Recommendation: 99Designs
I am going to a trade show in a month or two. I bought one of the standard backdrop things and needed some art for it. I was quickly told that all my attempts looked like bad powerpoint slides transferred to the backdrop. So I tried a site called 99designs. They have a whole pool of freelance designers that compete for simple jobs - logos, wordpress templates, backdrop art, etc. I committed $250 to a design contest for my backdrop (the site takes some cut of that and the rest is a prize for the winner). That was 2 days ago. At this moment I have 35 different designs sitting there for me to comment on and choose from. Almost any one would be acceptable, and many are fabulous.
This strikes me as a classic victory for the division of labor. I am getting what seems like a crazy amount of good work for $250, work I could not duplicate myself for 100x that. I suspect that some of this stuff is super-derivative and is banged out using simple tools in just a few minutes, but so what? They can do something fast that I can't do at all and we all benefit.
