DesignCrowd

DesignCrowd AU News and Press


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Campaign Brief

Australian crowdsourcing startup DesignCrowd hits 100,000 designers; business doubles in size

28 Feb 2013 | Campaign Brief
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Australian online graphic design marketplace,DesignCrowd, now has over 100,000 designers and the business has doubled in size in the last year. The startup revealed some interesting figures that show crowdsourcing continues to disrupt and is showing no signs of slowing down.
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The Next Web

12 Big brand celebrities that crowdsourced in 2012

19 Jan 2013 | The Next Web
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Authored by Alec Lynch, DesignCrowd co-founder & CEO

When people think of crowdsourcing, they often think of it as a tool for entrepreneurs and small businesses – and they’re right. Small business users have powered explosive growth of crowdsourcing services in the last 5 years (from stock photography to logo design crowdsourcing). What many don’t realise is crowdsourcing is being used more and more by the world’s biggest brands, governments, politicians and celebrities.

Read the full article
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Smart Company

10 of the best Aussie Crowdsourcing Projects from 2012

17 Jan 2013 | Smart Company
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Authored by Alec Lynch, DesignCrowd co-founder & CEO

In recent years, Australia has established itself as a global leader in crowdsourcing with the emergence of an Australian crowdsourcing hub (a collection of world-beating crowdsourcing platforms that launched Down Under).

In 2012, crowdsourcing in Australia and around the world continued to flourish with the 'stars' of Australian crowdsourcing (including a business I operate – DesignCrowd) growing rapidly.

Read the full article
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Sunbury Leader

'Ruddy' design wins political T-shirt comp

10 Jan 2013 | Sunbury Leader
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A SUNBURY graphic designer could soon play a key role in ensuring a well-known Queensland federal MP is returned to parliament later this year.

Last month Shane Marchewka was announced the winner of a national T-shirt competition organised by former Prime Minister and Griffith Federal MP Kevin Rudd. Mr Marchewka's Studio71 beat 118 designers from Australia and overseas as part of the competition hosted by crowdsourcing site DesignCrowd.

Mr Rudd used a breakfast television show last month to announce the winner, which featured the emblazoned slogan 'Its Our Ruddy Future'. 'I wanted the design to be iconic but also easy to read and relate to and the slogan was a very important part of that,' Mr Marchewka said.
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Mumbrella

Melbourne Designer Wins Kevin Rudd Contest

18 Dec 2012 | Mumbrella
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A designer from Melbourne has won a competition to create the official election t-shirt for Kevin Rudd. Melbourne-based Shane Marchewka, who designs under the pseudonym Studio71 won the $1000-prized contest.

‘KRudd’, who Tweeted about the contest today, said: “Shane is a great guy who is putting in the effort to start his own small business. He had a range of great ideas and really embraced the spirit of the competition. I wish Shane and Studio71 all the best for taking his business to the next step. I was overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of entries, so thanks a million to DesignCrowd and Australia’s talented graphic design community.”

The DesignCrowd contest received 405 designs, Freelancer.com 450. The entries can be viewed on Designcrowd’s website.
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BusinessZone

How to get a killer logo design on a shoestring budget

14 Dec 2012 | BusinessZone
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Authored by Jo Sabin, DesignCrowd Marketing Manager

If you're thinking about getting a logo designed, what steps do you need to take and where do you go for design services? Small businesses and start-up entrepreneurs have a universe of options available thanks to the online design boom but which one's right for you?

Don’t under estimate the power of logo design to help your business get customer cut-through when the marketplace is crowded and every brand is competing for customer mindshare. An awesome logo design tells the world who you are and is a strategic business asset. Your logo encapsulates your business promise in a single graphic so it pays now to apply some brainpower to what message it should communicate to the world.

Read the full article
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Forbes

Thinking Of Self-Publishing? Ben Galley Has Some Advice

29 Oct 2012 | Forbes
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For self-publishers to achieve a professional cover, that’s quite difficult unless you’re actually a graphic designer. If you find yourself thinking that you can design a cover in Word or PowerPoint, hire someone else to do it.

A cheap way to commission a cover, Galley said, was to use crowdsourcing sites like Crowdspring or DesignCrowd. Authors post a brief to the site and designers then submit covers for consideration. When the author has decided on the best submission the site handles payment and contracts.
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The Sydney Morning Herald

Screw the mining boom, let’s create a tech boom

09 Oct 2012 | The Sydney Morning Herald
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Authored by Alec Lynch, DesignCrowd co-founder & CEO

In recent weeks Australian politicians have been bickering about the mining boom. “It's over, it's half-over, it ended last week (China put the kibosh on it).” Who knows? The only thing that is certain is that one day it will end. It's time Australia started planning for its future. It's time to start planning our next boom and, in my opinion, it's time to create a technology boom.

Technology, without doubt, is where Australia should place its next bet. While the mining boom splutters and fracks Australia up, technology is gaining momentum. Aussie geeks from Sydney to San Franscisco are cooking up world-changing start-ups and Australia is experiencing a mini tech-boom.

Young Australians do not want to make their fortune by drilling the ground, selling minerals to China and taxing fat-cat mining magnates. Young Australians want to make their own fortunes and the best way for them to do this is through entrepreneurship and technology.

Read the full article
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Australian Anthill

Crowdsourcing firm lets 5,000 take a bite out of the Big Apple

14 Aug 2012 | Australian Anthill
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More than 5,000 entrants have submitted designs to the latest DesignCrowd contest.

Using the innovative Sydney-based DesignCrowd crowdsourcing service, TimesSquare.com, has offered up a $10,000 prize for anyone who can provide a new logo for the New York-based website. TimesSquare.com is a site that covers nightlife, dining, and entertainment going on in and around Manhattan, and judging by the old logo still on display at the web site, it looks like company really needs a new one.

Speaking on the landmark contest, DesignCrowd CEO Alec Lynch said, “We believe TimesSquare.com’s $10,000 prize was the largest ever for an online logo contest and one of the first design crowdsourcing projects to receive over 5,000 entries. It’s a great case study in design crowdsourcing and highlights the creativity and power of the crowd.”
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Venture Beat

World-record crowdsourcing results for Timessquare.com logo contest?

08 Aug 2012 | Venture Beat
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What if you crowdsourced your logo design and everyone came?

That’s almost what happened to TimesSquare.com, a New York publication that opened a logo contest on DesignCrowd, an online marketplace for design jobs. The company offered a $10,000 prize for the winner, and as of this morning, DesignCrowd’s 83,000 designers have submitted 5717 entries.

“If crowdsourcing was an Olympic sport, we’d win a gold medal,” DesignCrowd chief executive Alec Lynch said.

Lynch believes that both the prize and the number of submissions are the largest ever for an online logo contest.
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NationalPost

Crowdsourcing design is cheap, but is it good for your brand?

25 Jun 2012 | NationalPost
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An online design contest to create a logo for Canadian website TimesSquare.com that has $10,000 on the line for the top submissions, has garnered close to 3,000 possible designs. For Lorenzo Tartamella, chief executive of TimesSquare.com, crowdsourcing its new logo has provided a vast range of art options.

“It’s incredible … An ad agency would have never been able to give us the diversity and the choice that we’ve been given the way we have with this contest,” he said. DesignCrowd CEO, Mr. Lynch said his service is “essentially outsourcing on steroids,” since it gives customers a vast amount of speedy responses, on their set budget, with no cost risk if they aren’t satisfied with the results.
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Techvibes

Australia Startup DesignCrowd Launches in Canada

05 Jun 2012 | Techvibes
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Three months ago, Australia's DesignCrowd—which raised $3 million in funding from Starfish Ventures late last year—launched in the UK. Now, the crowdsourcing marketplace startup has launched its service in Canada, continuing its global expansion.

"Canada has over one million small businesses and we estimate they spend over $1 billion on design services every year, but most of this is with traditional design firms who are slow, expensive and risky to use," Alec Lynch, the CEO and Founder of DesignCrowd, said.
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Sky News Business

Sky Business Interviews DesignCrowd CEO, Alec Lynch, at CeBIT 2012

23 May 2012 | Sky News Business
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BRW

Designs on Rent-A-Crowd

12 Apr 2012 | BRW
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The logo for the London Olympics gave Alec Lynch the idea he was looking for to start a business."The logo cost about £400,000 [$615,000], it took months to create and was then totally panned by the public and critics," Lynch says. "The client in that case was stuffed; they’d wasted money, had a PR disaster on their hands, and didn’t end up with a great logo."
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Wired UK Magazine

Startup of the Week: DesignCrowd

28 Mar 2012 | Wired UK Magazine
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DesignCrowd is an Australian-originated business that allows people to crowdsource a creative brief. A typical logo design project will get more than 100 different designs to choose from. Wired.co.uk spoke to founder Alec Lynch.
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Zdnet

DesignCrowd out of 99designs’ shadow

21 Mar 2012 | Zdnet
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In the start-up universe, first-mover advantage is a law that like gravity, can weigh on a company's fortunes, but Sydney-based DesignCrowd hopes to become the exception to the rule.

DesignCrowd COO Chris McNamara admits that the company has to date lived in the shadow of 99designs, but said that this changed with the $3 million funding round, which was the catalyst for him to join the business founded by long-time friend Alec Lynch. The equity raise also saw the appointment of Starfish partner Anthony Glenning, who sold his business Tonic Systems to Google in 2007.
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Zdnet

DesignCrowd and 99Designs: UK battle

17 Feb 2012 | Zdnet
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"While DesignCrowd has been based in Australia, we've had almost 10,000 UK businesses and designers use our service. We think the UK is the next frontier for crowdsourcing, and that's why we've launched DesignCrowd.co.uk. We're sure competition there will increase, as we've seen in the US, but, for now, there will be less competition," Alec Lynch said.
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SmartCompany

DesignCrowd acquires US company Brandstack, launches BrandCrowd

22 Dec 2011 | SmartCompany
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Online crowdsourcing start-up DesignCrowd has acquired Texan company Brandstack for an undisclosed sum, combining the service with its existing community to launch BrandCrowd.

According to Lynch, the acquisition of Brandstack and the subsequent launch of BrandCrowd will further reinforce DesignCrowd’s leadership in crowdsourced graphic design services. Brandstack, founded by Wes Wilson and based in Texas, is an online marketplace providing ready-made brands and logos for sale to buyers around the world.
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TechCrunch

Brandstack Pilled the Deadpool, Acquired by DesignCrowd

20 Dec 2011 | TechCrunch
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DesignCrowd, an Australian design crowdsourcing platform that raised $3 million last month, has just announced that they’ve acquired Brandstack and will integrate it into their service (essentially rescuing Brandstack from the deadpool.)
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TechCrunch

CrowdSourcing Platform For Creative Projects DesignCrowd Raises $3 Million

02 Nov 2011 | TechCrunch
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Australian-based crowdsourcing website for creative projects DesignCrowd has received a $3 million investment Starfish Ventures.

DesignCrowd allows anyone to upload a design project, set a deadline, set a budget and invite the platform’s group designers. The startup says that on average 25 to 100-plus custom designs are submitted from designers around the world, and the project manager can then decide which one suits his needs.
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BRW

DesignCrowd on Cloud Nine

10 Nov 2011 | BRW
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A Melbourne venture capital manager, Starfish Ventures, has invested $3 million in a Sydney company, DesignCrowd.com, a graphic design website with plans to open an office in Silicon Valley.

Lynch says designers can be paid on DesignCrowd even if they don’t win the design contest. "We get good designers and creators on every project, and consistent quality so there is no luck involved."
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Anthill

Australian crowdsourcing start-up DesignCrowd receives $3 million

07 Nov 2011 | Anthill
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The Australian venture capital firm Starfish Ventures has invested $3 million in DesignCrowd, according to a media release dispatched on Thursday.

The Australian start-up, a design crowdsourcing community with more than 40,000 registered graphic designers, plans to use the new investment to launch two new services in 2012 and to expand its client base outside Australia.
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Zdnet

DesignCrowd scores $3m, set to go abroad

04 Nov 2011 | Zdnet
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Sydney-based start-up DesignCrowd has scored $3 million in venture capital from Melbourne firm Starfish Ventures and is planning to use the funding to expand internationally.

DesignCrowd provides an online marketplace for businesses to crowdsource their creative projects to others.
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Delimiter

VCs plough $14m into crowdsourcing startups

04 Nov 2011 | Delimiter
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This week DesignCrowd announced Melbourne investment house Starfish Ventures had invested $3 million in the company. The money will allow the Sydney company to further expand globally.

"We’ve done well in Australia, now we want to take on the world, and Starfish is the perfect partner to help us succeed," said Lynch in a statement issued yesterday.
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SmartCompany

Sydney crowdsourcing firm DesignCrowd receives $3 million investment from Starfish Ventures

04 Nov 2011 | SmartCompany
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Sydney-based crowd sourcing design website DesignCrowd has finalised a $3 million investment from local venture capital firm Starfish Ventures, with founder and chief executive Alec Lynch saying the money will be used to break into international markets.

"Our kind of growth plans really require a capital injection, and this is exactly what we need to take the business further out from Australia and adopt some new product ideas," Lynch told SmartCompany this morning.
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TechnologySpectator

DesignCrowd secures $3m investment from Starfish Ventures

04 Nov 2011 | TechnologySpectator
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Sydney-based crowd-sourced graphic design website DesignCrowd has received a $3 million investment from Melbourne venture capital firm Starfish Ventures.

DesignCrowd, which was founded in 2007, is now a multi-million dollar business with clients spanning 159 countries, and has 40,000 registered graphic designers from around the world
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iTWire

Aussie start-up attracts venture capital, again!

04 Nov 2011 | iTWire
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Australian Internet start-up company, DesignCrowd.com, has had an injection of $3 million by Melbourne-based venture capital firm, Starfish Ventures, as it seeks to further expand its business into the global market. It is the second time, in tough economic times, that the company has secured investment funding.
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B&T Magazine

Crowdsource startup DesignCrowd secures funding

04 Nov 2011 | B&T Magazine
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Australian internet start-up Design Crowd has received a $3m investment from venture capital firm Starfish Ventures.

The online marketplace that helps businesses around the world outsource or ‘crowdsource’ creative projects was founded in 2008.
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mUmBRELLA

Crowdsourcing design company receives $3m investment

04 Nov 2011 | mUmBRELLA
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Australian internet start-up company DesignCrowd has received a $3m investment from the venture capital film Starfish Ventures. DesignCrowd is an online marketplace to help businesses crowdsource creative projects.
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The Sydney Morning Herald

Aussie tech gold rush: 'nothing off limits'

03 Nov 2011 | The Sydney Morning Herald
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Today crowd-sourced graphic design website DesignCrowd, based in Sydney, announced it had received a $3 million investment from Melbourne venture capital firm Starfish Ventures.

Its founder, Alec Lynch, 27, started the company with $10,000 in capital – which quickly grew to $60,000 after he tapped three credit cards and his family for loans – on his parent's kitchen table.
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StartupSmart

Crowdsourcing start-up DesignCrowd snares $3 million Starfish funding

03 Nov 2011 | StartupSmart
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Crowdsourcing start-up DesignCrowd is to accelerate its global expansion after securing a $3 million investment from heavyweight Australian VC firm Starfish Ventures.

The site acts as an online marketplace for designers, allowing businesses to "crowdsource" creative projects. More than 40,000 designers are registered to the site, across 159 countries. A New Zealand site recently launched, with further international expansion planned.
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The Sydney Morning Herald

Ideas anyone? Anyone?

19 Jun 2011 | The Sydney Morning Herald
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The voice of the crowd has never been louder. We're tweeting opinions, broadcasting amateur news footage, offering marketing ideas from the warehouse floor. Now businesses big and small are harnessing that collective creativity through crowdsourcing - a trend that is taking problem solving to the world.

A company would traditionally hire an agency and pay about $5000 for a handful of logo designs that might take a month to arrive. On sites such as DesignCrowd, clients can post a brief in minutes, choose a budget and typically expect 50 to 100 submissions within 10 days.
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SmartCompany

Hot 30 Under 30 Startups

19 Apr 2011 | SmartCompany
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Online outsourcing and design contests have become a massive area of growth on the internet. The desire of more and more businesses to post work contracts to be bid for by the population of the internet has helped Alec Lynch turn his business DesignCrowd into a thriving concern.

DesignCrowd has handed out more than $1 million in work to its freelance community since its launch in 2008, with a 78% increase in the last six months alone. DesignCrowd has also paid $200,000 in participation payments for unsuccessful bidders. Clients have included the Harvard Business School, Fair Trade Australia and Hi Tech shoes, while among DesignCrowd's 10,000 freelance designers are Udaya Kumar, the designer of the Indian rupee symbol.
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The Next Web

DesignCrowd raises capital and acquires US website

15 Apr 2011 | The Next Web
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DesignCrowd, an online graphic design crowdsourcing company ... has acquired and merged with US freelance design website.

DesignCrowd has been growing at an average of 21% month on month for the last year, and the new entity now boasts over [30,212] graphic designers and studios from around the world.

... "crowdsourcing is essentially outsourcing on steroids" and DesignCrowd will offer "more powerful, higher quality and sustainable crowdsourcing by harnessing higher quality designers and offering thousands of participation payments each month to better organise and reward the crowd".
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The Sydney Morning Herald

Crowdsourcing gets the job done

17 Aug 2010 | The Sydney Morning Herald
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It is not just small businesses using these services (crowdsourcing). The design service DesignCrowd has been used by Harvard Business School's Innovation and Growth Research Centre, the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand and the British sports footwear company, Hi-Tec.
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Fox Business News

Crowdsourcing Website Launches 'Fairer, Better' Crowdsourcing Model

15 Jul 2010 | Fox Business News
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Design crowdsourcing service DesignCrowd has launched an innovative, new design crowdsourcing model that addresses the flaws with the traditional crowdsourcing process through what it calls "Crowdsourcing 2.0" - crowdsourcing where multiple designers get paid.

DesignCrowd now allows customers with graphic design projects to handpick their favorite designers from around the world while keeping the project open to other designers.
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The Age

Crowdsourcing a game changer for Australian business

06 Jul 2010 | The Age
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Small businesses are tuning to the cost and efficiencies of crowdsourcing and self-employed people are using it as a new platform to tout their expertise to a worldwide market...

Alongside odesk.com, websites touting crowd sourcing pepper the internet from designcrowd.com to freelancer.com and elance.com. The first two are run out of Australia and are a result of mergers or offshore takeovers.
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SmartCompany

The stars of Australia's crowd-sourcing hub

08 Jun 2010 | SmartCompany
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It's no wonder crowd-sourcing has been described as "outsourcing on steroids" – few trends have had as much impact on the way small businesses can compete with their bigger end of town, by giving them access to low-cost, high quality services from anywhere in the world across the internet.

"It's about giving opportunities to people who have talent but don't necessarily have their foot in the door in the industry," Lynch says (founder of DesignCrowd).
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Mashable

15+ Great Ways to Find Web Design and Development Work

02 Apr 2010 | Mashable
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(On Designcrowd) you can browse the design contests in the "web design" category, pick projects you’d like to have a crack at, and set a small "participation 'base' payment" before you submit a design. Once the client picks the favored design, if you’re the design contest winner, DesignCrowd will pay you your fee via PayPal.
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B&T Magazine

Crowdsourcing site launches agency-friendly model

17 Feb 2010 | B&T Magazine
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Crowdsourcing design company DesignCrowd has launched a new crowdsourcing business model which it says eliminates the "threat" crowdsourcing poses to traditional agencies.

Using the agency’s graphic design outsourcing platform, design studios, ad agencies, printing and web hosting companies can offer design services and crowdsourcing to their own clients, using DesignCrowd’s 13,000 designers as their own "virtual team".

The platform can be completely white labelled and rebranded and has been built with agencies, printers and other resellers in mind.
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Entrepreneur

New Crowdsourcing Model Lets Agencies and Printing Companies Harness Crowdsourcing

16 Feb 2010 | Entrepreneur
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Crowdsourcing design company DesignCrowd has developed a new crowdsourcing business model to let design agencies, printers & other design related businesses use crowdsourcing with their own clients...

Design studios, ad agencies, printing and web hosting companies can use the new graphic design outsourcing platform to offer design services and crowdsourcing to their own clients and leverage DesignCrowd's 13,000 designers as their own virtual team.
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SmartCompany

Australian crowdsourcing site acquires US rival

25 Nov 2009 | SmartCompany
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Australian online design marketplace DesignCrowd has acquired and merged with US crowdsourcing website in order to expand its business overseas.

The merged business will take the name DesignCrowd.com, and offers designers a marketplace to pitch work for clients who have posted projects on the site, including logo, t-shirt, poster and even business card design.
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The Sydney Morning Herald

Outsourcing on steroids

12 Nov 2009 | The Sydney Morning Herald
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Crowd sourcing is revolutionising the economics of doing business ... Alec Lynch [Founder of DesignCrowd.com] calls crowd sourcing "outsourcing on steroids". He says: "the chief benefit of crowd sourcing is the ability to harness multiple suppliers to work on one project. It’s also lower risk because there’s no need to tie yourself to a single supplier. It also drives better responses and quality of work compared to the traditional outsourcing model because suppliers don’t become complacent."
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Brand Republic

Give Australia a new identity, win £1,000

13 Oct 2009 | Brand Republic
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An Australian design agency has launched a global competition challenging people to rebrand the country, with a A$2000 (£1,015) prize on offer for the winner.

The competition, which calls for people to submit a logo and strapline for the country, is being run by Australian crowdsourcing firm, DesignCrowd.
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Yahoo

Three (Real) Ways to Make Money From Home in Your Spare Time

24 Sep 2009 | Yahoo
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DesignCrowd.com offers designers the chance to submit their work in online "contests" for posted projects. The odd jobs, most paying a couple of hundred dollars, come in from around the world, from small businesses and individuals who need logos or fliers, banner ads and posters.
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The Buffalo News

Virtual ad agencies help the little guys compete

02 Aug 2009 | The Buffalo News
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Web sites such as DesignCrowd allow prospective clients to seek proposal pitches and low-cost quotes from a legion of vendors without dealing with a live person ...
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Dynamic Business

Website launches competition to fix NSW Government logo

20 Jul 2009 | Dynamic Business
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Crowdsourcing website DesignCrowd has launched an unsanctioned $1000 contest to re-design the recently bungled NSW Government logo.
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The Sydney Morning Herald

New business tool that's pulling the crowds and saving money

09 Apr 2009 | The Sydney Morning Herald
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BARACK OBAMA is doing it, and big brands such as BMW, Nokia and Pfizer have experimented with it, but now a British sports shoe manufacturer has enlisted the help of an Australian design website to put it into action.
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