Are you wondering how you can utilize graphic design crowdsourcing contests? Is the allure of dozens of graphics created for your choosing piquing your curiosity? If so, you are not alone. Businesses the world over are gravitating towards this platform as the way to get the designs they need.
The most popular projects to crowdsource are often the top-end branding assets, like logos, websites and business cards.
But the need for creative assets is often ongoing in businesses, and without an inhouse designer or links to a professional, it can be hard to produce quality artwork that reflects the brand in the best light.
Crowdsourcing through DesignCrowd provides access to more than 500,000 designers who are ready to create the assets you need.
And here are ten products your business might need designs for regularly, that you can crowdsource right here on DesignCrowd.
1) Label design
For many companies, such as those who sell beverages, food, and cosmetics, labeling is a regular part of business. A new product is developed and with it comes its packaging and labeling. The label designs need to be developed for each new product which may motivate a business to hire a graphic designer in-house or a contractor.
A great idea instead is to run a crowdsourcing contest to generate the final ideas. This way you get a quick and affordable solution as well as a wide selection which can bring new ideas that wouldn’t otherwise be considered. Through the creative brief you can give the needed overview of your business, your target audience, and the product, then let the designers work their magic.
Check out this contest by a Nutrition business who needed a label for their popcorn jars. For $480, they received 56 designs from 11 designers and found the perfect fit.
2) Email marketing designs
Another common and ongoing requirement for many companies is to stay in contact with customers through email marketing. By sending monthly newsletters, personalized offers, and updates, you can stay in your customer’s mind and move them through the buying funnel. These emails need to be engaging and eye catching, which is where great designs come in.
My Hosting Bubble is an internet hosting company that needed an email template to announce the launch of their new website, so they ran a crowdsourced contest. For about $100, they received 32 designs from six designers and found their winner who met their needs for a bold and modern design. Super affordable and no strings attached!
3) T-shirt design
Are you in the clothing industry and needing some fresh new designs for your t-shirts? Maybe you have an upcoming promotion and your staff needs T-shirts to help raise awareness about it. Or you want to design shirts to sell to customers to represent and promote your brand. Businesses need T-shirtd designs for a variety of reasons and all of these can be efficiently created through a crowdsourcing project.
There is no need to spend your time thinking up the design or concept, see what the crowd comes up with! Check out the great designs that came in for a T-shirt subscription company who sends out cool and relevant t-shirts each month to their subscribers. For $140, they got 83 designs from eight designers and it was probably hard to pick just one!
4) Poster design
Posters are a great way to communicate with your customers and share important information about what is going on with your business. Most companies will design posters along with the changing of seasons, for special events, or to share important changes. This can happen quite often so it’s nice to have a place to go to get designs quickly and within budget. Going back and forth with a designer can simply take too much time which is where crowdsourcing comes in.
A nice example of a crowdsourced project gone awesome is this poster design for an annual kid’s community treasure hunt. There were several other really nice designs which show how beneficial it can be to see various different creative ideas before choosing one, rather than just investing in one option.
5) Flyer design
Flyers go right along with posters, they are often printed to highlight products or announce changes, events, or promotions. These are needed throughout the year and crowdsourcing can allow you to discover fresh, new content that will catch your customer’s eye.
A great example is Krysallis, a company that sells barware, cutlery, home wares and more. They had a trade show coming up where they wanted to hand out flyers at their booth which featured their products. After $140, 38 designs, and 11 designers, they had their conservative yet elegant flyer. Imagine how much it would cost to get creative input from 11 designers outside the platform, the value is immense!
6) Vector designs
Vector designs are small but helpful designs that your business may need from time to time. Whether it is to create an icon for your app or an image that will go on one of your products, you can send your creative brief out and get designs submitted in no time. This is often a small task that works great for the crowdsourcing workflow.
It’s also worth noting vector designs should be used for all logos so they can be resized and it doesn’t impact on the resolution.
7) Advertisements
Advertisements are key to a business’s success. They need to be carefully planned, eye-catching, and relevant. Furthermore, they must constantly be updated and adapted to pique customer interest.
As marketing has moved increasingly online, businesses need more graphics designed for both online and offline efforts. Crowdsourcing is a great resource for this as you can get original ideas, quickly, and without a slow back and forth discussion with designers.
AngloINFO is the world’s largest network of websites for expatriates and they aimed to revamp their advertising through a DesignCrowd contest. They got 36 high-quality responses, even with a rather short brief, which resulted in the advertisement they had been looking for.
Try a contest for one ad and see how it does compared to your other ads.
8) Brochure design
We all know brochures can be very helpful pieces of marketing collateral. They give us an opportunity to dig deeper into a program, service, or product and help to move our potential customers closer to buying. They’re even better if we can have them designed with effective graphics to reinforce the text.
Check out the designs submitted in this brochure contest for an Australian company. They needed a high-end corporate home services brochure for their door to door sales team and got it for $170 AUD. This goes to show, crowdsourcing can result in a great selection of designs for marketing purposes at an affordable price.
9) Signage design
Signage helps your business to be seen and can be applied to a vehicle, storefront, on a billboard, etc. Crowdsourcing helps get results faster so you can have new signage displayed on your business in less than 2 weeks. As signage needs change throughout the year, you can pop over to DesignCrowd on an as-needed basis to get designs updated.
This driving school needed colorful and modern signage designs to put on their cars and had 69 submissions tailored to the various parts of the vehicle. Sure enough, they found the one that suited their needs. What signage needs does your business have?
10) Art design
All graphic designs are a form of art, but many businesses want specific designs created for miscellaneous purposes like an illustration or graphic to go along with a blog post or whitepaper. When this sort of project comes up, it’s nice to have a place where you can always go to make the request.
It doesn’t always make sense to keep a designer on staff when there’s not steady work and if you’re not sending a contractor regular work, you’re not likely to be on the top of their priority list. However, on DesignCrowd, there are always designers who will give their best to a project in a bid to be the winner.
Conclusion
Are you beginning to see how crowdsourcing designs can fit into your marketing strategy? It’s a more streamlined way of getting quality designs for your business which empowers you in terms of time and cost. And in the unlikely case you simply don’t like any of the designs, DesignCrowd offer a money back guarantee (conditions apply). These ten design services are just a few of the many options available.
Ready to simplify the process of getting graphic designs for your business? Click here to start your own contest!
Want More?
Discover ways crowdsouring can help boost your business:
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Written by Jessica Walrack on Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Jessica Walrack is a professional freelance writer with a background in sales and marketing. After 7 years in the corporate world, she stepped into the online sphere and has now been freelancing for 4 years. She specializes in helping businesses to create a stellar online experience for their audience in order to build industry authority and increase profitability. In her spare time, Jessica enjoys traveling all over the world with her family.