That crowd-sourced prizes attract reasonable quality entrants at low cost is part of their attraction to those funding them.
Complaining that they are low cost seems fruitless. Perhaps argue that the results are bad for the money invested—if you think there is evidence for that. I don’t think there is much evidence for that, though—prizes produce competitive results. In this case there have been 20 designs submitted already. Update: make that 50 designs!
I’m working on a lengthy essay discussing this. It may not be relevant anymore by the time it’s done, and might not really be appropriate for less wrong outside of replying to this specific post. But the basic summary is:
Yes, for the immediate future, a contest with a $300 prize is probably going to be more useful to you than trying to hire an artist for $300.
What you have to realize is that when you have a $300 contest with 20 participants, the actual financial payoff to the participants is essentially $15. The amount of time it takes to make a good logo is variable, depending on whether you get a flash of insight and do the whole thing in 15 minutes or take several hours trying various ideas. But essentially, on average, you are paying less than minimum wage for highly skilled labor. Doing a good job requires not only years of work, but studying design and branding principles that usually require a college education to understand and put into practice.
I don’t actually know whether it’s in your (or any other client’s) long term interest to do this. We’re dealing with a complex system here with a lot of potential long term side effects. People respond to contests irrationally, and it’s entirely possible that they will continue to do so indefinitely and the payoff will always be worthwhile. But at least keep in the back of your head that what you’re actually paying is a few dollars an hour, and the success you get is dependent (at best) on young hobbyists who are happy to do the work anyway, and (at worst) widespread irrationality and poor math skills among the general population.
(Note: I’m specifically talking about contest-labor. There are other forms of crowd-sourcing that I’m less concerned about.)
Assigning $300 to your logo budget might be insufficient, period. I don’t know enough about SIAI’s marketing history to really judge one way or the other. The website design looks pretty solid. But I’ve seen several clients approach marketing in a piecemeal way that a) isn’t efficient, b) misunderstands marketing as a whole. And whenever I see an advertisement for contest labor I’m reminded of a few related ways that clients approach art badly. This issue is the part that’s most relevant for SIAI’s consideration, but also the most complicated and I need to do more research before I’m confident enough of my assertions.
I think there must be a lot of people who would like to work in their own time over the internet. I don’t know if they are schoolkids, housewifes, or workers from the third world, but—whoever they are—there seem to be a lot of them. What there aren’t enough of are enough opportunities to satisfy them all. If you look at some of the “hire an expert” sites, the prices seem pretty awful there as well—e.g.: http://www.scriptlance.com/
It does appear that prizes are good motivators—in comparison with a process involving screening applicants and awarding one of them the contract. Perhaps it is irrationality. Perhaps people would rather be doing their preferred kind of work—rather than attending interviews and putting together pitches. Maybe they are learning. Maybe they are padding their portfolio.
Whatever it is, prizes seem to me to be in demand—and so we can expect more prizes, until the demand for them is saturated.
There are three primary benefits of well constructed prizes and media savvy global competitions: they are a high-leverage and efficient investment, a powerful innovation strategy, and an effective change strategy.
I don’t have a problem with the idea of scriptlance (assuming I’m understanding the site correctly). The internet drastically increases competition and that’ll certainly drive prices down, but that’s not inherently bad. I don’t think there’s anything magical about the traditional going rate for artwork, and having a market that caters to those with lower budgets is fine. The bids I’m seeing are pretty low, but they look like they’re translating into something that you could actually live on. (Rough guesstimate is that they turn out to be around $10-15/hour for the lower end projects, as opposed to the $2-3/hour that contest labor gives you)
From the client perspective, there may be some quality dropoff to consider, but it looks like the site at least gives you some tools to analyze that. I notice a few of the jobs have a bunch of reasonable bids around the client’s budget, and then a lowball bid. If those lowball bids tend towards lower quality, you still have a range of choices and might deliberately choose something more expensive if you think it’s worth it.
I suspect the actual problem is a lack of a good “middle tier” option. There are definite benefits to having a long term relationship with an artist who understands your vision and can competently execute it. Websites that divide up labor into little outsource chunks will have a harder time accomplishing that. I know that from the client perspective, finding an artist who is worth having that relationship can be frustrating. The artists who are likely to be worthwhile also tend to command expensive rates, so if you miss you’ll be wasting a lot of time and money. I don’t know what the solution there is but I do think it’s a problem.
As for the X-Prize: I see a categorical difference between contest-labor and actual contests. The X-Prize gives you actual prestige and publicity. In a real contest, even being runner-up can result in publicity that can benefit you and lead to new employment. They also usually provide rewards that are greater than normal payment would be. (I don’t know how valuable the labor required for winning the X-Prize is, but $10 million sounds like a lot of money to me).
Low budget contest-labor, on the other hand, doesn’t give you any special publicity, and can actually harm your prestige depending on the circumstances, since it has a stigma among professional artists and sends a message to other potential employers that you’re willing to work for scraps. An important skill for young artists to develop is to communicate the value of their work so that employers don’t take advantage of them (often unintentionally), leading to a cycle of frustration and a day job at WalMart. Contest labor sends the opposite message.
That crowd-sourced prizes attract reasonable quality entrants at low cost is part of their attraction to those funding them.
Complaining that they are low cost seems fruitless. Perhaps argue that the results are bad for the money invested—if you think there is evidence for that. I don’t think there is much evidence for that, though—prizes produce competitive results. In this case there have been 20 designs submitted already. Update: make that 50 designs!
I’m working on a lengthy essay discussing this. It may not be relevant anymore by the time it’s done, and might not really be appropriate for less wrong outside of replying to this specific post. But the basic summary is:
Yes, for the immediate future, a contest with a $300 prize is probably going to be more useful to you than trying to hire an artist for $300.
What you have to realize is that when you have a $300 contest with 20 participants, the actual financial payoff to the participants is essentially $15. The amount of time it takes to make a good logo is variable, depending on whether you get a flash of insight and do the whole thing in 15 minutes or take several hours trying various ideas. But essentially, on average, you are paying less than minimum wage for highly skilled labor. Doing a good job requires not only years of work, but studying design and branding principles that usually require a college education to understand and put into practice.
I don’t actually know whether it’s in your (or any other client’s) long term interest to do this. We’re dealing with a complex system here with a lot of potential long term side effects. People respond to contests irrationally, and it’s entirely possible that they will continue to do so indefinitely and the payoff will always be worthwhile. But at least keep in the back of your head that what you’re actually paying is a few dollars an hour, and the success you get is dependent (at best) on young hobbyists who are happy to do the work anyway, and (at worst) widespread irrationality and poor math skills among the general population.
(Note: I’m specifically talking about contest-labor. There are other forms of crowd-sourcing that I’m less concerned about.)
Assigning $300 to your logo budget might be insufficient, period. I don’t know enough about SIAI’s marketing history to really judge one way or the other. The website design looks pretty solid. But I’ve seen several clients approach marketing in a piecemeal way that a) isn’t efficient, b) misunderstands marketing as a whole. And whenever I see an advertisement for contest labor I’m reminded of a few related ways that clients approach art badly. This issue is the part that’s most relevant for SIAI’s consideration, but also the most complicated and I need to do more research before I’m confident enough of my assertions.
In the meantime, I’m also reminded of this discussion item about branding biodiversity. The philosophy behind that is definitely relevant here.
I think there must be a lot of people who would like to work in their own time over the internet. I don’t know if they are schoolkids, housewifes, or workers from the third world, but—whoever they are—there seem to be a lot of them. What there aren’t enough of are enough opportunities to satisfy them all. If you look at some of the “hire an expert” sites, the prices seem pretty awful there as well—e.g.: http://www.scriptlance.com/
It does appear that prizes are good motivators—in comparison with a process involving screening applicants and awarding one of them the contract. Perhaps it is irrationality. Perhaps people would rather be doing their preferred kind of work—rather than attending interviews and putting together pitches. Maybe they are learning. Maybe they are padding their portfolio.
Whatever it is, prizes seem to me to be in demand—and so we can expect more prizes, until the demand for them is saturated.
http://www.xprize.org/about/x-prizes
I don’t have a problem with the idea of scriptlance (assuming I’m understanding the site correctly). The internet drastically increases competition and that’ll certainly drive prices down, but that’s not inherently bad. I don’t think there’s anything magical about the traditional going rate for artwork, and having a market that caters to those with lower budgets is fine. The bids I’m seeing are pretty low, but they look like they’re translating into something that you could actually live on. (Rough guesstimate is that they turn out to be around $10-15/hour for the lower end projects, as opposed to the $2-3/hour that contest labor gives you)
From the client perspective, there may be some quality dropoff to consider, but it looks like the site at least gives you some tools to analyze that. I notice a few of the jobs have a bunch of reasonable bids around the client’s budget, and then a lowball bid. If those lowball bids tend towards lower quality, you still have a range of choices and might deliberately choose something more expensive if you think it’s worth it.
I suspect the actual problem is a lack of a good “middle tier” option. There are definite benefits to having a long term relationship with an artist who understands your vision and can competently execute it. Websites that divide up labor into little outsource chunks will have a harder time accomplishing that. I know that from the client perspective, finding an artist who is worth having that relationship can be frustrating. The artists who are likely to be worthwhile also tend to command expensive rates, so if you miss you’ll be wasting a lot of time and money. I don’t know what the solution there is but I do think it’s a problem.
As for the X-Prize: I see a categorical difference between contest-labor and actual contests. The X-Prize gives you actual prestige and publicity. In a real contest, even being runner-up can result in publicity that can benefit you and lead to new employment. They also usually provide rewards that are greater than normal payment would be. (I don’t know how valuable the labor required for winning the X-Prize is, but $10 million sounds like a lot of money to me).
Low budget contest-labor, on the other hand, doesn’t give you any special publicity, and can actually harm your prestige depending on the circumstances, since it has a stigma among professional artists and sends a message to other potential employers that you’re willing to work for scraps. An important skill for young artists to develop is to communicate the value of their work so that employers don’t take advantage of them (often unintentionally), leading to a cycle of frustration and a day job at WalMart. Contest labor sends the opposite message.