CR Blog

Coversourcing Update

Graphic Design

Posted by Patrick Burgoyne, 10 January 2008, 11:32    Permalink    Comments (3)

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The entries are starting to come in for our Coversoursing competition to design the UK jacket for Jeff Howe's Crowdsourcing book: including this great one from Richard over at AceJet. Can You do better?

Howe defines Crowdsourcing as "the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call". So that's what Random House and Creative Review are doing. In our Coversourcing competition, we want you, our readers, to create the cover design for the UK edition of Crowdsourcing. The winning design will be printed on the UK edition.

Ideally, we'd like the winning design to be a group effort, in the spirit of the book. So if you want to collaborate with other artists and designers - illustrators, photographers, typographers - we heartily recommend it. You may do this with friends, colleagues, or you may prefer to use Creative Commons-licensed material from Flickr or any number of websites. We certainly encourage you to do the same back and make your work available under CC for others to build upon. If you do want to share your source files, please upload the source files to an external service, such as Box, and put the link and your preferred credit in the notes for your entry on Flickr. And if you do use someone else’s work - please make sure you credit it correctly in the notes as well.

Entrants need to submit designs via their personal Flickr stream. There is no limit to the number of entries you can make. In order to be submitted to the competition, the image needs to be tagged “coversourcing” in Flickr. Any image tagged “coversourcing” will be picked up and turned into an entry here

Visitors to this site can also vote for their favourite designs to form a shortlist of entrants which will be taken forward to a panel vote to decide the final jacket.

The panel will consist of the following people:

Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing and WIRED Editor
Richard Ogle, Random House Art Director
Patrick Burgoyne, Editor, Creative Review
Angus Hyland, Partner, Pentagram Design UK

The chosen jacket design will be printed on all UK editions of Crowdsourcing, which will be available in bookshops from August 2008.

Each book will be highlighted as the very first ‘crowdsourced’ book jacket and the successful winning entrant will be presented with a signed first edition of the title and framed artwork along with a cash prize of £500.

Deadline: 10 February

3 Comments

‘Crowdsourcing’ in a business environment sounds like an interesting concept. However I have not read the book and can't help thinking that in the context of design how is this different from an open competition or a free pitch?.

Incidentally there does seem to be a trend going on here with several large brands inviting competition entries to solve their creative problems, is this something Creative Review is condoning?

A. Designer.
A designer
2008-01-10 15:25:14


“We find an organisation quick to accept the specious claims of neo-classical economics, with its myopic “incentive” models of creativity and an instrumental view of culture as a resource.”

Before falling for the shiny prize of pseudo glory you may wish to read - On the “Creative Commons”: a critique of the commons without commonalty, by David Berry, Giles Moss.
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/commons_without_commonality/
Marcus
2008-01-10 20:31:06


What a crap idea, its pitching repackaged in corporate speak. I can see the advantages of the web creating specialised knowledge communities. But in most cases it will be a way to get ideas on the cheap and undermine the individual and make him feel worthless. I can hear the big corporate procurement guys licking their lips and see the dollar savings in their eyes, its about the bottom line stupid.

Whats wrong with specialised knowledge as you will get it the long way around with crowd sourcing anyway? Anyone doing a cover design with the words "SHITE IDEA" in caps? I'm sure it will get you the very generous £500 and make you famous.

Will
Will
2008-01-11 12:49:00


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