10 May 2008
Crowd source for design works!
I have just found this great website call 99Design.com (a subsidiary ofSitepoint.com) which basically allows anyone to submit a design tender and designers submit they work in the hope to obtain the contract and the money which is associated with the tender.
The quality of the deisigns (mostly logos) is pretty good. I also find the prices offered to be more than fair to the designers.
For those who don’t know what crowsourcing is, here’s the Wikipedia definition: Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine an algorithm or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science). The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. However, both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticism.
I would also recommend you to read the book The Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki, 2004) which looks at many aspects of crowd sourcing.
I am going to give 99Design a try to get the Neoaid.com logo designed in the next few weeks
This is NOT a paid review 
Just reads this post on ReadWriteWeb about crowdsourcing: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/crowdsourced_workforce_guide.php
Listing of many more websites which uses crowd sourcing