

The other side of crowdsourcing - mhil
http://www.transcapitalist.com/transcapitalist/2009/9/1/the-other-side-of-crowdsourcing.html

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thaumaturgy
I agree with the sentiment in this article.

I'm a programmer; to me, what designers do, and what they can come up with, is
pure magic. I see amazing things all the time that I never could have produced
myself. The best I can do is say, "I like this because," or "I don't like this
because..."; I certainly haven't the ability to turn out the kind of stuff
they do.

As a programmer, I'm not too fond of things like rentacoder, for the same
reasons: it tilts the market in a really ugly way. The consumers don't
understand the nuances of code, and their primary interest on such sites is
price.

So, when I needed a designer, I compromised: I browsed 99designs for a few
hours, found a fellow in the UK that had submitted a number of designs that I
appreciated, and contacted him privately asking him to name a price for some
work.

Hopefully it'll work out. I think using something like 99designs as a
portfolio site isn't so bad.

~~~
lsc
hah. see, I go further; I can't even tell you what looks good. (I mean, I can
tell you what _I_ like, but that is something entirely different.)

The thing is, to hire a designer, I would need to outsource the 'look and
feel' to someone else. I mean, your logo needs to fit with the rest of your
site; my logo generated in figlet would look horribly out of place on a web
2.0 'rounded edges' website. Instead, I have found some minimal css that
appears to be under an open license, and busted out with 'figlet' for
everything else. No rounded boxes, but I certainly have a look that is both
unique and consistent. And I find it aesthetically pleasing.

I was tickled pink today by someone on twitter commenting that I was an
excellent example of 'niche branding'

He even called me a 'cli webhost' so it sounded like maybe he knows something
about advertising or art.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Man, with just a few tweaks, that would take me straight back to the good ol'
BBS days. :-)

(I mean this in a good way.)

