As if making a living as an artist was not hard enough, one website has made it even more difficult for graduates in the creative field. Fiverr is a peer-to-peer online services platform where users can exchange creative and professional services to one another for $5. The site provides services ranging from help with translating different languages to coding assistance, but the biggest controversy regarding Fiverr’s business model is its logo design service.
The site works by allowing designers to upload their portfolios to the site in order to attract entrepreneurs looking for a logo for their new company. After specifying what they want, entrepreneurs will pay designers as little as $5 for the rights to use it.
A variety of issues have risen as a result of Fiverr’s business model. First off, $5 is an extreme low-ball payment for a designer’s talents. As a precedent, the logo you see below for BP sold for $211 million.
Now, of course not every logo is going to sell for that much; but you should now have a better idea of just how cheap $5 is to charge for a logo. My first thought was that if designers aren’t happy with the compensation for their time and effort, they should simply stop using it. But, the truth is that the consequences of Fiverr extend beyond just the designers choosing to use it.
Fiverr is making it even harder for college grads in the creative field to find a job. Business owners can now opt out of hiring designers and instead outsource their work to “designers” on Fiverr.
I say designers in quotations because in addition to eliminating jobs, Fiverr is becoming a hub for fraudulent activity. This article from Folyo.com recounts one designer who went undercover as an entrepreneur looking for a logo and found that a majority of the portfolios he came across were made up of appropriated work. The image below speaks for itself.
With that being said, I can’t help but wonder: Why would anyone use Fiverr.com? Even from the entrepreneurial perspective, you would be building the brand image of your new company around a logo for which you paid a stranger $5. In the rare case that the image you bought was not stolen from another designer, your logo is not going to be quality design work. The good designers are too smart to make the same mistake as Simon Oxley, designer of the Twitter logo, who received $6 from Twitter for his design.
The long-term consequences of Fiverr are real. Designers struggling to make a living are resorting to letting entrepreneurs low-ball the cost of their talents, in addition to putting their own work at risk for appropriation by fraudulent designers using the site. Both the designers who spent four years earning a degree and the entrepreneurs looking to start their own business are starting off on the wrong foot by using Fiverr.
Some things are worth paying extra for — the face of your business being one of them. Stay away from Fiverr and instead start hiring designers for the positions they have rightfully earned.
Reach the columnist at ralynch3@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @ryguy916
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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