Our marketing consulting firm does lots of brand consulting and some design work - we have a small in-house staff of graphic designers and illustrators, but we often have to contract work out.
We have a great network of designers which we’ve had great relationships with - but we heard about a small new company that provides an innovate new way to deliver the same kind of service called CrowdSpring. We recently experimented with it - the company uses "crowd sourcing" - a method which utilizes large pools of people / resources to more efficiently deliver graphic design services for you. Do you remember the LendingTree.com slogan, "When banks compete for your business, you win" ? It’s the same concept here - you put out a project, and a pool of graphic designers competes for your business. Pretty neat concept, but does it work? First, here’s how the service works in a nutshell:
- Determine your price point - you name the price
- Set your deadline
- You commit and pay and submit your specs
- Designers work on your design according to your specs and submit it
- If you get fewer than 35 entries, you get your money back
- You pick your favorite, and this is your final result
The company is still very small and the service is in a very early stage, but very professionally run. We’ve used the service now three times and have been very satisfied with the results. The graphic designs we’ve received as candidates have by and large been very professionally executed - and the winners we chose were top-notch. There was one instance in which we were not happy with the results, and we were able to receive more submissions until we got one that we really liked.
The best way to describe the CrowdSpring service is that it’s addicting - it is so efficient, cost-effective, and the results are so impressive, we’re totally hooked on the service. We think this is going to be a real winner in the marketplace - and highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a low-cost (or even normal budget) graphic designer for your business.
