In conclusion I think that these sites address a market niche that is here to stay, it is a change in the way we do things, the internet is so vast and many sites are great and many sites are just plane old butt ugly, this will not change, but I think that if you want a larger piece of the pie you need to re-evaluate you’re thinking about crowd sourcing sites, after all if you have been in the design business a while you know the technology is changing very fast, this requires you to also change your attitude about it.
How many of you are still using Photoshop 1?

“I hold design contests to get logo’s made for my clients. I like it and my clients love it.”

Of course you love it. You don’t have to:
A. Consult with your client on what they truly need (it’s called “branding”).
B. Thinking of a concept yourself that embodies the marketing vision of the company (branding).

No that’s too hard. That’s work. Hey, why work too hard trying to think when you can get a hundred hungry design students to do it for you? Then all you have to do is pick from the pile for the “coolest” logo. Really, who cares about sitting down with a client and being consultative?

It’s much easier to throw up a contest on a web site, sit back, and collect the desperate attempts to hit a blurry target.

For that matter, what kind of client doesn’t have a well-enough established vision of their business that they don’t know how to articulate what the logo should look like more than to say something vague like, “Not too many colors, we want it like web 2.0?”

My point here is that creating a logo isn’t only about drawing vectors and selecting a font. The reason you pay top dollar for good design is because the good designers want to ask questions and learn about the business they’re designing for before sketching a concept. That’s what we get paid for, not just the execution. That’s what all the learnin’ was for.

I’m disgusted with the job posts on a certain “guru” site right now. Posts like this:

“We want a series of book illustrations, 40-50. They should be professional quality. It’s a book about dogs. You decide the style. We’ll pick from the best drawings sent in and the winner will get the job. I’m sorry, but we can’t pay more than $250 for all of them. There will be more work in the future if you do this well.”

This is disgusting, and the “artists” who take on these types of jobs do us all a disservice. That’s why a $200 logo design contest should be ignored. On some level I agree that you have to decide for yourself if the value of the contest is worth it, and some contests have a publicity factor that make them a good marketing opp. However, those are few and far between.

For the comments of whether someone “feels right” about paying less than top dollar for a project, if I had a world-reknowned designer offer me a killer design because we were talking and I was stuck for an idea, and I couldn’t possibly afford his rates, but he saw it as a cool project with a good cause and comp’d me some ideas anyway because none of his own clients would let him try what he had in mind, and he expected nothing other than to just let people know I didn’t come up with it myself, and all I did was buy him a lousy dinner and a beer as a show of gratitude, should I feel “okay” with that? Well, he felt okay with it, as did I. So, transaction completed. True story, by the way.

The only “bad” contest is when the true reward is disguised, or received work is misrepresented in the public space. Deceptive practices are never kosher. Yet there are several prominent people now who have presented these contests without any ulterior motives than the ones they expressed, and made their rewards very clear, and STILL they get raked over internet coals. Ridiculous.