I don't know... Good designs are already "democratized" in the sense that clients and designers are already in a free market situation. This site tips the bal

I don't know... Good designs are already "democratized" in the sense that clients and designers are already in a free market situation. This site tips the balance so far in favor of what clients want that I can't see it inspiring anything but resentment in designers. The site will attract mostly inexperienced designers and will democratize art the same way Rentacoder democratizes code. Traditionally, most designers generate multiple proposals for their clients -- but they are paid to do so. In the case of this marketplace, all unaccepted proposals are unpaid. If, say, all designers have approximately equal chance of developing a winning design, all designers will eventually have a run of losing designs, just as a random walk is likely to go negative. This increases the volatility of the artist's income, encouraging experienced artists to go elsewhere. The site actually refunds the client's money if they get less than 25 proposals on a project. Since the artist in the "hire" model may only be generating 2-5 quality proposals, an artist using the site must either seek payouts over five times greater than the "hire" model or they must put only a fraction of the same effort into their proposals. This encourages rushed work and the participation of inexperienced artists who can't accurately estimate how much they need to charge to stay in business. Probably the biggest problem, though, is that this model makes it very hard to fight plagiarism. A client gets to see all the proposals, but they only need to choose one accepted proposal. There is little to stop them from "borrowing" elements from the other proposals without paying -- many artists do not have the means to launch a copyright suit, especially over a design detail. Any designer who experiences this a few times will sour on the site.