site you use will walk you through this, you just need to make sure you take the time to fill it out thoroughly. Remember, designers will only give you what they think you want, so that is what you need to communicate to them.
- Research how much you should spend. Take a look at contests similar to the one you will be creating. How much are they offering to the designer. You will notice that the greater the reward, the better the contest entries. This is already the “cheap” way to go, don’t be cheaper as it will just waste everyone’s time.
- Know there will be additional “middle man” charges of around 20% on top of what your set the contest for. You need to factor this cost in when you set the amount the design contest winner receives.
Example Crowd-source Design Contest
For just over $200, I got 7 very talented designers to submit 27 designs, and compete to win the design contest.
In submitting my contest, I did not select a lot of the options available, which all cost extra. Some of these make sense, such as promoting the contest in the forum area of the site, especially if you are in a hurry and want the attention of the best talent. For me, I give the design period about 5 days, ensuring me time to work with the designers through feedback etc. You can also highlight the contest etc and make it stand out. All these things might work, but how much more than just throwing the additional costs into the contest reward is debatable. I personally would rather see the extra money go to the Designer.
Here is my Design Brief for the eMarketing Matador Web Logo/Header
In the Design Brief , there was 4 key points I wanted to make;
#1 – I gave the address of the site so they could see where the logo/header image would live.
#2 – I “sweetened” the pot by offering to recognize the designer and link to their site. You can see this in the footer of this site.
#3 – I wanted the design or part of it, to have good icon appeal. If you look at the address bar, you will see the icon for this site.
#4 – I pre-paid the prize money. This showed I was serious and that someone was going to win.
Once published, a Design Brief looks like this to prospective designers
You can see that the summary is just that. I used it to give the basic and vital information, as well as provide the incentive related information of what I was going to do above and beyond just the contest.
Below are the different entries I received.
You can see I got a lot of variety to select from. It is amazing what 7 different designers will come up. Each has their own style and interpretation of your design brief. This is where crowdsourcing design excels. This is where you win!
Tips to Getting the Best out of Design Crowdsourcing
- Give Timely Feedback – I try to check my contests at least twice a day and provide feedback for each design. I rate the ones I don’t like and the ones I do like, I let them know. If I see something with potential, or going in a direction I like, I let the designers in the contest know so they can all go down the right path together. Design feedback is crucial.
- Get a good start – If you don’t see at least 5 designs submitted after a couple of days, review other contests and see what the bids are there. You might need increase your bid a bit. For this contest, I raised the bid by $20 once and saw better results after.
- Build a relationships – If you see someone with talent, keep in touch. You may want to go direct to them in the future, cutting out the competition and middle man. Going direct to the designer will easily cut costs by 2/3′s. Worse case, you can let the designers know of your next competition and have them “raise the bar” a bit.
The Winner
In the end, the winner of the contest was UaLz, a university senior taking time out of studying for finals to made some much needed money to pay rent etc. If you’d like to use him, his email address is duffu_duff@yahoo.com.
Here is a close up of my Logo. It is not what I thought I wanted. Its a lot better.
Listen to Seth
I’m a big Seth Godin fan. He’s a great Marketing author, blogger and Entrepreneur. He wrote an article “How to live happily with a great designer” that captures the essence of working with a designer, web or not, crowdsourcing or not. I recommend reading it before working on any Web Design Brief to any Web Designer.
That logo looks really really good. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Brilliant!!! I’ve been needing a banner for my blog and I’m definitely going to embrace this tactic!
Your banner is GREAT and what a BARGAIN!!!
Thanks for sharing!!!
Awesome article on crowdsourcing! As someone needing designs, I am relieved that I am no longer chained to only working with one designer at a time and feeling cheated when that person doesn’t deliver, or having to pay multiple designers for the same work, just in case…
With 99designs, I am SOOOO impressed with the quality of web and logo designs! I’ve browsed through the contests and studied those that receive many designs. What you offer $ wise seems not as important as how clearly you communicate what you want and how quickly and clearly you respond to designs.
Crowdsourcing is here to stay, and very few of the “traditional” design community will be left standing if they continue to charge high prices. The market is the market, and if I can get a killer design for $250, why should I pay another designer $2500 or even $25000 as I’ve seen some firms charge, and this before they even show me anything! It’s ridiculous.
Hello Ruben,
I share your enthusiasm for crowd sourcing, but only as a web professional that has a lot of overlap with web designers. I love it because I do the site structure, page layouts etc. I really just need designer to make my efforts “look pretty”. I want to make sure everyone who reads the article realizes crowd-sourcing handles one aspect of web design, but is FAR from a replacement for designers that also do site architecture, usability, business factoring (making the site work for a business) and branding (I use a separate set of resources for brand building, although I may eventually crowd-source the design).
Thanks for the comment!
Hi! thanks for sharing! really, really useful. I just went with 99designs through the process of creating a web design. It worked really well. Now however, I have to make the next step: create the physical website. Unfortunately none of the designers could help me with that. Do you have any recommendation for a third party that can help me to create the actual website based on the design that was created thru 99design? thanks in advance for thinking along here; greatly appreciated! Best, Laurens
Yes. You may actually need a couple of resources. You may need someone to someone to create the CSS Style Sheet and basic HTML with it implemented, than another to take that template of sorts and use it to make the complete site for you. Decide what you want and then head over to oDesk.com and post the project there for a freelancer to fulfill. You will see these people are reviewed and can pick the person you want very easily. When I am where you are, I go to http://www.oDesk.
Since I am not aware of you level of knowledge, I have to place the disclaimer that if you have never created a site before, or have someone to consult with, you would be better off seeking a web development company to take it from here, but oDesk could also help you there too.
Hope that helps.
Keith
Personally, I am quite on the fence regarding the use of a crowdsourcing site for a logo design. It is still a touchy issue for most designers who said that crowdsourcing is a no-no for obtaining a logo design. I have tried crowdsourcing before and I know the risks involved but it comes within the territory. But there are other no-frills logo design websites online such as http://www.logobee.com, http://www.logodesignstation.com, logoyes.com, etc. which are actually great in getting a professional logo design at a fraction of the price and minus the risks of crowdsourcing (plagiarism is one of them). Seeing that there are no consultation services, the price is significantly lower than that of conventional design firms. For instance, I have tried http://www.logodesignstation.com and the experience was indeed a positive one. I managed to get my business logo design at an affordable price and the turnaround time was great as well. Highly recommended. Although crowdsourcing for logo designs could be a bane for some, many find it to be a viable alternative to get a fast logo on the cheap. It all depends on the individual actually.
Great article about crowdsourcing. I’m definitely going to give this site a try.
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