Finally emptied that garage to make space for your dream startup. Great job! Let me tell you what’s up next very soon. Lots of design work, because business brand building happens in sync with the right marketing plan. And inspiring, eye-catchy designs are the perfect ingredients of a great marketing mix. Now this raises the requirement for somebody who can deliver those unforgettable graphic designs. From recognized design agencies to a freelance designer, there are plenty of ways to find creative graphic designers.
If you’ve enough money to throw around, hiring a design firm to help you in shaping your brand identity is a decent idea. But the problem is that most of the startups or small companies do not have adequate resources to hire a design firm. Hiring a freelance designer is what you’re left with, but that also becomes a pain when you don’t have any clue about how design industry works, the industry specific terms as well as clarity about what your own design requirement is. Not to mention, you only get a single person’s perspective on your design job.
Until a few years ago, these two were the only options one had, while setting out to get a graphic design. But, then Crowdsourcing got invented. Thanks to Jeff Howe who coined this term. A term that laid the foundation of a very dynamic and constantly growing industry.
Design Crowdsourcing sites can be used to source any type of custom graphic designs at very affordable prices.
Crowdsourced graphic design has been picking a lot of traction ever since crowdsourcing sites came into existence. Though these crowdsourcing sites offer plenty of design categories to choose from, but most popularly they’re used for crowdsourcing logo design. Logo design, as we know, plays the most important role in creating a business brand identity. Crowdsourcing logo design can be a boon for your startup in many ways.
6 Reasons Why Startups Should Use Design Crowdsourcing Sites
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Affordable Design Solution
Hiring an established graphic design agency or firm can cost you hundreds of dollars for a single design. Let’s consider you hire them for getting a business logo design. There is no guarantee, that you’ll like any of the designs they furnish. But whether you like the design or not, you are bound to pay them.
Now if we compare that to crowdsourcing your logo design, it provides you easy access to a large number of logo designers for far lesser prices. The best part is you can choose how much you’re willing to pay upfront because it’s entirely in your hands. Crowdsourcing sites for logo design are really cost-effective, and start from as low as sub $50 range for many popular design categories.
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No Graphic Designer Overheads
Many companies generally prefer to hire graphic designers on their staff to handle the everyday creative requirements of their businesses, be it a logo design or a social media banner design. But unfortunately, most small businesses or startups are not in a position to invest good salaries and payroll taxes for keeping an inhouse team of designers.
There are plenty of design crowdsourcing websites available that can provide you with a wide range of everyday design services such as a social media post design, blog header design, t-shirt design, packaging design and so much more. All these can help a small enterprise completely wipe out any kind of overheads. Think of it this way, you save on the cost of hiring in-house designers & get to invest that money somewhere else in your business. And you pay the designers(from design crowdsourcing sites) only when a design job emerges that you need to get done.
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Dozens of Design Options
Crowdsourcing is indeed an amazing way to get thousands of trendy logo designs to choose from. Design crowdsourcing sites are an awesome medium to get access to ample number of graphic designers who can help you by providing dozens of design options to represent your business.Â
The best part about these design crowdsourcing sites is that they also allow you to cut through the noise by giving designer feedback & eliminate the unappealing design options not matching your requirement. This in turn helps the designers understand your requirement even better, thereby getting you even more relevant designs. Since all this happens in real time, that’s why the entire process becomes very smooth, even though its dynamic.
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Extremely Creative Designs
With no prototypes and insecurities, the designers are always free to be as creative as their caliber. Undoubtedly, the more creative they are, the more likely it is that they will get noticed by people. Design crowdsourcing sites thrive on keeping their clients happy by managing the entire designer base working for your design requirement. So it is a very cumbersome task.Â
The crowdsourcing sites are dedicated to fulfil the exact requirements of the clients and keep them happy. Happy clients mean more recommendations, which in turn means more business. Hence, they try their best that clients receive the best crowdsourced graphic design. Every graphic designer tries to showcase his/her talent in the best way possible, in order to stand out from the rest of the designers battling for the project.
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Minimum Management
When a new design related project is launched, it needs to be managed. From conceptualization, through modification to final approval, every step of the process requires a lot of management from your end to run it smoothly.
Thankfully, with the help of these crowdsourcing sites, this becomes a piece of cake. These crowdsourcing platforms take great care in designing their websites, keeping the clients in mind. All you need to do is just submit your design job with a clearly laid out logo design brief. And thousands of designers will pour in for participating in your contest & it’s usually a breeze to manage the entire process and get a crowdsourced graphic design through these user friendly platforms.
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Free Startup Publicity
There are many design crowdsourcing sites which also allow you to integrate your design contests with social media channels. This helps you in many ways. Your business brand gets a lot of publicity on social media platforms. The infinite reach of these social sites allows you to attract the best of designers who may not have even known about your design contest otherwise.Â
You can also invite a closed group of people you choose(or even make it totally public) to vote on your contest’s design submissions. Through this, you can get valuable feedback while also generating publicity for your brand as well as business. Thus, Crowdsourcing sites turn out to be an affordable option for small businesses or startups to also get a lot of publicity without spending a dime on social media marketing.
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Closing Thoughts
If you’ve a small business or a startup, and you are unable to find a designer to fulfil your design job. Design Crowdsourcing Websites are an excellent option for you in this situation. We hope this article will inspire you to get a crowdsourced graphic design (if you already aren’t doing so). Its finally possible for startups to get great designs on a shoestring budget. Good luck & keep rocking from that Garage! (May you be the next Bezos).
One Comment
Interesting post !