From reading a lot of recent blog-posts it sounds like many of the large firms providing media-content via traditional means, are pretty much s*&!ting themselves. The previous days of making a large return from running a shop creating, subcontracting and selling design seem to be over. A new dawn broke and the old rules don’t seem to apply so much anymore.
If the large firms are correct – and their days really are numbered – maybe in the future (within these industries) everyone will work independently of large organisations?
Currently in 2009, it seems that designers need to promote themselves to gain kudos in the industry. In a way, modern designers have become individual enterprises themselves – with their own individual brand, streams to interact with public (via a blog / twitter / vimeo etc).
Baring this in mind, I can imagine a time when all designers operate as ‘hired-guns’ and are hired according to a jobs requirements.
If this kind of situation was to develop, informal work networks would be created on a per-project basis. You’d need to work with a team of people who you’d not necessarily ever meet in person and you’d all need to get up to speed quickly.
If this became true, there’d be a need for a new breed of webapps that can provide a decent way for people to collaborate on projects. (There’s basecamp – but I don’t think that’s ideal).
I don’t like the idea of crowdsourcing because it builds upon exploitation – but I think that crowdsourcing sites like 99designs and crowdSpring are a stepping stone .. they won’t last or replace the way that the majority of design jobs are carried out.
However, despite their faults, these crowdsourcing sites do at least attempt to tackle the problem of finding new ways to sell design services and interact with clients (without the involvement of large firms).
Maybe what we need are alternative models to crowdsourcing which tackle the same problem in a better way – but what could they be?