10 Crowdsourcing Marketplaces for Designers and Freelancers

Let’s not forget that the Web 2.0 hype was not just about glossy logos and round cornered buttons; the added value of this new wave of websites is the social part and the huge potential to ‘make things together’. So here’s a roundup of the most popular and interesting services that offer us the opportunity to find or submit designs or ideas.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers…

Crowdspring

By helping Buyers reach countless creatives across the globe, we’re changing the game for the little guy.

99 Designs

Need something designed? 99designs connects clients needing design work such as logo designs, business cards or web sites to a thriving community of 39,698 talented designers.

Brandstack

A Spring is our voting system. When someone likes your portfolio or your uploads they can Spring it. Items that receive more Springs will receive more exposure.

Social Designer

Buy stuff, design stuff, vote on stuff and be an agent of change.

Name This

Namethis makes the otherwise time-consuming process of finding a market-ready name quick and painless.

BigCarrot

The site allows people with a common interest to come together and pool their contributions to create an inducement prize.

Collab Finder

The Place To Find Designer & Developer Collaborators.

Collab.ie

Enabling collaboration by helping people with ideas meet people with skills.

Pikkoo

The first social community for user generated interactive mobile screensavers & wallpapers.

Peter L July 6th

Inspired Magazine, this is a great list. Of course you can never catch all of them, but I would encourage your readers to check out GeniusRocket as well. Its a smaller community of artists from around the world working not only graphic design projects, but video storyboards, ideation, and video.
Jake Rocheleau July 6th

Very cool collection, thanks for sharing and I look forward to your posts in the future
Monique Van Dijk July 7th

Great list – there’s a few there that are new for me so I’m going to check them out, starting with Kickstarter!

My own experience with 99 designs is that it takes a LOT of time/effort to monitor and give feedback on the designs that are posted. On the smaller $$ projects there’s also a big issue with copycat designs from other projects on the site.

Although technically not ‘crowdsourcing’ another winner is Rentacoder.com – it was set up for software design but is also a really great place to outsource writing projects. The interface is ridiculously easy to use (even for someone like me who found Elance too difficult to navigate) and they have a great arbitration process plus they vet all of the buyers, so it’s a safer marketplace for freelancers.

Are you a freelancer? I’m currently interviewing for my new book, more info at http://tinyurl.com/lulsvn
Catalin Zorzini July 7th

@Peter thx for teh tip, Genius Rocket is done!

@Monique, great insights! Thank you and definitely checking your calling

@Jake stay tuned mate!
LB July 7th

you forgot http://www.ilovedesign.com
Raymond Selda July 7th

Very unique article. Thanks for sharing.
James July 7th

Great list and pretty comprehensive.

The one miss is the one that I’m the biggest fan of — AdHack: http://adhack.com — a marketplace for advertising creative.

(Confession: I’m the biggest fan of AdHack because I’m part of the AdHack team.)

We connect ad buyers with ad creators and help them both win. Ad buyers get great ad creative. Ad creators get paid for their work, get to sell any unsold work they have and build a portfolio to attract new ad buyers.

We’ve evolved our model from the original crowdsourcing model to much more of a market for creative work, where creative folks can find gigs, buyers and retain control over the rights of their unsold work.
Fishgun July 7th

These sites are killing the market for quality design from real professionals.
Certain clients now believe it is perfectly acceptable to expect 50+ designers to work on spec in the hope that 1 might, (and I really do mean might) get paid.
In actuality, everyone bar the people who run these sites is losing.
Clients get ill considered work that takes no account of their real needs and goals. Designers waste their time working on spec for peanuts. Not only that but it is undermining the perceived value of design as a whole.
Travis July 7th

Also, for graphic designers, there’s Inkd, a new buy and sell marketplace for print creative.
Terry Walter Kensington July 13th

the leading open innovation project in the “german world” is called brainfloor.com. watch it. http://www.brainfloor.com have fun
guru July 15th

@ Fishgun.. My Sentiments exactly!!! These site diminish true quality of design and makes it OK for clienst to low ball us, because these site help us undercut each other!!!

designers wake up!
crowdsourcing July 15th

I agree with Fishgun, true quality might suffer in short term. On the other hand, new talents might come up with creative crowdsourcing projects that otherwise would never make it to the surface. From my point of view, crowdsourcing is a chance, not a risk.
Rahul July 16th

Nice sharing, but i think that http://www.donanza.com/ was also worth mentioning.
David Airey July 16th

To balance the praise, it’s definitely worth your time to read what else happens on these spec websites:

http://www.specwatch.info
MJ September 23rd

Hello,

I’m a senior creative working in the multimedia industry since forever,

I am not making any publicity for myself or anything, But i think that (((www.bigcarrot.com)))) is a really humiliating website! fuck them! what the hell do they think people are? donkeys and they’re putting this big carrot for them to follow? let them shovel it up their asses!!

Man seriously I wish that all the designers will just boycott them ! bastards!

MJ
Jeremy September 29th

You also forgot http://www.denook.com
LudoDelaherche November 4th

The most important crowdsourcing platform is http://www.eyeka.com

Why ? because they are 75 000 members in this community in 51 countries in the world !

eYeka give 500 000€ to his community in 2 years

eyeka propose ads contest, design contest, co-creation contest.

We can see eYeka’s members creation every day on TV all over the world.

For example, today (Nov 4) we have an eyeka member on canal+ (french channel) and an over on MTV europe
shiyon November 8th

I found another one called http://www.mycroburst.com/
sam December 14th

I agree with many of the above sentiments. These kind of sites not only water down design quality everywhere, but makes it that much easier for clients to treat creatives like cattle. Thanks to technological advances, anyone with a Macintosh and Adobe software can call themselves a designer because of how easy it is to make mediocre pieces that can pass as usable for most clients who don’t recognize quality. Generic website templates and cheap stock photo sites like iStockphoto.com have also lowered design standard.