MNteractive.com

Forbes recently ran a oxymoronishly titled article about CrowdSpring: The Creativity of Crowds. Ugh. Design contests. Whatever…I’ll roll my eyes and go on to the next link…

But then a twitter conversation kicked off with someone asking for some advice on their CrowdSpring sourced logos. And that got me thinking about how these design contest sites are all still thriving like crazy.

Yes, there’s the typical arguments against these sites such as: they are taking advantage of designers…it cheapens the industry…they’re full of copyright infringed sources…it’s slave labor, etc. All valid, sure, but none of those arguments ever seem to convince anyone to not use those sites to source design, or for designers to not submit to such sites.

The bigger issue that I see is that it’s simply just a bad purchase. I tried to work up some math and a detailed explanation full of examples, but hopefully I can get my point across better via a simple analogy:

You are hungry. You have $10. You can either:

a) Go to Old Country Buffet

or

b) Grab a sandwich at the Birchwood Cafe*

(* = insert whichever yummy, fresh, tasty, organic, local, made-to-order, fave sandwich shop you prefer)

(Point being one place is going to give you a lot of options, none of which are really worth the $10 you are spending)