This particular site has a story related to other things I’ve written about here. and here.

For all my griping about the concept of crowdsourcing design, one of the design competitions I *won* did turn into a development project that I thoroughly enjoyed. Really really enjoyed, which has me contemplating why.

It’s the large corporate accounts that keep me afloat, buying prom dresses and red vw beetles for my daughter. But there is something about the smaller clients that feeds my soul.  They care.  They notice small things.  They bring a sense of passion and excitement to the work on their websites or apps.

The Blue Room Post website, which went live today, has been a stellar example of that *thing* which keeps good designers/developers here in this digital world, working away at odd hours fueled by too much coffee, pitifully excited by stuff that no one else cares about.  These guys work in the creative media arts, so the content itself (which I admit I usually don’t notice – when it’s about the code it doesn’t matter if it’s shoes or seating ) was a joy to work with. But it wasn’t the content, it was the people. They were just great to work with. Personable, funny, really good at what they do and very good at communication. They had such a good sense of how to do that, they didn’t bug the crap out of me, but they never left me wondering what was up. I can see from their work that they have talent and good clients, but my guess is that it’s their ability to communicate so well that keeps their business alive.

I’ve been known to rant (from under my other hat, the grad school one) about our misguided philosophical underlayer, our quirkly preschool aged beliefs about the relationship between technology and humanity. So I’m finding it particularly funny that here, on the non-meta level of manifesting, I am noticing once again that really it’s about our human ability to communicate with each other.

Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Publicly and truly, I support Typekit because it is getting us to the world of web fonts faster. We could wait indefinitely for type vendors to agree to industry-standard licensing terms and font formats.  ~Zeldman

Typekit. Heard of it ?

Like Zeldman I’m a supporter. Gave them my money and signed up for an account. If you are a designer or developer, you should too.

It’s an imperfect compromise, but our digital world of balancing standards and aesthetics is far from perfect. Yes of course I know that we can do this in other (more complex, iffy support) ways, other free ways. But. Typekit DID it, and supporting them is likely to push us forwards faster than anything else. C’mon, would you pay $50 a year to have standards compliant browsers that do decent typography ?  You know you would.

Here are the lyrics to What I Am by Edie Brickell:

I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box.
Religion is the smile on a dog.
I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.
What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are – or what?
I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.
Religion is a light in the fog.
I’m not aware of too many things,
but I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.
What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are – or what?
Don’t let me get too deep.

http://www.dejal.com/timeout/

I get lost in what I’m doing while working.  Lost, really lost. Losing track of time lost.  So I’m often surprised when I notice how much time has passed.  I learned a LONG time ago never to stick something on the stove and think I’ll check on it before it becomes a 911 call.  Time Out is a little application that reminds you when you should take a break.  It has two types of breaks, the micro, a few seconds, mostly for your eyes to focus on something other than the monitor, and normal. The genius part is that it hides your screen, you have to actively decide to ignore it.

The shocking part is how often one is *supposed* to take a break from working on a computer !  I allowed the defaults to install, and I admit it, I had to change them, I felt like I couldn’t get anything DONE. Keep in mind that these breaks are not necessisarily breaks from “working”, just from the sitting at keyboard method. I stand up and flip through a manual sometimes, or any other thing I can come up with.  But its been reducing my stress levels to take a real break, walk outside, shake my head out and free up some space.

The most telling thing for me is the struggle I have to not work around it every time.  I don’t always win the armwrestling match with myself, and sometimes it’s a compromise, a shorter break than this thing thinks I should take. But I know, in a deep down sighing eyerolling way, that this free little app is good for me.

Try it.

It has been wonderful in many ways. I’ve had more flexibility in so many areas of my life than I might have had otherwise. I can schedule my life how I choose to, I can wear what I want to work, and I don’t have to commute. It  has brought me pride, accomplishment, confidence. Most importantly it has allowed me to support my child and be present in her life in the ways I hoped.

She was 10 when I started this, after a few years of being employed by others in ways that allowed me to work from home part of the time.  The in-part-from home gig didn’t really work out, employers were suspicious, even though they tried not to be, and I over compensated in an effort to alleviate their fears. I realized that if I were going to spend that many hours of the day working, it might as well be for myself.

I remember that at first I was so scared. My fears were both reasonable (that I might fail) and incredibly magnified (that I might not make it and I’d be living on the street with my child). You might think that the sense of pride is proportional to the fear overcome, but not really.  Why is it that fears are so often larger than anything else ?

For all the wonderful things the past eight years have been (and thats many) there is a downside to working for yourself. Before you try it you think. “I will start every day with a healthy breakfast, followed by yoga, I will take walks at lunch and during micro breaks do housework, I will play more be healthier be more fully conscious and aware of my life, connected to my own self directed values, my bills will be paid on time and my house will always be clean.

But in the real world its different. You still end up doing shit you don’t like.  No matter what your work is,  its unlikely that anyone likes all facets of it.  For example I loathe the business end.  I barely do it, and when I do, it’s not that well. The thing everyone says about working all the time is true. There is no relaxing and letting some boss or company take part of the responsibility and fear off your hands, it’s all on you, all the time. And if you can’t focus on tasks, if you get distracted easily or are not extremely self motivated, forget it.  If you can do those things, be ready to struggle with finding a balance, and don’t expect to do much yoga.

My daughter is leaving for college in the fall. My primary reason for the lifestyle I have now is changing. Has already changed actually. There is a landscape of possibilities opening in front of me.

I could go work for someone else.  I could let them worry about lots of things, health insurance, billing, being nice to clients.  I could have days off.  In a row !  I could have coworkers,  collaborative moments with peers, learn from others, go out for drinks after work. 9-5 often sounds like a good trade for bare feet and kittens in my lap.

But it doesn’t sound like me really. Thing is I already know that my work style is intense, and my politics make me an unlikely employee. I’d end up agitating for something, organizing my coworkers, obsessing about creating change in whatever world I’m in, even if it’s one of cubicles and watercoolers. Unless its something like a job involving tech at a university… now that sounds like me.

I’ve made lots of choices, like this suburban lifestyle, based on my desire to be the best mother I could. i do have the option now of living in a yurt, or at least building a cob hobbit house.  Or being nomadic, although that really doesn’t sound like me, I like roots and fruit trees too much. The point is, all things that might have felt impossible, are now open to me.

Yes, I’m adding an extra pollyanna spin to the idea of blank canvases.  I had plans until recently for the life after my daughter left home, they included a house in the mountains and other things I dreamed of, a whole beautiful life ahead.  But the person I planned that life with left.  Asshole. I have shitty taste in partners. So here I am looking for silver linings and all, knowing that if I look hard, they’ll be there. And really, what choice do I have ?  Lay down and still ?  Stagnant and fallow ?  I could now actually, but that is not like me either, I’ve learned to keep walking.

Back around, eight self employed years, an anniversary, eight candles, what wish will I make today ? I close my eyes and look. But I still don’t see a path, don’t have a plan, don’t know what I wish for now. Okay, peace. i wish for peace. In all its many forms of course, including a continued peace with not yet knowing what is in front of me, of trusting that things will become clearer in their own time.  And of starting over, of my own ability to shed skin, to midwife, to give birth, to stand witness, to connect to that which has always guided me well when I listen. I just don’t know, and that is okay.  I wont fill the canvas simply because I fear  it’s emptiness.  But it’s okay to throw some paint on it and see what forms, to fingerpaint a bit and let it become.

Peace.

“In the Wild” is a phrase that amuses me. In tech circles it means something like “in real life”, techniques that are used on live sites and apps, as contrasted with in theory and experiments. Also, it often means things you are not aware of.  It has other meanings in non-tech contexts, and I find the overlap hilarious.

So. Here it is.

On Design:  I’ve now heard the same thing from crowdspring clients FIVE TIMES. My designs are “too artistic” for their use/audience/small-pea-brains.  The first time I thought it might be a joke, or sarcasm or something.  But numbers two and three came right on the heels of one and I realized it was no joke.  So, the current state of web and application design is clearly one where creativity is OUT.  What the hell happened ? Umm, creativity in this field used to be a *good* thing, now it’s formulaic layouts and palettes that are in demand.  Keep in mind, the designs I submitted were for the most part not even what  I would consider creative or artistic, I was only going for slightly outside the cookie cutter for goodness sake.

On CrowdSourcing:  I’ve learned that it’s even WORSE for designers than I knew. On top of the known reasons there is:  theft. Here’s how it works…  A client signs up and posts a project, they pay a small project fee (which goes to crowdspring) plus whatever they set the compensation at for the design work. They rate the designs highly at first, this keeps the designers submitting (usually people will submit one part of a project and wait for feedback) so all of the screens the client was looking for get completed. At the end of two weeks or so, they have a boatload of designs, many of them decent to good. Then the client says they don’t like any of the designs. CrowdSpring talks with them and extends the project (this has happened on four of the projects I have been working on). After that if the client still doesn’t like anything, crowdspring honors the moneyback guarantee and returns all the clients money.  THEN the client walks off with a number of designs and has someone else (either in house or at least cheaper) duplicate the design. The designers keep an eye out, complain to crowdspring, crowdspring investigates and in the end does something awful like… ban them from the site.  This has already happened on one of the projects I was working on (separate from the four I just mentioned which may end up going the same route).

On top of that even the legit clients (the agencies, this a a good deal for them they don’t want to be banned) are dropping prices. If client A can get a website for 1,000, client B will attempt to get one for 900.  If it doesn’t work, the client can always add money to the compensation they are offering as the project runs (this has happened once on a project I’m submitting on).

That adds up to six projects with issues out of the fourteen I’ve worked on,  and eight of them are still in progress so that number might go up.  Those are abysmal stats.

The BEST part is the expectations from the clients.  They give urls of sites with concepts they like, and then they repeat themselves over and over in the pubic  comments “We really like the look of this-site-which-clearly-cost-30-grand”, they don’t get it, they think the designers are not listening to them. My favorite one of these so far was for a reality show, giving business advice no less, and they continued to insist it should look like, and “have the production quality” of the site for the t.v. show Warehouse13. Asshole, do you think they paid $750 for that ?  Besides, it’s ugly.

SO… I’ve got a few projects left there, I’ve been focusing on clients who insist they want artistic and creative… we’ll see if they mean it.  I doubt it actually.

What a sad sorry state of affairs.   So far after about two weeks of SERIOUSLY long working days I have earned: zero dollars.

But I now feel like I know enough about the concept of Crowdsourcing Design to speak intelligently about it, and as a bonus have developed this for anyone who might be considering it from a client perspective.

Fast forward a few years. Crowd sourcing is hot, the economy has tanked, and what do we have now ?  It’s happening with DESIGN.  It not just designers bidding on projects, trying to competitively undercut one another, no sir, it’s worse than that.  People put up projects, set a budget for it (“I’ll pay $500 for the design I like the best”) and designers compete, DOing the work, submitting the designs, and the winner gets paid.  The losers get squat. Can you think of a worse idea ?  Even ONE ?

There are several of these types of sites, three big ones: CrowdSpring, 99 Designs, and Design Crowd. CrowdSpring advertises that each project gets an average of 110 submissions.  Thats ONEHUNDREDNINE submissions that did not get paid.  And some typical prices ?  600 -1000 for a 3-5 page website design (uncoded).

The fourth quarter is always slow for me, and I want to build some muscle in Illustrator (having actual projects/challenges always results in a shorter learning curve climb). So I’m making the best of this effort, laughing snidely at the pisspoor designs of others, and greatly admiring the good ones, who tend to be from places in the world I have only heard of once or twice and I’m sure the cost of living is very different there.  Yes, I’m an overprivileged american snot who is experimenting with learning the hard facts of living in a global culture. I’m also working up some serious skill in illustrator, where I can manage but could be much better, so I’m doing everything in illustrator (rather than photoshop which I know in my sleep). I’ve been a member of the crowd for about 10 days now, and am getting the hang of it.

The clients post requirements, then designers post designs.  The clients can publicly rate each design,  the numeric ratings, score of  0-5 where 5 is best, and can comment on designs privately. The designers who seem to know what they are doing, post ONE design, wait for feedback, and either start over if the concept is off or continue to develop if the rating is decent. The projects (competitions) usually last about two weeks.   Here’s what I’ve done so far…

Some Automotive conference wanted a design.  I thought they wanted a logo, so I submitted one, but DOH they wanted a poster.  The client really liked the concept I did, seemed a nice enough guy, and the project was almost over.  So I figured what the hell and did a poster that was completely and totally different from what everyone else was doing.  They were all 3d rendered highly glossy too many lights kinda stuff, in blues of course.  So I did a wild assed colored thing with a painted car.  Screw it, it was fun.  The client also has a week after the two weeks of the competition to make up their minds. So I’m not sure yet, but I would fall off my chair if I won that one.

Next up is this Norwegian company doing some sorta startup for event organizers.  They are gathering all kinda damn social blahblah data data, geo everydamnthing, tags, checkins etc etc.  They had two projects up.  I submitted for the first one, a 3 page website, $1,200. I did all three pages (wasn’t so savvy yet) and they got rated a ONE.  Say WHAT  ?!?  THAT pissed me off, so I did MORE designs. I also at some point realized that these folks rated most people a zero, so it wasn’t quite as bad as I first thought, but still.  Really. My next SET of designs got rated a 3.  Still pissing me off. Then a Four.  Then a few more fours . Then I checked out the other competition they were running.  Same startup, but they wanted three variations of  control dashboards for presenting the aggregated data. THREE completely different dashboard designs  for a whooping $700. It was such a lowball figure that only one other person was submitting, and their stuff completely sucked. I think they didn’t understand what a dashboard is. And why would they ?  The client provided NOTHING in the way of information on what type of data. Whatever, I did FOUR designs and submitted them, right before the project closed, sure that at least Id get that $700.  But noooo, I get an email from crowdspring saying that the client had asked to extend the time of the project.  Hrmmph.  3 more days.  How bogus, I looked on crowdsprings site and it says right there that clients can’t do that.   Guess they can. So now I’m waiting to hear.  I’ve done…. 8 concepts, three of them all three pages, and four dashboards.  Thats 18 pages of design, the max I’ll get is 1200+700 = 1900, and there’s a very good chance I’ll get zip. But I did get some cool dashboard ideas and I’ll actually use those eventually and GET PAID FOR IT.

Next up, an organic farm website, 3 pages, $1000.  I’ve done… 3 different concepts, one page each this time (gettin smarter) and am waiting to hear what the client’s feedback is.  Not the person who posted the project mind you, he’s been VERY communicative, very nice, but he’s not the end client.  ‘Cause guess who the biggest posters of projects are ? Agencies.  That’s right, they get the account, tell clients they are doing the work in house (crowdspring even has a set up for them to brand the submission with their agency  logo this is so common) and then they farm it out to crowdspring people, and end up giving the client a bunch of designs to choose from and it costs them only $1000 !!!  Oh now I’m getting it.

Next, a drupal theme for a data encryption company. Simple enough. We’ll see.  Then a website concept for an agency with a client who does bullion trading.  The gold and silver kind, not the beef, chicken or veggie kind.  That one is still early on, but so far the other designs completely suck and so the agency guy loves me. Then I got solicited to submit stuff, one for a kids game interface ($600 bucks, but I got them to send me .ai files so it’ll save me some time and could be fun) and one for another game-like thingy for medical students($2000). I guess I got those requests because I’m doing obviously illustrator stuff ?  Or maybe it’s because I’m obviously a sucker who will work for free ??

So there you have it. I am part of the crowd. Working for nothing (I mean LITERALLY). But I am kicking Illustrators ass.  Vector that baby.