Crowdsourcing
Out of context: Reply #46
- Started
- Last post
- 47 Responses
- BaskerviIle0
Crowdsourcing as a concept is a great idea and works well for collaborative processes. Look at open source code.
The likes of firefox, wikipedia etc. all create by big groups of people and refined over time.What they did not do is let 1000s of people submit browser designs and code and pick the one they liked the most. No, it was a collaborative process that slowly built and refined a browser.
That is very different from crowd sourcing graphic design, especially branding.
The first thing to note is that branding is NOT drawing a logo. The logo is often the last part to be finalised. I work for a large international branding consultancy. When you hire branding experts you get a number of things:
Business insight – yes we actually have people who understand business, have MBAs and have studied finance etc. we advise blue chip companies about how to improve their businesses. Business strategy is not logos.
Analysis and strategy – we analyse the market, the competitors and find ways to stand out from the crowd, differentiate with ideas.
We design a brand not a logo. Everything is done for a reason, from choice of colour, photographic style, overall look and feel, tone of voice, use of sound, movement, an appropriate user interface.
The logo is the summation of all of the above. So if you crowd source just a logo, you not only miss out on 99% of what a real branding project should be, you also employ an amateur who has no idea about your company and what it should stand for.
Brand design needs to be a coherent set of ideas and arguments that inform every aspect of the company (we even run staff training programs for companies we rebrand). it cannot be done by those with no prior knowledge of the client.
To take 2012 as an example. Wolff Olins designed the brand, and you can be sure they worked on that project for a long time before you ever saw the final logo.
£400,000 is a small price to pay for a large international brand. I imagine the team would have consisted of between 5 and 8 people plus freelancers. that budget of 400k plays for client managers, designers, creative director, artworkers, strategists etc.
They're all probably charged out at from £200 to around £1000 a day. so as a team might cost as much as £5000 a day to run. So that might be 4 months of work.
That how much it costs, everyone has to earn a living. I personally think £400k is a great deal.
The 2012 logo is distinctive and memorable, it feels fresh compared to all the bland brush-stroke style olympic logos that went before:I'm talking about these:
I think the sydney one is one of the worst ever and yet there wasn't a big fuss about that!
now compare these, so fresh and different. London really stands out as creative and modern:
And, as to crowdsourcing an olympics logo, this is the tripe that you get when you ask the public to do logos:
http://www.fubra.com/london2012/…
One other thing. If you crowd source graphic design, then you might 100 people spending 5 hours working on their entry. but you only pick on design. Which means 495 hours wasted by those who didn't win. Not exactly the most efficient way of working.