 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Design |
| Founded | May 2007 |
| Founder |
|
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Custom Logo Design, Website Design, Illustration, Marketing Materials, Industrial Design, Copywriting |
Number of employees | 70 [1] |
| Website | www.crowdspring.com |
Crowdspring (written "crowdSPRING", legally crowdSPRING, LLC) is an online marketplace for crowdsourced creative services. [2]
Crowdspring was co-founded in May 2007 by Ross Kimbarovsky and Michael Samson. [3] Crowdspring launched its online marketplace publicly in May 2008. Crowdspring is based in Chicago. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
More than 200,000 graphic designers and writers from 200 countries work on Crowdspring. [10]
Crowdspring maintains a blog which was launched in mid-2008. [11]
When it launched publicly in mid-2008, the company and its business model received some criticism because Crowdspring's marketplace works on a speculative model and challenges traditional ways of buying and selling graphic design, industrial design, and copywriting services.[ citation needed ] This is the process of asking professionals to complete custom work for the chance of getting payment. [12] This means that most people involved in the process effectively work for free. [13] Crowdspring embraced and actively participates in the debate about its spec work business model. [14] [15]
Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of design and of the fine arts. Its practice involves creativity, innovation and lateral thinking using manual or digital tools, where it is usual to use text and graphics to communicate visually.
Minted is an online marketplace of premium design goods created by independent artists and designers. The company sources art and design from a community of more than 16,000 independent artists from around the world. Minted offers artists two business models for selling their goods - one in which Minted handles manufacturing and fulfillment and a second where the artists handles manufacturing and fulfillment.
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digital platforms to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. Crowdsourcing is not limited to online activity, however, and there are various historical examples of crowdsourcing. The word crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing". In contrast to outsourcing, crowdsourcing usually involves less specific and more public groups of participants.
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Government crowdsourcing is a form of crowdsourcing employed by governments to better leverage their people's collective knowledge and experience by tapping into their ability to see connections, understand issues, and coordinate action. It has tended to take the form of public feedback, project development, or petitions in the past, but has grown to include public drafting of bills and constitutions, among other things. This form of public involvement in the governing process differs from older systems of popular action, from town halls to referendums, in that it is primarily conducted online or through a similar IT medium.
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