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The outrage resulting from a perfectly valid opinion began when a commenter referenced the newly launched website of a prominent UK designer by sharing his opinion, "it was a clean site but it was nothing spectacular" and explained, "I felt all of the praise was because of who he was rather than the quality of his site's re-design." Given the context of Mr. Dawes post, this comment is absolutely valid and in no way disparaged the design or designer.

Nonetheless, outrage boiled over with a few highly respected designers who made it clear that it is not appropriate to criticize (other high profile designers) in a public forum - regardless of whether or not the criticism is related to the topic at hand.

It seems to me that the crux of the argument goes something like this ...

It is apparently not acceptable:

• to criticize a designer's work in a public forum, like Twitter

Apparently, the time an place for criticism:

• is in person, at a pub over a pint or glass of Scotch

I've got two words that would easily suffice for describing how ridiculous this newly created "creative code of behavior" is, but because it is apparently not "ethical" to:

• mention other designers by name or reference their work in a public forum
• use a viable design example to bolster an opinion (as long as that example is a friend of a respected designer)

I will simply refer to said argument as:

• a bunch of egotistical ninnies who have allowed their britches to get a little too big as a result of their relative standing in the design community

Logic would dictate ...

If it is perfectly acceptable to use Twitter (or, another public forum) to:

• broadcast a new design and invite commentary
• state an opinion about a design or designer
• refer to a design as "brilliant", "genius", "inspiring", or "extraordinary"
• anoint a designer "the best designer in the world"
• generally "kiss ass" 

… in order to promote what are, often times, ordinary design solutions, then

It is also acceptable to use Twitter (or, another public forum) to:

• question the validity of an opinion or statement
• criticize 

Otherwise, there is a bit of a double standard if you ask me. You can't have praise without criticism, just like you can't have coffee without the diuretic component. Praise and criticism go hand-in-hand.

If it is perfectly acceptable to use 140 characters to offer unsupported praise, then it is also perfectly acceptable to use 140 characters to offer criticism. You can't have one without the other.

Stating that the "only acceptable time and place" for criticism is out of public earshot over a pint of beer is pointedly absurd. We work in a highly connected visual medium. Nearly everything we do is for public consumption and that means that everything we do is also up for public critique. I can't imagine that these design superstars are as fragile as ... well, I could be wrong. It's tough being the alpha dog.

Never once have I ever assumed that everyone who sees my work will love it, and never once have I ever assumed that people did not have a right to critique my work in the public space. One person's opinion will have little to no bearing on my career, and I am not thin-skinned enough that I can't take a valid critique.  

During my career as an art student, I endured brutal public critiques of my work on a weekly basis. I learned to appreciate "artistic distance". I also learned to look for ways to improve my craft and my skills.  Critiques are invaluable and necessary for artistic development. They are also invaluable for learning how to help other creatives. As long as a rationale is substantiated, it shouldn't matter if the commentary about your work is positive or negative.

It's not like you are telling your brother that his wife's mustache was wiped on her upper lip by his best friend … that's when meeting in person over a pint is required to cushion the blow.

Being a professional designer means I have as much right to respectfully criticize your work as I do praise it . Especially, if you are the best designer in the world.

What is truly unacceptable:

Creative professionals are under a daily assault from external sources attempting to devalue our work. We are constantly being told, often times by colleagues, that to compete in the "global marketplace" we have to provide our hard-earned skills and talents nearly free-of-charge. Spec "contests", work-for-hire agreements, and the RFP process devalue our profession even further by encouraging professional creatives to forgo their integrity in order to land "needed" work.  Now, a respected company is taking advantage of crowdsourcing and is legitimizing a creative outlet that, quite literally, devalues our profession with each and every sale.

In the end, yes, an easy argument can be made that having another company jump on the crowdsourcing bandwagon means little to "real" designers. I often hear designers make statements like "the people who will buy these logos are not your customers anyway"  or "why shouldn't a low-cost solution be available to people with low budgets?"

My answer to both these statements is simple.

Every time a designer lowers his prices to absurdly low levels to "compete" or a company like iStock decides to offer bargain-basement prices for products that we charge a fair-market price to create, it reinforces the perception that creative work is "easy" to produce and therefore not "worth" the price to hire a professional.  In the end, this hurts the entire industry from the independent web designer to the smallest studio to the most well-established agency.  Once an expectation has been set, trying to convince a buyer that your product and services provide more "value" and is therefore "worth the expense" is as pointless as arguing whether or not you need eggs to make an omelet.

No argument or defense of these practices will ever be able to counteract the negative effects of crowdsourcing and anyone willing to argue there are "levels" of buyers needs to wake up and smell the fire burning a hole in their cash account.  

And, by the way, those people, the one's who "are not your customers", talk to your customers.

If a competing designer is able to undercut my proposal by 10% and still offer the same quality of work,  that's competition.  But, if I lose a potential customer to a vendor who promised the same services for 75% less than I can deliver them, that is not competition.  That's desperation or a blatant snow job.

Competition can only be "competitive" when prices are competitive.

How many logos will a crowdsourcer have to sell to make a living wage?

Let's say for the sake of argument that the average "sale price" of logo on iStock is a generous $500, that means the designer will net $250 after iStock takes its cut.  The designer will have to sell 80 logos simply to make it to a poverty-line income of 20k. 80 logos may not sound like an unreasonable benchmark, except when you consider that most professional designers probably don't create more than a dozen successful logos per year ... and, they are not competing against hundreds or thousands of second-rate logo designs.  How in the world will a struggling crowdsourcer expect to sell enough logos to pay the bills?  It's clinically insane. The only beneficiary is iStockPhoto.

At 50% comission, iStockPhoto will become nothing more than a loan shark for designers.  I agree with the fine folks at No-Spec that Crowdsourcing is quickly becoming the scourge of our industry and don't think for a moment that the naivete of the designers who participate in this sham are not hurting your business.  If it all boils down to "marketing", who do you think is going to win?  The uber talented freelancer on a limited marketing budget or the company with millions of ad dollars to burn convincing would be clients that quality creative is cheap to produce?

One fact is inarguable, creatives, in general, are terrible businessmen and among the worst when it comes to protecting our own best interests.  Keep writing off all the iStocks as someone else's problem, excusing their clients as a "lower level" of buyer, working on "spec", making excuses for signing work-for-hire documents that strip your rights of copy, responding to an RFP, or blaming our issues on "ineffective marketing" and all you are doing is putting on blinders in an effort to avoid the bigger issues.  

 

There is not a single myopic issue that can be blamed for the problems we face as a community.  There is a litany of reasons why creative services are devalued and, in the end, we, the creative vendors, are the only ones to blame.  We are still allowing it to happen.

The site provides system administrators nearly complete control over all site content and graphics.  

We are proud to have been chosen to handle the development of Multicast's online presence and look forward to working with them in the future to keep the site fresh and functioning well.

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