Crowdsourcing Our Logo: The Crowd has Spoken
24th April 09
Posted in crowdsourcing, design, social media
And boy, did we get an earful.
To quickly recap: As a innovations unit tasked with exploring new models in communications, we needed a logo that can convey our mission and philosophy. So it made sense to try crowdsourcing to experiment first-hand with how all this might fit into our industry down the line. In the process, we hoped to find fresh talent who are marketing their skills in new ways.
A lot of people asked why would we do something like this? Don’t we have great designers in-house? Doesn’t that stuff commoditize design? Isn’t that exploitive?
That’s beside the point: the pros and cons of crowdsourcing design can be debated ’till we are blue in the face but the fact is, the model seems to work and therefore deserves our attention.
Currently, we believe it works best for small or start-up clients. But as the model evolves it has a lot potential to work for larger clients with more demanding needs.
These new technologies aren’t going away, so it’s now our duty to understand how to work with them. We can continue to insist that us trained professionals are irreplaceable by the untrained crowd (and end up like our poor friends in journalism), or we can start figuring out how to turn eggs into omelets. From our viewpoint, this isn’t about preparing for the day that creative agencies can outsource design, it’s about preparing for the day that clients can outsource creative agencies.
BBH Labs believes that in the not-too-distant future, creative agencies are going to resemble expanded networks, with core teams overseeing expansive partnerships rather than the more vertically-integrated models existing today (more to come on this topic later). We see these kinds of partnerships and platforms happening across media increasingly already.
The task now is to find out how to build these new models in a way that is fair to all involved. Crowdsourcing our logo was the first tiny step in a larger Labs process to come – the medium was the message.
(For full post click below)
And what a message: we received a whopping 1,740 submissions, a record for Crowdspring! Though we don’t confuse quantity with quality, as long as the designs were created with care and passion, we appreciated each and every one submitted.
Regarding the process, just like in the non-crowdsourcing world, we noticed a few talented leaders pushed forward the output from the rest of the crowd (the 80/20 equation was a bit closer to 90/10). Due to this, we found ourselves rating work higher or lower, not necessarily on specific merits, but in an attempt to sway overall direction. At a point, we began to contact designers we thought had potential, asking to see their portfolios and bios rather than continue to judge them on logos submitted. This allowed us a glimpse into what kinds of people are actually working on the site and to our surprise, we found a very, very interesting and eclectic group: established designers looking for opportunities to experiment with smaller clients, ambitious start-up agencies that don’t have a client base yet, promising designers in foreign countries that don’t have face-to-face networking opportunities, and more. From a designer’s perspective, there are multiple opportunities for creative exploration and relationship building and according to Ross E. Kimbarovsky, Crowdspring co-founder, 50% of work provides direct follow-up work.
Unfortunately, we can only award one designer the job, but we made some interesting contacts for the new BBH Labs family and are looking forward to working with them in the future. The designer we chose to work with on this project is named Dan Spulber and he is a academic, bicyclist, master potter from Romania. We enjoy his views on design as well as the fact that he submitted a thoroughly original sketch that seemed to absorb our mission. We will now begin working with Dan to perfect our logo and hope to share it with everyone shortly.
As discussed previously, our single biggest issue with the process is that crowdsourcing design sites resemble an open call model more than an open source model. And though this model works quite well for the client, it seems unfair to reward only one designer for work that is improved upon by many. We know that there are talented entrepreneurs like Ben Kaufman at Kluster exploring solutions to the filtering and reward issues we faced and we hope to have the opportunity to be involved in perfecting the process.
This is only the beginning. The next few years will give way to further and accelerated media decentralization as more and more individuals, companies, crowds (and mobs) come together online to experiment and improve upon each others successes. There will be no failures here.
And as for Labs, we are excited, scared, fascinated and fortunate to be a small voice in the growing crowd.
Congratulations on the strong outcome and experience, and for having the guts to take risks in public. “Learn to do by doing” used to be the 4-H motto and I think no other statement so well shows how to get value from emerging technologies and models.
If you ever want to work on an open-sourced approach to ad creation, please consider our platform at AdHack (http://adhack.com).
Reading your thoughts above on the future direction of the creative agencies, I hear echoes of our own thoughts, writing and conversations.
good stuff folks. the simple truth is agency and media world MUST learn from what happened to newspapers. i wouldnt say “journalism” was commodotised technically, but surely commentary, op-ed, and news was – creative agencies must stay ahead of this cuz fo sure the end-line execution WILL become commoditised and is already well on its way there with lots of parts being outsourced – creative direction, like old pullizter investigative (news-breaking) articles will always have value – as will creative direction, and cant be commoditised.
/response, rant + gush
good result!
Let me know when you start writing about future agency models. I completely agree with the extended network approach.
Elrolio’s point about newspapers is an excellent one. I’m looking forward to this conversation. It’s kind of what ‘Made by Many’ means.
Keep ‘em coming Glickman.
It seems there is a lot going on with the crowdsourcing of execution, but the generation of ideas seems to remain squarely in the realm of the creative agency. Do you see this shifting as well? Will there be a crowdsource market for just ideas, or are these too intangible to be exchanged for $$? Just a thought.
Philip, I agree ideas are intangible and very difficult to quantify without an ability to execute.
Will there be a crowdsource market for ideas? Yes. I know this because we are already at work on one!
Adam, if it counts for anything, the naysayers say what they do about the Labs logo crowdsourcing project because a) they probably didn’t have the option when they started up (which means they are ummm…slightly old thought-process-wise) or b) if they did, they didn’t think it counted for much, which means again, they are slightly old thought-process-wise. Of course, there are those who are forward-thinking and still chose not to crowdsource, which I think is fine as long as they demonstrate forward-thinking in their work. In any case, I appreciate this whole project – I believe it shows you put your money where your mouth is – and look forward to seeing the new logo
Crowdsourcing has a habit of attracting controversy, that’s for sure. The other ‘new’ model to occur in the print design marketplace is http://www.inkd.com. It too has kicked up a storm, primarily it seems because the commission is 20% (for the designer, not the agent!). I’m still indecided on this. However I would say that simply because something is ‘new’, it doesn’t make it morally right. Of course we must remember, if designers don’t want to be involved in crowdsourcing or inkd etc, they don’t have to be. And the same tools that enable these experimental marketplaces to emerge ALSO empower designers to make direct contact with their own market and do whatever they want.
[...] http://bbh-labs.com/crowdsourcing-our-logo-the-crowd-has-spoken#more-1790 [...]
[...] To be honest, I don’t think any of us are going to learn anything from another post about logo competitions. We’ve all read the pros and cons of crowdSPRING and perhaps followed BBH Labs’ experiment. [...]
[...] stuff and you’ve got yourself the beginnings of a great logo. This makes the approach BBH Labs took in April more appropriate and dare I say it, the start of a so-called ‘principle’. The [...]
[...] than tap into our network of designers or crowd-source amongst the design community (like BBH Labs did when they started up), we decided to go one step further. We would plug into the crowds [...]
[...] was BBH Labs’ logo project back in April 2009, where they got 1,700 logo submissions and chose one, that got us fired up about [...]
[...] have come along… creating new content (The Johnny Cash Project), design contests (BBHLabs logo), to change the world (Good Project), asking customers for new ideas (My Starbucks Idea & [...]
Personally, I am quite on the fence regarding the use of a crowdsourcing site for a logo design. It is still a touchy issue for most designers who said that crowdsourcing is a no-no for obtaining a logo design. I have tried crowdsourcing before and I know the risks involved but it comes within the territory. But there are other no-frills logo design websites online such as http://www.logobee.com, http://www.logodesignstation.com, logoyes.com, etc. which are actually great in getting a professional logo design at a fraction of the price and minus the risks of crowdsourcing (plagiarism is one of them). Seeing that there are no consultation services, the price is significantly lower than that of conventional design firms. For instance, I have tried http://www.logodesignstation.com and the experience was indeed a positive one. I managed to get my business logo design at an affordable price and the turnaround time was great as well. Highly recommended. Although crowdsourcing for logo designs could be a bane for some, many find it to be a viable alternative to get a fast logo on the cheap. It all depends on the individual actually.