Australian firm DesignCrowd has launched its crowdsourcing graphic design site for businesses in Canada with a dot-ca address, it announced yesterday.
DesignCrowd.ca is online now and marked as being in beta stage. The new domain is one part of the firm’s three-month global expansion effort. It has recently launched in the UK, and received $3 million of investment from Austalian venture capital firm Starfish Ventures in late 2011.
The service allows Canadian businesses to hold contests and offer a cash reward in order to solicit many submissions from the graphic designers on the site. The business gets to review the entries, choose the design they like, and pay the winner of the contest. The winning graphic designer gets paid, while the others go away empty handed, or possibly with a runner-up prize.
Canadians like Web marketing entrepreneur Lorenzo Tartamella are already making use of DesignCrowd, even before it landed with a dot-ca address. Tartamella is holding a contest to design the logo for his Web site TimesSquare.com and awarding $10,000 in prizes, including $5,000 to the winner.
Toronto-based designer Elisha Leo is ranked as the number four designer on the site. She’s earned a 93 per cent positive feedback rating and earned more than $30,000 from winning contests on the site.
DesignCrowd isn’t the first crowdsourcing site for graphic design to launch in Canada. In October 2011, 99designs.ca launched here. While businesses that use the service seem to be happy with the results, and save money in the process, some graphic designers consider the approach as setting a bad precedent.
DesignCrowd advertises that it has more than 76,074 graphic designers registered globally and has paid $4 million for completed projects.