What is crowdsourcing?
You can’t hear the word crowdsourcing without thinking of outsourcing which has become the word for shipping jobs overseas. Crowdsourcing has become the term used to describe using as many people as possible to get things done as cheap as you can.
The word crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, The Rise of Crowdsourcing, by Jeff Howe. But the act of crowdsourcing has been around for longer than that.
Wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see Human-based computation), or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science).
My opinion on crowdsourcing?
In my opinion, crowdsourcing is to the creative industry, e.g. Graphic Design, Photography, what Wal-Mart is to small businesses and customer service.
If you’re a Wal-Mart shopper you might think great, crowdsourcing is going to make Graphic Designers more affordable right? If you don’t care for the big box stores you might wonder if the customer service you have come to love from your graphic designer is going away? The answer to both those questions may be yes.
The pros and cons of crowdsourcing are in the eye of the beholder. If your Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia means less sales, but need to know some information quickly on your phone, or you know something and want to share it easily, it’s great. Istock photo is bad for professional photographers, but great to small businesses with a tiny budget. If you’re a designer the big logo design sites take away your logo work, but need a quick cheap logo and they’re great.
As prices are forced lower by crowdsourcing designers have to spend less time on each task to make the same amount of money. The time it takes to design and build a file won’t change much; so personal contact with the customer is what will suffer.
So how does crowdsourcing affect design?
When I design a logo I talk to my clients, I ask questions to get to know them, the personality of their company or product, and learn whom their target audience is. I consider where the client is in their market, leader or just entering. I consider color psychology and the nature of shapes. When you go to a logo box store site the main question you’re asked is how much do you want to pay? As a designer for big box logo site you have to churn out logos like a machine to make any money. You create a bike shop logo with a bicycle rim in the middle and the next week you swap out the bike rim for a car tire and present it to the next client. I am not saying these are bad designers, on the contrary, I have seen some great logos come out of these shops. However with little to no interaction with the client they are just creating good-looking logos, not necessarily the right logo for your company or product.
What happens from prolonged exposure to this level of design, it becomes normal; just like the lack of customer service and personal attention we have come expect from a big box store. So while crowdsourcing is a great way to get design work done cheap, it may not be a way to get great design work.
Some examples of when crowdsourcing works:
Crowdsourcing News: The Guardian and MP expenses investigation into the MP Expense Scandal in the UK. The newspaper created a system to allow the public to search methodically through 700,000 expense claim documents. Over 20,000 people participated in finding erroneous and remarkable expense claims by Members of Parliament.
Timeline: Steve Fossett disappearance. The search for aviator Steve Fossett, whose plane went missing in Nevada in 2007, in which up to 50,000 people examined high-resolution satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe that was made available via Amazon Mechanical Turk. The search was ultimately unsuccessful. Fosset's remains were eventually located by more traditional means.
The ESP Game by Luis von Ahn (later acquired by Google and renamed Google Image Labeler) was launched in 2004 and gets people to label images as a side-effect of playing a game. The image labels can be used to improve image search on the Web. This game led to the concept of Games with a purpose.
SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.
Other things writen about crowdsourcing:
Phantom Captain:
Art and Crowdsourcing
, by Andrea Grover
The Rise of Crowdsourcing, by Jeff Howe
Is Crowdsourcing Evil? The Design Community Weighs In, by Jeff Howe
July 02, 2009
What's in a name change.
I was listening to the radio and heard a story on the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and how they're thinking of changing the name of the state to Rhode Island. Yes the full name of Rhode Island is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. It made me think about company names and changing them.
I have developed a strong brand and, I think, a rather unique and recognizable, though sometimes difficult to use, logo.
Now that I have developed a brand I find that sometimes I need a simpler logo and name. I use YAD, Your Art Director's acronym, and a YAD button.
Now I don't have the resources, or brand recognition, to change my company name like International Business Machines, IBM, did and because YAD* has another meaning, I make sure that when I use YAD it is always in conjunction with Your Art Director in some way.
In these days of texting and twittering LOL, RT and @, 2 ur friends, when is it right to make the switch from your full name to a shortened name or acronym?
Some things to ask yourself before you make a switch.
A strong brand - Kleenex® and Band-Aid® wouldn't think of changing their names, they have actually had to sue people to not use their name. An interesting article about just that: American Red Cross Sued For Using a Red Cross
An emotional attachment to the brand - McDonalds® and the Golden Arches® have many childhood memories attached to them for a lot of people, using Mickey D's may be okay in more playful marketing targeting younger customers, but the loss of an emotional attachment to your customers could prove devastating.
Is the name or acronym already used - In many cases people base their company name on the availability of a URL. I think you should choose the best name for your company then figure out the URL. That said, be sure the URL that matches your company name isn't being used by your competition, or something worse. An article on acronym problems in the Credit Uunion industry
Is the new name a problem - It's easy to think that the company American Sprinkler Systems (I made this up, not affiliated with American Sprinkler) could use it's acronym, but it might not be in their best interest. Sharing expert information online is a great idea, so who wouldn't like the Experts Exchange, well some spam blockers might not, expertsexchange.com. The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs
The new name internationally - When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America they didn't know that "no va" meant "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe. This is a horrible website, but it has some fun international marketing mistakes, well, I'm sure they weren't fun for the marketing professionals in charge.
Why change the name - Changing a name and logo is the quickest way for a marketing profession to put their mark on a company, but is it the best thing for the company or just their portfolio? There needs to be a good compelling argument to make a big change to your brand. Sometimes through no fault of it's own a company finds it's name has become a bad thing. You wouldn't blame a company with 911 in it's name for feeling like it needed a change. Sometimes a company outgrows it's name. Apple Computer® changed it's name to Apple® after the rise of the Ipod.
What can you gain from making a brand and name change? In many case's a lot but whatever you decide to do, be sure to build some matrix to measure the effect the brand change is having.
Some more information on naming companies.
Entrepreneur.com's naming rsources
Why Companies Change Their Name, Name Wire
The 10 Commandments of a Great Business Name, About.com
As for Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in my opinion, changing the name is a waste of time and money. No one refers to it as Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, I've only ever heard it refered to as Rhode Island, they also have the distinction of having the longest state name and it's going to cost a lot of money to change all the documents and signs.
*A YAD (Hebrew: יד), literally, "hand," is a Jewish ritual pointer, used to point to the text during the Torah reading from the parchment Torah scrolls. It is intended to prevent anyone from touching the parchment, which is considered sacred.
I have developed a strong brand and, I think, a rather unique and recognizable, though sometimes difficult to use, logo.
Now that I have developed a brand I find that sometimes I need a simpler logo and name. I use YAD, Your Art Director's acronym, and a YAD button.
Now I don't have the resources, or brand recognition, to change my company name like International Business Machines, IBM, did and because YAD* has another meaning, I make sure that when I use YAD it is always in conjunction with Your Art Director in some way.
In these days of texting and twittering LOL, RT and @, 2 ur friends, when is it right to make the switch from your full name to a shortened name or acronym?
Some things to ask yourself before you make a switch.
- Do I have a strong brand, would I be giving up brand equity to make a switch?
- Do people have an emotional attachment to my companies brand?
- Is anyone using the new name or acronym already?
- Is there a problem with the new name, it's acronym or URL?
- Does my new name work internationally?
- Why do I need to change the name?
A strong brand - Kleenex® and Band-Aid® wouldn't think of changing their names, they have actually had to sue people to not use their name. An interesting article about just that: American Red Cross Sued For Using a Red Cross
An emotional attachment to the brand - McDonalds® and the Golden Arches® have many childhood memories attached to them for a lot of people, using Mickey D's may be okay in more playful marketing targeting younger customers, but the loss of an emotional attachment to your customers could prove devastating.
Is the name or acronym already used - In many cases people base their company name on the availability of a URL. I think you should choose the best name for your company then figure out the URL. That said, be sure the URL that matches your company name isn't being used by your competition, or something worse. An article on acronym problems in the Credit Uunion industry
Is the new name a problem - It's easy to think that the company American Sprinkler Systems (I made this up, not affiliated with American Sprinkler) could use it's acronym, but it might not be in their best interest. Sharing expert information online is a great idea, so who wouldn't like the Experts Exchange, well some spam blockers might not, expertsexchange.com. The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs
The new name internationally - When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America they didn't know that "no va" meant "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe. This is a horrible website, but it has some fun international marketing mistakes, well, I'm sure they weren't fun for the marketing professionals in charge.
Why change the name - Changing a name and logo is the quickest way for a marketing profession to put their mark on a company, but is it the best thing for the company or just their portfolio? There needs to be a good compelling argument to make a big change to your brand. Sometimes through no fault of it's own a company finds it's name has become a bad thing. You wouldn't blame a company with 911 in it's name for feeling like it needed a change. Sometimes a company outgrows it's name. Apple Computer® changed it's name to Apple® after the rise of the Ipod.
What can you gain from making a brand and name change? In many case's a lot but whatever you decide to do, be sure to build some matrix to measure the effect the brand change is having.
Some more information on naming companies.
Entrepreneur.com's naming rsources
Why Companies Change Their Name, Name Wire
The 10 Commandments of a Great Business Name, About.com
As for Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in my opinion, changing the name is a waste of time and money. No one refers to it as Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, I've only ever heard it refered to as Rhode Island, they also have the distinction of having the longest state name and it's going to cost a lot of money to change all the documents and signs.
*A YAD (Hebrew: יד), literally, "hand," is a Jewish ritual pointer, used to point to the text during the Torah reading from the parchment Torah scrolls. It is intended to prevent anyone from touching the parchment, which is considered sacred.
June 27, 2009
Missing Plug-ins CS 4, a bit of a Rant
You know when your working and in the zone and something brings it all to grinding halt? It happened to me yesterday when I went to use Contact Sheet II in Adobe PhotoShop CS4. It's always been in PhotoShop for as long as I can remember, ->File/Automate/Proof Sheet II, like a friend ready to help me do my work. Why would they get rid of a tool that collects all your images into proof sheets automatically and saves them to any file format you want so clients can easily pick photos.
Adobe decided that you need to use another program to do this. Adobe Bridge will now handle the Contact Sheet duties, and Contact Sheet II would be an optional install for Photoshop. You have to change your Bridge CS4 workspace to output, and a panel will appear to let you go through many more steps than you used to, only the Panel didn't appear. What did appear were peoples comments on forum pages asking why the Panel didn't appear.
It was then I decided to do the optional install of Contact Sheet II and found that Adobe felt other things were optional as well. Bigger Tiles, ContactSheetII, ExtractPlus, Layer Comps to WPG, PatternMaker, PhotomergeUI, Texture presets for Texturizer, TWAIN, and Web Photo Gallery (WebContactSheetII) were all optional now. Twain, the plugin to run many scanners and input devices, is now optional, go figure.
Apparently they are on one of the install disks that came with CS4. I also found them here:
Macintosh
Windows
The install locations are all over the place, so be sure to read the file OptionalPluginsReadMe.pdf to make sure you get them in the right place, then take a deep breath, grab a fresh cup of coffe, restart your timer and get back to work.
Adobe decided that you need to use another program to do this. Adobe Bridge will now handle the Contact Sheet duties, and Contact Sheet II would be an optional install for Photoshop. You have to change your Bridge CS4 workspace to output, and a panel will appear to let you go through many more steps than you used to, only the Panel didn't appear. What did appear were peoples comments on forum pages asking why the Panel didn't appear.
It was then I decided to do the optional install of Contact Sheet II and found that Adobe felt other things were optional as well. Bigger Tiles, ContactSheetII, ExtractPlus, Layer Comps to WPG, PatternMaker, PhotomergeUI, Texture presets for Texturizer, TWAIN, and Web Photo Gallery (WebContactSheetII) were all optional now. Twain, the plugin to run many scanners and input devices, is now optional, go figure.
Apparently they are on one of the install disks that came with CS4. I also found them here:
Macintosh
Windows
The install locations are all over the place, so be sure to read the file OptionalPluginsReadMe.pdf to make sure you get them in the right place, then take a deep breath, grab a fresh cup of coffe, restart your timer and get back to work.
June 17, 2009
Orphan Works Legislation
As a designer and artist this legislation scares me. Before I get into why, let me give you some info about both sides.
This is what Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights has to say in favor of the legislation.
Based on the recommendation of my office, as published in our 2006 Report on Orphan Works, the legislation would allow good-faith users of copyrighted content to move forward in cases where they wish to license a use but cannot locate the copyright owner after a diligent search. It has benefited from many months of discussion, reflection and fine-tuning under the leadership of Senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch and Representatives Howard Berman and Lamar Smith.
Here's a bit of the side against the legislation.
If the Orphan Works Act is passed, all of your copyright holdings will be retroactively “orphaned” and lose their associated protections. You will have to register each of them with the federal Copyright Office in order to regain said protection. In addition, any future work of yours will have to be registered as well. This registration will cost a fee, and will likely be too expensive for most individuals to pay.
Here are some links to others with an opinion on the Orphan Legislation.
My opinion.
What if someone sees an illustration on my portfolio site and innocently copies it for their vacation blog. They shouldn't do it, but we all know this happens. They stop updating the blog, time goes by and they change their email. Someone looking for a picture for their project comes across my image and can't find contact information for anyone connected to the blog? They send a few emails, maybe look up a name, no luck. As I understand this law they can now take my image and do anything they want. I don’t think someone should be able to do that after a feeble attempt to find the creator. What if they put it on a product and sell it, worse yet, what if they take the image and use it in connection something I don't agree with?
If an illustration, photo, story, song, blog is found on the web and the owner can't be located it should not be used, it should be assumed it is protected and left alone. If someone really wants to use the work they should hire an artist to create something that will fit their needs. This law will cheat the creator out of control of their work, and cost other artists work because people can just find images, do an unsuccessful search and then use the image as they see fit. When in history has it ever been okay to find something someone has used their talent to create and just take it.
We are at time in human history where technology has made the ability to be creative and share that creativity in ways that are unprecedented, and now we are going to make a law that not only will cost us to be creative with government fees, but also let our creativity be stolen legally.
Please do something to help stop this legislation from becoming law, send a message that creativity is valued.
Learn more about current copyright law,
May 20, 2009
Can I wear tan socks?
It occurred to me this morning when I looked in the sock drawer and saw nothing but tan, I don't wear tan socks, black socks and black shoes are what I wear, part of my brand.
I started to think about clients calling and saying, I need to change things up, generate some excitement, I want to change the colors of my logo for this project, ad, or whatever, can I do it? Sure you can, it's your logo, but before you do I want you to think about branding. Branding lets your audience know it's not only you, but the you they are comfortable with. Your brand is more than just colors. It's a collection of expectations about a product, company or person. You go to McDonalds® and it's always the same, Golden Arches®, food that tastes the way you expect. Starbucks® too, it isn't just a logo and green color, it's music, people, a feeling, the taste. Think about Coke®, when you see a Coke ad you know it is Coke, even when it's real people or animations, an iPod® ad is an iPod® ad, even if the Apple® logo is on colors, or black. Why? because of branding.
These examples are big companies, they have a very well developed brand with teams of people managing it. Most of my customers are smaller, the brand is still forming and may not be able to handle something as simple as a color change, but maybe it can, if the rest of the presentation is consistent and meets the audience's expectations of your brand.
Read more about Branding.
So think about what you want to do, and be sure whatever it is that you are being true to your brand. Tan or black socks are a trivial matter in my overall brand, (unless I wear them with sandals) but I'm going feel more comfortable in my brand, more assured. Let me look in that drawer one more time. Ahhh, one last pair all the way in the back. I really need to wash clothes.
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