Crowdsource a cover, rip off designers?
Update: As he commented here, Jonathan Fields has dropped the contest mentioned below so as to avoid the appearance of exploitation. I applaud him for that move, and apologize if my post implied that his intentions were less than honest. He’s clearly a stand-up guy who intends to do the right thing by creative-types.
Today, I saw this status update over on Twitter, and was intrigued — not because I’m a designer, but because it concerns an area that I’ve worked with people on, book cover design. The long and short of what’s going on is this: help this guy design the cover of his book and win stuff, including, possibly US$1k.
Something about this bothers me, and it took me a while to put my finger on it. Then, it came to me: the contest cheapens the talents of people in a way that I find troubling. I’ve worked with designers on a bunch of projects, including my own book covers, the book covers of others, and several websites (including the one you’re reading now). In each case, I (or my publisher) was happy to pay for the vision of the designer, and to work with them to achieve our goals. This collaborative process seems to better value the talents of people, and to recognize the skills that designers bring to the table. Turning this collaborative process into a design contest where lots of people end up laboring for free seems like a short-sighted publicity stunt to me. (I guess the stunt is working, because here I am blogging about it.;) )
I suppose I’m old fashioned in at least one way: I believe in contracting out work to people and paying them appropriately for their creativity and talent, without the bullshit. This publicity stunt has the whiff of a cheap scheme for the publisher to come up with a bunch of covers and pretend like there’s some kind of community input (the author calls it “crowdsourcing,” which in this case seems to be a euphemism for “work for me without pay”). Overall, it strikes me as a bit exploitative and a bit crass, and it severely undervalues the transformative talents, skill, and insight that designers can bring to a project. Though the author probably has completely honest intentions, I still think the idea is fraught with trouble. If the author wants a cover worthy of his book, his publisher should just pay a designer fairly, and quit the stunts.
(Via Scribbles and Words)
