You have to be certified by the government to practice law, medicine, law enforcement, education, etc because you literally and figuratively hold lives in your hand. Even cosmetologists, physical trainers and massage therapists have access to clients’ bodies and therefore have to maintain and uphold certain requirements for the health and safety of their clientele.

Design is not related to health, law, or the government in any way, so the government has no need to regulate the industry. The design industry could attempt to self-regulate, but to what end? The client wants what/who the client wants, and if they don’t understand the meaning behind the design-related certification, then they won’t value it.

Furthermore, is it fair to tell people that they have no value as professionals and then call them snooty when they try to defend their skill based on their level of education and the expense of said education? To save the time and effort of explaining the value of an education to someone who may not have a frame of reference to understand the components that contribute to that value, the easiest reference point is price. If I got my law degree for $30,000 and the guy next to me paid $200,000 for his, you could make a fairly reasonable judgment without any knowledge of law, quality of professors, entry requirements, etc. to say the other gentleman received a better education than I did. People aren’t citing their education expenses to show you how big and important they are, they’re trying to explain why it’s so crucial that they actually get paid for their time while communicating their professional value in a way that you can comprehend.

Even if one weren’t to consider the value of their skill, expertise and training, there is always the issue of time. You pay for even a 30 minute conversation with a lawyer because you just took 30 minutes of that lawyers time. You pay for a consultation with a plastic surgeon because you just took an hour of their time. The surgeon didn’t make a single cut, the lawyer didn’t argue your case or compose a document on your behalf, but even if you don’t choose to utilize their services, you still paid for the time it took to ascertain the value of said services.

These design competitions are asking designers to create whole products with absolutely zero compensation for their time and effort. For some designers (I would argue, those with low expectations), this is a viable solution, but the rest of us are trying to promote an increased level of education about the design process to create an environment where our clients and counterparts value our craft. This may come across to some as ‘snooty’, but you have to take into consideration the difficulty of imparting the objective value of products which are viewed by most in purely subjective terms. The client says “I like it because it’s pretty.” The designer says “Your perceived value of this item is flawed because it’s ‘prettiness’ is immaterial to its worth. Here’s a list of the reasons it’s valuable…” The client says “You’re a pompous jackass who thinks he knows better than me.” Obviously, the designer would use more tact (hopefully), but that’s a quick and dirty example of my point. In educating clients about design, we first have to teach them that their opinion is irrelevant which often goes over like a fart in church. The rejection of this notion by the client is the reason that many designers create products that aren’t representative of their skill or good judgment.

I’m not going to speak for everyone, but my personal opinion and general interpretation from most of the anti-cs arguments out there (and the point that I feel the other side often misconstrues) is that this isn’t about competition or lost revenues, it’s about quality and professionalism. Nobody’s trying to appoint themselves “design industry police” and bar all untrained newcomers from the door, we are trying to prevent the uneducated consumer from making judgments about the quality of work they should expect, the level of skill they should require and the amount of client/designer interaction that contributes to effective design based on the lessons learned in the spec community. This may come across as paternalistic, but advocating for quality design benefits both designer and client.

Yeah the experience was, and unfortunately still is, harsh and frustrating. Anyone that has done crowdsourcing can agree with me, but I don’t blame you for not coming forward. It’s like being addicted to a drug or something. You don’t want anyone to know, but you also want help quitting.

For everyone else, Jamie has documented her experiences during four years of crowdsourcing when she used sites such as GetAFreelancer, 99designs, Crowdspring, Logo Tournament, Hatchwise, Genius Rocket, and more.

A couple of stand-out points:

“Everyone boasts about how crowdsourcing gets you a bunch of entries, but they never tell you how many are similar to others. You may get 250 entries, but only about 10 are unique ideas.”

“The buyers are basically doing all the designing. Why I don’t know, but if they have to tell you, the designer, what to do, then something is a little off.”

Thanks for sharing, Jamie.

Designers don’t sell pretty, they sell thinking. They advise their clients what to do and how to do it. The graphics are just the tiniest part of what the designer sells.

If you want to compete with people that are only selling 5% of what you do, go ahead and give it away. Or be smart and sell the other 95%.

Someone who needs design work done should look over design portfolios, interview whomever they want to get a feel for the way designers work, consider their budget, and hire someone.

The kind of thinking that promotes crowdsourcing and spec work is anticapitalist and, ultimately, I submit, unAmerican. How do I get to thinking that, you ask? Look, capitalism is, ideally, based on you have an idea, arrange all the details (financing, location, etc.), and you take your chances trying to succeed. There are no guarantees. Everything from crowdsourcing to antitrust exemptions for major league baseball franchises are attempts to guarantee profit. That’s anticapitalist and unAmerican. And Forbes magazine promotes the anticapitalist, unAmerican angle with that article.

I don’t see how this is any different… sure crowdspring is profiting off of it… it is a business not communism… they offer a marketplace and as we have free will we can choose to participate or not participate if you don’t like the terms of the arrangement.

I realize this is a variation on the way your industry normally functions… but technology is evolving at amazing speeds… and as an industry based mostly on technology… you have to change with it.