(These are the first core paragraphs, not including my opening paragraph.)
Living in America in the 21st
century has so many different aspects than figuring out the solution to the world’s
biggest problems or finding the “greenest” car. Everything that we see not just
here in America, but around the globe has been represented in a visual
presentation through media, advertising, billboards, trailers or virtually any
other way of presenting something visually. So what does that mean for the
every day person? How does it affect them? One of the main ways that
crowdsourcing design work can impact the viewer is that the quality of the work
will be shifted.
When an advertisement is being
created, it needs to be taken into account how much time someone will spend
looking at it. Our world is so fast paced, that the average amount of time that
is spent focused on a billboard is less than 5 seconds, for an advertisement in
a magazine often less than 15 and that’s if it’s an interesting advertisement.
How can a designer make something that not only illustrates what the company is
requesting, but also grabs the attention of the crowd.
What happens when an advertisement
is put together without focusing on the details? If it’s too crowded, does that
make the presentation catch the eye more, or does it simply confuse people’s
minds? Think about it, when a room is really messy, clothes all over the place,
piles of papers, trash scattered around, the tendency as humans that we have is
to want to clean it up. If something is too messy, it becomes difficult to
function or find anything in the room. This same concept can be applied to the
design in advertising, if something is too busy it becomes distracting. The
message can become jumbled beneath the visual noise.
Why not crowd source? One of the
main reasons coming from a designer is that often, crowd sourced designs have a
tendency to be busy. Not often, but more so than not because they have not
received proper training. Now what does it mean, proper training? Proper
training means they haven’t studied the basic principles in design, how shapes
interact, how to create a logo with accurate hues and values.
For many companies, crowd sourcing
is a way to get multiple different, fast results. When researching this topic,
this perspective was discovered in an article titled, Crowdsource Your Next Program Design. In the article, Mary Andrade
stated, “Through crowdsourcing, they found a faster,
better way to drive higher quality results that would be supported by
stakeholders before significant investment was made. It all started with
an urgent request regarding a new hire orientation. The primary
stakeholder felt strongly that a module needed to be redesigned, and quickly.” Companies
might not always have the time to sit around and wait for a designer to show
their work. Often, they need a result quickly, without having time to fully
explain what they might be looking for in a product. Getting a job done quickly
may be more important than the care that is taken with creating it.
Cost is a huge factor as well.
Let’s face it, in the world today with the economic stance of the United
States, every penny counts. If it’s between hiring a designer on staff full
time or to complete a project or simply sending out a message to say “hey see
what you 100 designers can do with this concept” and picking parts and pieces
of a design. More than likely for the price it will be more appealing to chose
from many different ideas rather than just a few. A challenge that comes up
with using a website such as 99design is when designers upload their projects,
often they get responses such as the following, “Please
try adding a small fire (proportional to the teepee) in the front right of the
teepee with small wisps of smoke going up.” Nate2929 requested in the Ashley
Valley Wilderness logo design contest. If this were a conversation between the
company and a designer, there wouldn’t be a problem. However, there was no
specific request made to an individual, which meant that any designer could
perhaps “use” another designer’s logo, adding in a fire next to the teepee and
then end up “winning” the contest. A problem with crowd sourcing design work is
that it can end up leading to theft of intellectual property.
Both of these designers brought up some interesting perspectives. Ryan pointed out that as designers, when an issue of crowd sourcing is discovered, it should be brought up so to stop it. If something is never talked about, how will anyone learn about the problem?
An example of a misunderstood problem, while it’s still a touch topic, is with the KONY 2012 campaign. Invisible Children received a lot of hate for making a video, but not really going the extra mile to make something happen. However, what many people don’t realize is that the intention of Invisible Children was never for the organization, to personally do anything. Their main purpose was to spread awareness of something that they feel is a social issue that needed to be addressed through means of media production. While crowd sourcing is no where near the issue child soldiers, just as Invisible Children raised awareness on what is going on in Africa, regardless of if they went about it the best way or not, the same thing needs to happen within the design field. As Megan commented, crowd sourcing not only puts designers out of work, but it also harms the company!
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your first paragraph and I think it can even serve as your opening paragraph if you add the thesis statement to the end of it. The only thing I found unclear was “One of the main ways that crowdsourcing design work can impact the viewer is that the quality of the work will be shifted.” Shifted to what? You need to clarify how this will shift the quality of work and to what direction, like what kind of shift? As I am typing these questions I remember that I liked how you asked questions in the paragraph it helped the reader relate to the topic being discussed and want to read more on how crowdsourcing affects them personally.
The next few paragraphs that describe how long people spend roughly looking at an advertisement and the messy room analogy were brilliant. It dragged me in and taught me new concepts of design that were analogous to things I experience in my everyday life such as seeing billboards or cleaning a messy room. The only criticism I would have is in this part “the tendency as humans that we have is to want to clean it up” write it as “the tendency humans have is to clean up”. I also enjoyed how you indirectly taught us that busy designs are not good to have and then apply it to your topic of crowdsourcing stating that most crowdsourcing is busy and lacks basic concept- finesse of those who have design degrees.
I liked your refute of why companies use crowdsourcing and it’s completely true! I met with my AP Environmental Science teacher from last year and she showed me her new t-shirt design. She opens a contest to students to make a design for the new club t-shirt but when designs come in she ultimately has the say and crowd-sourced her design by adding the design of a tree she created and adding the earth in a shape of a heart that another student created next to her design. Anyways, I thought you would be proud to hear that I learned by reading your essay that crowd sourcing happens every day even when and where you least expect it.
For your last few paragraphs I liked how you implemented two quotes and elaborated upon them. I agree on the fact that crowdsourcing ultimately ends up hurting both the company and the designers but isn’t more heads better than one sometimes? So maybe include how companies like having the collaboration of designers as well.
I really enjoyed your essay and I can not wait to read it in its entirety!! Your design shines even through your writing!
Joana Sipe