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Here’s what I wrote to them. You can also see my comment here:

As a design professional, there are many reasons why I can’t support this move by iStock.

I don’t feel personally threatened by cheap logos. My business chooses clients who understand the value of professional graphic design. A basic logo and stationery design package for a small company starts at $3,500 in my business.

1. I have an ethical problem with the crowd sourcing structure. Many hours can go into even the quickest logo design to meet a basic standard. Each logo design can only be sold once. Many logo designs will not get sold at all. It’s not the same as posting snap shots which have the potential to get sold 100s of times. This results in innumerable hours of unpaid labour, mostly by inexperienced designers. This is very similar to logo contests. You can read more at http://www.no-spec.com and find out why most established design professionals agree to not participate in crowdsourcing or logo design contests.

2. There is also a concern from a creative process point of view. I think young, inexperienced designers who are starting out, may feel they have no other options but to give away logo designs. Sometimes the reasoning goes that doing these kinds of crowdsourcing logos gets you great experience. Well, it doesn’t. The great experience comes from learning the process of communicating with the client, getting a good briefing, doing research, presenting and refining ideas in a team environment and in communication with the client. The absence of briefing, research and customization will result in cookie-cutter logos.

3. Crowdsourcing is also a bad start to a client - designer relationship. To run a profitable business, you have to establish ongoing relationships with your clients. Single-project clients are not what you want, anonymity is not what you want. An established design business usually takes care of its clients’ visual communications needs over many years. It may start with a logo and stationery, but continues with websites, ads, brochures, displays, signage, and marketing. There is history and knowledge built up over the years, and the accumulated experience in a company’s branding makes a design studio very valuable. We become a business resource to a company much as a lawyer or accountant would.

4. And from a business perspective it’s not a good idea either. Young or inexperienced designers often don’t understand how a business works and what a billable hourly rate must cover: equipment and software upgrades, rent and other overhead, your own wages, benefits, and hopefully even a bit of profit. The profit structure which carefully takes into account all expenses and overhead as well as revenues and growth is what all of the Getty Images corporation is based on, this is what every profitable business is based on. Crowdsourcing takes advantage of the poorest and most desperate, and the least educated. The cheap fee for a unique symbol that can only be used by one client, unlike photos which can be sold to many different clients for different purposes, will not even cover a minimum hourly wage, never mind overhead.

I will not use istockphoto any more if this logo design product becomes a reality. There are many other sources for stock photography, including shooting my own.

Most of my thoughts below were compiled in reponse to a blog post about the decreased need for designers and editors since authors now have access to self- and desktop-publishing tools:

I realize that online and print-on-demand books will change the industry and the traditional editor/designer collaborative process. This process is shifting to a complete separation of content from design, which means templated, XML-based layouts, and medium- and audience-driven delivery of content. I see it coming, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and I am not overly worried about the need for professional design.

Someone will still have to create optimized layouts, just as is done for websites, whether they will be used as templates or are customized for high end delivery of equally high end content. The sky is the limit as to the layout options we may see in the future in electronic books. These options will only be used to their full potential by professionals specializing in user experience design. A more legible, more attractive, more intuitive design will always stand out and add value.

Even the most sophisticated desktop publishing tools do not make an author a designer. The greatest social network will not make an author an editor. It’s not the tools, it’s the education and experience that enable one to use the tools.

Beyond that, there is a cultural component to the traditional printed book interface which has a universal human appeal, and the online publisher who best approximates that appeal and user experience in the new book media will do better than others who are lacking that cultural aspect.

I suggest that the role of the book designer will be changing, but will be more important than ever with the increasing visual sophistication of audiences and the increasing options in visual delivery.

Besides, now that we designers can self-publish our own books, we don’t need expensive authors or publishers anymore. We can write and design our own content, and from there it’s only a small step to world domination.

The prevailing notion about design seems to be that it is always subservient to marketing, but that is absolutely not the case. Communication is the overarching discipline. Both graphic design and marketing fall under communications. Graphic design often works in conjunction with marketing, or serves marketing purposes. However, sometimes design itself IS the product, and marketing then serves design.

As designers, we have done a good job of selling our skills as valuable business assets. Companies understand the value of a strong logo, a well-organized, attractive website, and professional-looking brochures.

But it is time to remember that design has many functions. Here are some of them:

• to inform and educate (e.g. airport signage, medical diagrams, books)
• to convince (e.g. advertisements, pamphlets for a company or product — this is when design becomes aligned with marketing)
• to improve everyday life (e.g. product design such as a better dishwasher or a better spoon)
• to decorate (e.g. a poster designed as a keepsake rather than purely as information)
• as graphic art (e.g. designers like Marian Bantjes, Rick Valicenti, and Stefan Sagmeister have demonstrated this)
• as a science (e.g. font design which is based on legibility criteria, visual proportions, as well as style)
• to entertain and amuse (e.g. cartoons and comics)
• to fight for a cause (e.g. Käthe Kollwitz’s social justice posters, or Diego Rivera’s murals)

As Paul Rand, the designer of many famous logos (for IBM, UPS and ABC) said: “To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.”

At the risk of sounding conceited, most graphic designers I know are brilliant people. They have to be all of the following: more »

I made this posting on Sitepoint on the topic of the Great Spec Work Debate. I believe very strongly in what I’ve written here:

Rather than rehash everything that’s been said against spec work, I’ll address your 4 arguments specifically, as I don’t think they’re valid. You’ll find my comments on those further down. more »

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