Coversourcing - Design Contest & Great Case Study Opportunity?

Graphic Design

I don’t know how I have not run across this before today, but I just found the website for the book Crowdsourcing a book written by WIRED editor Jeff Howe. The winner of the contest of course is rewarded with 500 pounds, and has their work used as the cover of the book. I am not overly opposed to this contest due to the fact that they do not attempt to steal the rights of the entrants, or under compensate the winner (500 pounds is arguably an adequate rate).

At least in this circumstance, the idea of a design contest helps support the concept of the book. Because of this I partially find the contest to be a great case study. I feel that Mr. Howe and Random House should have every entry judged by a panel of design experts. They could then use the results to see what percentage of the submissions met the goals listed in the creative brief, which they considered professionally sound, and what percentage were not acceptable submissions.

This could serve to help discuss the ramifications of choosing the “crowdsourcing” route rather than traditional methods of content creation.

*Article image courtesy of crowdsourcing applicant yonialter

01/17
ADD A COMMENT
1 Comments

Related Articles

Share This Page:  Stumble It!  //  Del.icio.us  //  Float It!  //  Digg It!  //  Reddit

One Response to “Coversourcing - Design Contest & Great Case Study Opportunity?”

  1. James
    January 23rd, 2008 at 10:28 am

    Hi Zinni -

    Interesting idea. I think one of the effects of crowdsourcing is you can’t judge every entry - that’s why you have the crowd voting as well, but it should be possible to see how many fit the criteria - we haven’t had to reject many so far. If you’d like to contact me when the competition’s over, we could look over them then.

    James
    (Admin at coversourcing)

RECENT ARTICLES //

RECENT COMMENTS

  • Mabel: you only show sample of pre-k to 3 sites. What about older kids?
  • Pinkpetrol.com: Great tips, something of these were touched upon when a 60year old consultant wanted to the do the design for a 13-18s...
  • MReuvecamp: Thanks for the reply guys. Jeremy your feedback was really great, as was telling us about the research! Will have to have a...
  • jeremy: Thank you all for the great feedback, since I live in a bubble it’s good to hear what outsiders think. Another thing that...
  • M Reuvecamp: Jeremy, I have been researching Pre School sites, and educational sites for a fair while now, and would have to agree with...
  • Lemon: I just want to provide a counter argument to Bunny’s comment. I do agree that many clients might try to direct design in a...
  • J. Jeffryes: Can you share some examples of the bad design you mentioned? J. Jeffryes’s latest post: This is Why You Hire a Designer
  • jeremy: We have designed a site for preschoolers and had a ton of discussion and research around the design and usability of the site....
  • bloggiedoggie: Another good site designed for Preschoolers is Ziggity Zoom. This is a relatively new site but they seem to combine both...
  • Geoff: The best (only?) easy to navigate and genuinely useful website I’ve found for my older kid (5 now) is Starfall.com....
  • Manuel Romero: of course art has the guts to stand up for the right ideas and he gets rejected by under talented and sneaky blogger type...
  • Bunny got Blog: I have to say,I really like your articles. One thing I have learned is there are too many clients,who want a professional...
  • Jin: I interviewed at least 20 candidates last year to fill a UI designer position at work. I tend to have different standard and...
  • Sarah Childers: Good article. It is tough being a designer sometimes, but the result is worth the time put into a project. I recently...
  • Spence: I really need to check this Mad Men series out! Great article as usual.
View the Comment Line

RECENT INTERNSHIP LISTINGS

Visit Creative Internships

TWITTER

Zinni on Twitter