The Evils Of Design Outsourcing
Posted on 14. Sep, 2009 by David Y in Freelance
Design is the backbone of all things life. Without it the world would be a bland possibly colorless mess. Imagine a scene where everyone looks alike, wearing the same outfit, doing the same things day in and day out but we as designers have prevented such a thing from happening. With our creativity and understanding that life is fun, each and everyday we make a difference.
However outsourcing is threatening to change things for the worse. Out of sheer greed and in some cases laziness we’ve given up a fundamental aspect of life. But what is being done to stop this madness? Or is it going to continue going on unnoticed?
A google search for the terms design outsourcing yielded over 16 million results. Pages and pages filled with people selling outsourcing services and I’m sure this list grows daily.
Something that brought was brought to my attention and somewhat inspired this article is the following quote from someone on Craigslist:
It is unfortunate what is happening today in the graphics field in such a short time. The problem exists because it is now possible to send the job to India where hundreds of thousands on Indian computer workers would be and are happy to do the job for $10 a day. I employed 50 graphic designers at one point in my business. Now that business is gone, mostly due to the pricing brought about by outsourcing. It got to the point that our long time customers would tell us what they were going to pay. There was no longer any bidding process. Competition would not have been a problem but I was paying my designers 18 to 25 an hour plus benefits, health insurance and 401K. You know, a respectable living.
Outsourcing killed the graphics industry in this country. Similar to why we don’t manufacture Levi’s blue jeans anymore … even our children’s textbooks are mostly produced overseas now. Managed in Europe, produced in India, Vietnam and other like places and printed in China. Now I hear that even Cannondale bicycles are moving their manufacturing completely to China. Why would these companies pay you 20 an hour when they can pay 2?
Where was the PC that you used to post this ad made? What kind of car do you drive and where was it made? Would you pay twice as much for the same car or would you pay half price? That is the problem. It is all about the bottom line for everyone.
Someone else replied saying the following:
I agree that this is a growing problem. $10 an hour is not an acceptable wage for an experienced professional. These businesses are exploiting our industry. Building on the previous post, I think that the best approach would be for everyone to email these companies and waste their time. They need to know that there is a consiquence to their actions and that as a community we won’t stand for it.
So I’d encourage everyone that comes across one of these posts to send the company an email. You can tell them how you feel or you can fictitiously apply to the job. Doesn’t matter. They wasted your time when you read the post. We need to make it so inconvienient for people to post this nonsense that they won’t do it anymore.
If you’re a business that cannot afford to pay graphic designers
more than $10 hr, then maybe you shouldn’t be in business at all.
You scum bags are hurting the integrity of our profession and
should be called out every time you post these insulting wages.
I will attack every business that post these jobs who’s trying to insult
our intelligence and down play our value. So be aware!
Until this issue is addressed true designers who bring quality and great outcomes to the table will continue to suffer.
Here are what other designers have to say on the matter:
@VM_DesigNut says:
I don’t agree with it. It hurts the design business here, and ruins the understanding & importance of the design process everywhere. I also think it degrades the design process & designers. Think of the $50 logo. Designers know how ridiculous that is, so should clients
@iamkhayyam says:
It’s essential to a certain degree. Farming out portions with in house work is fine with me.
@missneela says:
The effects of outsourcing in design has the same effect as outsourcing in the corporate structure. The result is a negative one that has a ripple effect in just about every area. Keeping things between other respectable designers builds a better design community.
As you can see from a professional standpoint sending projects to places like India and China for little to nothing does more harm than good. In the end outsourcing is a villain that we should refrain from.
What are your thoughts on design outsourcing?
Author: David Y
Hi, I'm David. A Graphic Designer and Front End Web developer, I love cats, reading and helping others. You can also find me on twitter.
6 Responses to “The Evils Of Design Outsourcing”
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AJ Patel
15. Sep, 2009
I think coding can definitely be outsourced but when companies start outsourcing design, they are rarely satisfied with the results. They only stop doing it when it results in loss of money or traffic.
It’s hard from a business standpoint to choose the more expensive option but I’ve researched overseas design firms for a company I was with. When we gave them a job, they turned around something which was NOWHERE near what we expected after seeing their portfolio. It turns out, they added these great sites of big companies to their portfolio after they had only done work on some minor segment of the company’s site.
So now we were stuck in a contract with this firm who had no idea what we wanted. I started coaching them on how they should look into our competitor’s designs and emailed them a few links pointing out the design features like elegance, white space, etc. that were needed in a site like ours that was trying to get clients to come check out our business after seeing the site. But they just didn’t get it – they kept sending back their same initial design asking what would you like us to change.
If I was going to sketch it up and send them exactly what we wanted, I may as well have made the site and sent it to shopHTML to convert into the site.
Needless to say, we didn’t pay them the remaining percentage of the balance due at the end of our contract, but we still lost a big chunk of money.
David Y
15. Sep, 2009
Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment. In a sense outsourcing forces many people to lower there standards just to get work locally.. It’s a sad problem that seems to now be getting out of hand in many areas.
Suthnautr
22. Sep, 2009
To the company that once had 40 employees all being paid a living wage and benefits I say bravo. Unlike that example, some companies actually threaten employees with outsourcing in order to cut their pay and benefits.
One laughable example is a hotel I once worked for. The mere word “outsourcing” struck such fear into so many thousands and was so hot at the time, that they actually threatened employees with outsourcing.
The employees were frightened when they heard this, until I pointed out that we were a hotel – and outsourcing bartenders, waiters and room attendants to Mexico or China made no sense at all – the hotel was in NYC.
Ford made the point that he paid his employees twice what other car manufacturers paid so they would be able to afford to buy cars. The worse off the economy is, the less everyone has to spend. When everyone sends what little money there is out of the country to third world businesses we’re no longer supporting our economy and competing for customers (because the American workers are our customers) but spiraling our economy ever further downward with diminishing returns ending in our becoming a third world nation ourselves. With the manufacturing economy dead, too many businesses are reading “service economy” as “economy services” when they should understand that what drives the American economy is now services – to outsource means to kill the only economy we have left.
David Y
22. Sep, 2009
Thanks for taking the time out to comment. I strongly agree with your statement towards the end about killing whats left of our economy.
The sad part about it all is everyone is mostly looking out for themselves no matter how it affects anyone else while being quick to blame someone else for there problems.