The design crowdsourcing and competition market has become a delightful multi-layered cake of talent, workmanship and styles. Whilst most reports focus on the cause - describing each platform in the space, or the client success stories - this market investigation will focus on the effect on the communities it empowers: the designers.

The Springleap design crowdsourcing, competition, challenges and contest overview and report - 

A market investigation via interviews with designers

In this investigation, we’ll be conducting ongoing interviews with designers from design competition and crowdsourcing platforms including Threadless, 99designs, Talenthouse, Designcrowd, 12designer and more.

What is design crowdsourcing?

Design crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing a multitude of designs via an open call with a reward. This can vary from designers pitching to win the job to design competitions, contests and challenges that can include internal voting by a panel internal to the client, via community vote or a blend.

The theory is that such campaigns yield a diversity of workmanship in style and concept as well as providing a platform for a digital or social media marketing campaign for a brand - with the content being shared and voted upon. This would be used to stimulate discussion and engagement with existing brand fans or to grow the current base. 

This yields and opportunity for solving creative challenges for design problems as well as creating discussion and using the brand fans to airplane demographic / consumer testing, with this revealing insights into the market opinion. It also allows brand fans to exercise their opinion and influence the brand's shape and form that they will later consume.

Springleap's team will be interviewing designers from different platforms to showcase their opinions and workmanship. This report will become a living body of their opinions to the benefit of showcasing the state of the design crowdsourcing industry as a whole, the work it produces and the talent it empowers. The aim is also that the designer interviews will create greater exposure for the industry and find suggestions in what works, what doesn't and how offerings can be improved.

Are you a designer regularly involved in crowdsourcing and design contests?

Get showcased by the Springleap team - drop us a message, and we’ll get back to you right away with some questions.

To read the impression of designers who use crowdsource platforms regularly, take a look at our list of interviews:

1. Kristian Jabilles (aka waste factory)

2. Maulana Yusup (aka Methlop39)

3. Ardan Kukuh Prayogo

4. Tangguh Karya

5. Andy Pitts

6. Clare Nicholas

7. Kirsten McCrae