Four Travel Deals
Like Woot for travel: Fourtraveldeals.com cuts out the noise.
Foodzie
Like Etsy for food: Foodzie is an online marketplace where you can discover and buy food from small artisan producers and growers.
crowdSPRING
crowdSPRING brings crowdsourcing to design projects: 1. Post a creative project. 2. Watch the world submit ideas. 3. Choose the one you like.
Crumpler
Ian Hall writes in about Crumpler:
At the bottom of the page a turtle says “You are viewing the lo-fi version of the site.” This is nice as it allows you to know you aren’t seeing everything you might otherwise, but does not restrict you to viewing only in Flash.
Bandsaw
Jamis ♥ his bandsaw.
Anonymous Coward
on 09 Sep 08Translation: the flash version is a nightmare when you are trying to make an informed product decision/comparison, get information, or place an order. Much easier to go through a reseller to order.
KLM
on 09 Sep 08I’m honestly surprised that with a good chunk of the 37signals team being designers or former designers that you guys condone what crowdspring does
kathryn
on 09 Sep 08i understand why crowdspring came about, but i just can’t get behind the idea of designers working on spec. see http://www.no-spec.com/
Charlie Park
on 09 Sep 08Maybe I’m missing something, but the travel site just seems to be a front for Expedia.
JF
on 09 Sep 08I’m honestly surprised that with a good chunk of the 37signals team being designers or former designers that you guys condone what crowdspring does.
We’re not condoning or endorsing anything, we’re just linking to it because we thought some people may find it interesting.
Angeline
on 09 Sep 08Thanks for mentioning us as a Screen Around Town! We’re huge fans of simplicity, and that drives the UI and copy on our site.
xoxo, Just a couple of Basecamp fanboys (and girl) known as crowdSPRING, who are just across the tracks from your office. Come over for ping pong or Rock Band anytime.
Nikolaus
on 09 Sep 08Thanks for the mention folks. Everyone at Foodzie enjoys svn :-)
Tanner Christensen
on 09 Sep 08Holy crap! Time for a vacation! Thanks 37signals.
ober
on 09 Sep 08Last I heard, about 50% of household in the US used dial-up, not broadband. So having a version for slower connections is great, but not sure what message the image of a turtle is sending… It’s like the designers couldn’t help but let you know that they didn’t really appreciate having to come up with a separate interface. Does this help the digital divide?
Anonymous Coward
on 09 Sep 08OMG: http://rubyurl.com/d7xL
Mathew Patterson
on 10 Sep 08Crumpler: Awesome bags, great branding, painful website
Toby
on 10 Sep 08Jason, I’m surprised you claim you’re not condoning or endorsing these sites, even if you are just featuring them as screens around town. People come to svn to read the (highly regarded, and not usually reticent) opinions of 37signals, in which you regularly condone or endorse various methodologies, technologies, businesses & web sites. I feel that by posting a site here, you are implicitly endorsing it, if you do not explicitly condone it.
rvr
on 10 Sep 08agree with @toby. you could at least post a disclaimer or warning that crowdspring is, indeed, a spec work site, for those who care. and really, all design professionals should care.
you’re never reluctant to take a stand for or against something, why be so dispassionate now? plus, you know you’re raising their profile, right?
bochgoch
on 10 Sep 08Sorry guys, but why the anti crowdspring sentiment what’s wrong with ‘designers working on spec’ (I’m no designer as you’ll see from any of my sites…)
Can’t say I’m overly impressed with crowdspring but more of the basis of the the quality of the work I see on there in comparison with the prices being charged: 5-10 times what the same quality of logo etc. would cost on DigitalPoint or similar.
Patrick Algrim
on 10 Sep 08I think some people don’t like what crowdSPRING is doing just because it’s kind of like having artists compete with each other. We need to get back to the “real” art again. Design has become almost so corporate that for me, it’s almost not enjoyable anymore. I want to create artwork, and if people like it, good! I would love to make a living from it, but I personally think crowdSPRING is putting the competitive pressure on designers much like models would do on a fashion show. Who’s the best, and who looks the best. I am not bashing crowdSPRING in anyway, I just don’t want to see our industry keep going into the direction it is. Flavors of the month from large companies that see opportunity to make money, instead of just doing things that they enjoy and things that other people will enjoy.
Toby
on 10 Sep 08Well, here’s 10 reasons why spec work is bad: http://www.no-spec.com/articles/ten-reasons/. Note this applies specifically to the professional design industry, although I’m fairly sure @bochgoch would agree it pretty much applies to software development too.
It doesn’t apply to the (real) art, modelling, or even advertising industries, because these work differently. If you want to find a model, you call in their books (for free) and compare them, but this doesn’t directly cost models time and money to do this. You would then pay the models you chose for the time they actually spend on your fashion show. Try organising a fashion show and telling the models they should do it for free, but the one you like best might get paid at the end.
Patrick Algrim
on 10 Sep 08@Toby thats a great point, but you missed my point—we shouldn’t be the models.
Patrick Algrim
on 10 Sep 08@Toby I think I misread your comment, I think you understood my analogy. But I am uncertain. Thanks for the discussion anyway!
Ross Kimbarovsky
on 12 Sep 08Hey everyone, I thought I’d jump in here to address a few points. We’re very much for a spirited discussion – this is one of the reasons I am a big fan of SVN (and we’re huge fans of 37signals’ products – we use them for our development). @Patrick – we actually agree on more things than we disagree. Competitive pressures on sites like elance and guru have made design a commodity. Designers will do the work for $30 and virtually no U.S. based designer can compete at those prices. We’ve taken a very different approach (in fact, we’ll be presenting at the Chicago New Media Summit on Sept. 15, just after Jason Fried, and you’ll hear us talking about these very issues…) We’ve built a community of 6,000 designers from 130+ countries. They succeed or fail based on talent, not price. Buyers set prices on crowdSPRING and we’ve set minimums. In our just released crowdSPRING Pro product, for example (more privacy, more user control), minimums for all projects are $1,000. Now, we can disagree about many things, but we can agree that $1,000 is significantly higher than $30. Designers on crowdSPRING weigh the risk for themselves, do the research, and provide great work for their clients. When we presented at the DEMO Conference this past monday, we were joined on stage by the Chief Creative Officer for Element79 who has posted a $1,000 logo project for the Palazzo Casino (vegas). It was posted for 3 days, over labor day weekend. Don’t take my word for it. According to the CCO of Element79 – the work by the selected designer and 20% of the work in the project was outstanding. We have hundreds upon hundreds of clients and designers who’ll tell you this. And we’ve built in numerous protections that simply don’t exist anywhere else. We require escrow in EVERY project, we provide customized legal agreements to protect the intellectual property being purchased, we have a well developed copyright violations policy and set of procedures. We also spend a lot of time educating our community. Now – we do understand that crowdSPRING is not for everyone. And that’s OK. In many respects, companies like 37signals, Threadless, iStockphoto have blazed the path for us and have proven that a product doesn’t have to satisfy everyone to be an excellent product. We can live with that. – Ross Kimbarovsky, co-Founder, http://www.crowdspring.com
Patrick Algrim
on 14 Sep 08@Ross – that was great, I enjoyed the conversation of your legal aspects. But you just said it yourself, “They succeed or fail based on talent, not price.”—that is the very definition of competition!!! I am going to draft Patrick Kane for The Blackhawks based on talent. It’s a competitive nature that you are selling a product on! The analogy of model on the runway still holds water on your discussion. While people may find it to be a useful service, they only find it useful because they got a low priced product for something that is very useful to them. I think a good majority of people will feel that something they worked hard on, should have a fair price tag on it. If not, maybe we should call Carlos Segura or Paul Rand and ask them!
This blatant disregard to the creative industry being a new found money market for flavor of the week style companies, has made me begin to shift away from what I find to be an artform.
Ross Kimbarovsky
on 15 Sep 08@Patrick – Isn’t competition inherent in everything we do? 37signals competes for new users every day. Designers compete against one another, whether on crowdSPRING or offline. Writers compete for readers. Musicians compete for listeners. Entrepreneurs compete when they start new companies and have no customers or revenues. Arguments focusing on price have been made in many industries. For example, Radiohead’s innovative model to sell their recent record (pay what you want) was met with huge criticism from the music industry (incidentally, offering some of the same arguments you’ve offered). And I fully agree with your statement that “a good majority of people will feel that something they worked hard on, should have a fair price tag on it.” The 6,000 creatives working on crowdSPRING fully understand the risk. Those who don’t want to take on the risk don’t. Those who cannot get work using other methods are very thankful for the opportunity offered on crowdSPRING. Isn’t risk properly measured by an individual? If I understand your suggestion – you are suggesting that some people in the creative community can better measure the risk that OTHER people are prepared to take. Why? To me, this not only misses the point that risk is individual, but also adopts an “us vs. them” mentality that will surely fail. This is precisely what professional photographers said when iStockphoto was born. And today, those photographers aren’t selling their stock at Getty Images. They’re on iStockphoto. While I am not a designer, I certainly don’t think that the design industry is less of an artform when creatives from around the world are allowed to compete fairly on a level playing field. To the contrary, I would suggest that we should never adopt an attitude that excludes ideas and that prohibits people from being creative. THAT would shift the industry in the wrong direction.
Patrick Algrim
on 15 Sep 08@ross – I completely commend you for trying to create something good. But straight from Jim Coudal’s mouth on Business POV – “we just made things that we like, and we believe other people will like them too.” That’s the correct adaptive mentality most should have. 37Signals competes for customers, but they stick to doing what they feel is necessary with the product they love. A very similar style to Jim Coudal’s mindset. Without going into circles I think most of all I feel disappointment in even having to have this conversation. The “us vs. them” mentality…. Doesn’t hold any water, a community is an “us.” The United States is an “us” - so why would you not pertain your beliefs inside of a given community. That’s not doomed to failure, or maybe we should call up Napster and see why people continue to download. “Us vs. them” - welcome to the internet, but that’s a different story.
Overall, art shouldn’t have competition – you should do what you want to do and not have to try and replicate others. Inspiration is one thing, but art is all about expression, and expressing it any way you feel. It shouldn’t have a competitive nature, or else that completely contradict the reason why we create art.
Let me end by saying again, I commend your attempt to do something good. That’s probably why you are being asked to speak at conferences. But I think a large majority of industries do have the wrong mindset about designers (especially Web, who most see it as an art form), and that isn’t a direct target at you. While your Web site may be a good attempt, I don’t truly know if it helps.
Keith
on 15 Sep 08I don’t see the problem with crowdsourcing graphic design. It doesn’t weaken what professional designers do in any way in my opinion. The money isn’t in the local baked good shop and graphic design firms aren’t chasing down $200 to $500 design gigs anyway.
Crowdsourcing on this level fills a great niche for small business owners, local non-profits, and cash strapped startups.
What you get is a digital artifact not design.
Designers do a heck of a lot more than looking at an advertisement, a short blurb, and then create something. So I’m not sure why there is all this perceived channel conflict between what crowdsourcing stuff like $150 ident designs and engaging a graphic design agency to do the identity work for your organization. The two services couldn’t be more different.
Spencer Lavery
on 16 Sep 08The trouble with crowdsourcing, is that it encourages designers living in inexpensive climates to offer prices to clients in expensive climates that wouldn’t otherwise be able to get those prices.
It’s akin to the Chinese sweat shops and other forms of cheap labour that you simply couldn’t get in your own country. Just looking at the web site now I see a logo for $150. A plumber would charge me that just for a call-out, and a designer is at the very least as talented and skilled as a plumber.
The trouble is, if all of the great, (comparatively) expensive designers get tired of diminishing budgets, the cheaper designers won’t have anybody to copy from, and design will not progress. Some of the work I see on crowdSPRING is excellent, none of it is ground-breaking.
Crowdsourcing is turning an artform into something perfunctory. Something akin to data entry.
Thankfully all of the clients and potential clients we speak to still understand the value of developing a great relationship with your designers.
This discussion is closed.