Crowdsourcing shows no respect for professional designers who deserve to be compensated for their expertise and it devalues a profession that many of us love. This is hardly good for artists. The end product suffers too, as it diminishes design to nothing more than a beauty contest and doesn’t consider its strategic marketing and communications value which is achieved only through an effective designer/client relationship.

*cheers*
Dana

p.s. how might you go about being a sponsored artist?

The fact is most artists won’t be able to transition from between being an artist, where the primary focus is on honing one’s craft, to owning a business.

Unfortunately, business owners will continue to rule the world and most artists will continue to struggle even though the tools are now available to succeed. The mindset will 99% of the time not be there.

Also, 99Designs great for artists? I agree with @DanielStroka that it’s terrible for designers. The only people its good for is the owner of 99Designs and the people who outsource cheap work there.

While the spirit of group collaboration is nice, what it has morphed into doesn’t help the actual artists themselves and using crowdsourcing just trains artists to expect to be paid little to nothing for their skills, a mentality a lot of artists are trying to break.

If you want to help artists, you really should pay them what they’re worth. Creating something from nothing is not an easy feat and while it looks like we’re just staring at the blank page for hours doing nothing, we are actually really working. Treating them like you value their contribution and their mental efforts would go a longer way. And be more nourishing as well.

Instead, find a local designer, strike up a relationship, and work together.