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Tuesday 8 October 2013

Week 6: Crowdfunding Network



Before starting to talk about crowd sourcing itself, its damages and benefits in design, let's first find a definition and try to explain why people or designers choose crowd sourcing to improve their business activity.

So, crowd sourcing can be defined as "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers." [1]

What does it mean? It means that the individual or group of people working on a project, choose to gather some ideas and further help from other individuals (most of the times experts) that are linked to an online community. Therefore, this can be viewed also as an alternative way to spend as less as possible, reaching the deadlines, increasing flexibility and mobility of operation in general in today’s competitive business environment.

Typically, by online communities it is meant forums or websites that work for the individual as a platform. By choosing these sites that offer different packages and formats to put together contests, foundations or companies have various ways of expressing their ideas and their needs.

Those companies that are seriously working in developing their business and know exactly what they want to receive, can choose the best settings to meet their requirements and needs and even post their goals/tasks with description and in detail at the websites to open contests and invite submissions.

Hence, my question is: Might every business developer go for crowd sourcing to improve their design and be known by the others as fast as possible?

On the one hand, the answer is yes because it is possible to choose the amount of money that an individual wants to spend. It means that you know exactly how much you will be paying for design / graphics work. Hence, this is really good for those that have to start with very limited budgets and in particular it could be a really good way to save the money.

Secondly, if a company has to set a very strict deadline for a design project, crowd sourcing could be the solution to see the results on time. Once every aspect and priority has been settled up, online communities can start to help you as soon as possible and this is great since a lot of work and especially time can be saved.

Furthermore, by using a crowd sourcing site, it is possible to receive a submissions from a wide range of designers and artists with varying backgrounds and degrees of experience, from across the country, or even from overseas. This means that it would be possible to discover some ideas that have never crossed your mind and with a bit of lucky make immediately success.

On the other hand, the answer is no because there could be a lack of long-term branding strategy. It means that crowd sourcing on an individual project basis is probably not an option. It could produce results that may not work long term or as part of a package.

Secondly, it is extremely important to consider the fact that there could be some issues regarding copyrights and purchasable vectors being used for submission. Let's suppose the company is really vigilant in checking the originality of the submitted works but still this could be a big concern.

Moreover, according to an article that I red online most of the companies don’t get most out of it due to the lack of proper consultation/research process that designers and artists need to produce works for them. Crowd sourcing hurts the design and graphics industry because it devalues designers’ work; designers and graphic artists have to spend their time and resources to produce work regardless of whether or not they get paid for it." I believe this is true and not because the article said it but because it's what actually happens. If was an expert designer helping other people and then not being paid, how would I react? Would I be happy?

In conclusion, if an individual is wondering  whether crowd sourcing design is an option for your company’s project this is are the possible solutions to his question. Crowd sourcing might sometimes have some positive aspects, as we have seen, but it might have also some negative ones. I believe that those companies that really wish to improve their business activity and become bigger and more known around their countries or ever worldwide, should really consider whether it is worth it and take in consideration the fact that it could be a total failure.
  
















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