Crowdsourcing Your Graphic Design Needs

Recently, I've found myself leveraging crowdsourcing tools to meet some of my foundational graphic design needs. Specifically, I have created several (OK, three recently, four overall) contests on 99 Designs. My first foray with the site came about two years ago when I commissioned the logo for FoodFinder.net. Back in the spring, I took even more of a leap when I had some web development work done.

Just today, I awarded winners for two logo contests for upcoming projects. Since I've now done 4 contests, I figured I'd share some tips I've gleaned from working with the service. Also, I should mention that I also investigated using crowdSPRING, but I decided to stick with 99. The only reason was that I have always had good luck with 99, and didn't have a compelling reason to change.

Tips For Running A Design Contest

• Design Contests are a Lot of Work: Keep this in mind, the process can be draining. Make sure you don't have too much going on, as you really need to invest in providing ratings and thoughtful feedback. This last time, I had 2 going at one time, and based on the schedule of my day job, I struggled to keep up with feedback.
• Be Aware of the Timezone Difference: 99 Designs boasts a global community of designers, which is great because there are some really talented folks who don't live near you. Just be prepared for some time lags on revisions, and that not everybody's first language is English.
• Provide Feedback Liberally : You may notice the health indicator for your contest. This is driven by how much feedback you give. My first contest did fall out of healthy status early on due to my lack of textual feedback. Typically, I think a good ratio is about 35% - 40% of entries to feedback. Often times, a designer will submit 3 of 4 designs at a time, and I'll roll all of my thoughts into one comment. I've had good luck with that approach.
• Don't Discount a Designer Based on One Design: I've had many first entries that I didn't like at all, but if you're honest (and respectful) and the designer has enough direction, they will often come back with something you'll love.
• Be Specific, but Don't Micromanage: Designers crave direction and feedback, and it's great to see your ideas incorporated as an entry progresses. That said, the reason I'm doing a contest is because I need their skill and expertise. Many designers will do whatever you tell them to because they're trying to win a prize. It's better to say "I'm looking for a typeface that's a bit more professional" is better than "Can you try using Comic Sans 8pt italic".
• Be Respectful of People's Time: I don't ask designers for more than 1 revision unless I feel like it's a legitimate winner, and just needs a few more tweaks. Also, as soon as I know a design isn't what I'm looking for...I eliminate it
• When to Guarantee the Prize: There are several options you have when setting up a contest - one is to guarantee the prize. I am very willing to do this, as it will attract more designers. However, I typically wait until I see 1 or 2 entries that I'm sure I will be happy with. For me, this usually takes about 3 to 4 days. I also go with a blind contests...I think designers prefer not to have their ideas leveraged in other designs.

I guess that's it for now; I'll comment if I think of anything else. I do have to say the I was so happy with the results of my website redesign contest (which I was very skeptical about), that I've since worked with designer, that Jack Herbert directly on upcoming projects. He really immersed himself in the site and came up with ideas that I hadn't considered. I wouldn't have expected that kind of engagement from the crowdsource format.

Anyway, I'm a fan of crowdsourcing, but it's a bit of a process adjustment. Apart from being unpopular by content and design experts for devaluing their services, you're putting other types of constraints (e.g. timeline) on the project. That said, you'll never get the sheer volume of design hours for the money. For a small business owner/hobbyist, like myself, it's a great option. Have you tried it? What do you think?

A Complete 180 Approach

For the past 2 years, I've put a lot of time and effort into developing my little restaurant site, FoodFinder.net. This past weekend, I added another site to my portfolio. Unlike FF, which is completely custom built using the Microsoft stack of technologies, the new site, which is a wine guide called Wine Guidelines, goes against every motivation I've ever had when building sites.

For one...I won't be doing any building. I purchased the site in a Flippa auction for a couple hundred bucks. It really was an impulse buy. See, I just finished reading Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup (Amazon affiliate link), and a host of other resources on the topic of building a small software company. It has really altered my perspective from that of a developer (focusing on perfect architecture and pristine code) to that of a businessman (release the product as fast as you can, and refine as you go BTW...this only works for web-based products). I think this change in mindset has been slowly going on over the past five years or so.

So Why This Listing

Anyway, a few things attracted me to this particular listing.

• It's based on Wordpress: I've been more and more intrigued with WP as a website backbone, and wanted to dig in a bit.


• The content is automated: Using various Wordpress plugins, the site gathers content from various sources. I'm very curious to see if a site can run on autopilot and have any success.


• The topic is a hobby of mine: I'm actually a bit of a wine drinker (as are many of my friends). Plus, it ties in to a wine/food pairing algorithm I've been mulling for FoodFinder.net


• The cost to run and operate this site will be small: I've already got a hosting environment built up and ready to host that is a fixed expense. Other than the purchase cost, and a few hundred more bucks I'm going to throw into a new logo and custom theme. There shouldn't be any more cost.


• The BIN came with a ton of perks: Between the content and software that was included in the auction, it was pretty much a no-brainer

So What Now?

Unlike FF, which I have intentionally avoided loading up with ads so users would have a better experience, the new site is loaded with ads and affiliate links. My intention is to put in about a week or two of refining the content, tweaking the design, and doing some light marketing (link building, social media, word of mouth, etc), I intend to leave the site alone except for writing the occasional wine article. I have a new project in my sights, and will be getting that underway tomorrow, with the intention of launching early next year. Plus, I have a few FF enhancements I'll do on the side.

Stay tuned.

Follow Me

Friends and followers are the cornerstone of social media. In fact, I just began following my own blog, just so I don't feel too lonely (does that wind up being some kind of circular reference...bah dum chhhh). Anyway, the art of finding food to try is soliciting the advice of knowledgeable and trusted foodies, or at least people that you trust. FoodFinder's follower functionality allows you to do that very passively.

Following Foodies
When implementing relationships on FoodFinder, we went with following over friending. Friending typically opens up channels of communication and involves initiation and acceptance by the two parties. Following is simply a way to observe. As foodies use the site, they will inevitably run across users they've never met, but whose culinary taste are in line. Who better to observe than someone who has similar taste, but who also runs in different circles. The more foodies of this type that you identify, the easier it will be to find great new places and dishes to try.

Make sense? If so, log on and follow me.

Making a List, Checking it...

Now that we've qualified the foodies in our little community by calculating their reputation, we need to give them outlets so they can share their expertise with the world. In FoodFinder 2.0, foodies can easily create lists for restaurants and menu items. Not only that, but lists can be both positive and negative.

Making a List
So why lists? List are not a new concept. In fact, they're fairly common across sites of this ilk. That said, one of the things that we've always strove to do is give foodies a way to exert their influence with minimal investment. I strongly believe that there is a large community of knowledgeable restaurant experts who simply don't like to write. To tap into and channel this voice, we seek to provide ways for these users to participate, and add content without requiring an essay. That's why we've always had the "point and click" ratings for restaurant and menu items. Lists are easy to create, and even easier to add to. From just about anyplace you view a restaurant or menu item, you can build your lists.

Haven't created any lists yet...login, or create an account and give it a try.

A New Way to Rate

As I mentioned in the last post, when I created the second version of FoodFinder.net, one of the cornerstone pieces was the Reputation Engine. It affords an information seeker the ability to discern between a meaningful review (written by a foodie who is well-traveled and whose opinion is greatly respected) and a less meaningful review (written by someone with limited dining experience, a restaurant's owner, or somebody who otherwise has a bias). In the first version of FF, I saw this all the time...even more so because I allowed anonymous ratings. This issue, one of "Cit-Crit" vs. restaurant critics is often debated, and is a problem that I wanted to take a stab at.

Rating by Reputation
The overall ratings on FoodFinder are now calculated in a completely new way. First, anonymous ratings and reviews are gone. They still appear at the element level (i.e. menu item, comment card, or restaurant aspect), but they no longer figure into the calculation of a restaurant overall review. Instead, a rating for a restaurant is weighted by the reputation of the foodie. This is obvious when seeing the effect on the top restaurants page. For those of you who don't live in San Diego, believe me...this is a much more accurate list (although there's still room for improvement IMHO).

Based on the early success of this new approach to rating, I may expand it to include menu items, and the other restaurant aspects (food, service, and atmosphere). What do you think...am I on the right track?

Tales of a Restaurant Guide Upgrade

What's up foodies and technophiles...long time, no talk. Well, I'm just 2 short weeks removed from the re-launch of FoodFinder.net, and I'm really happy with the product. The new look and feel is great and there are some new features that work together to give a unique take on the ever-crowding restaurant guide space. Over the next few days or so, I'll do a quick walk-though of the new feature set and some lessons learned. For now...let's start with the basics.

The Foodie Reputation Engine
This feature came in a bit late, but lays the foundation for (what I think) is a pretty innovative idea; more on that in a sec. Plus, I got to satiate my algorithm-loving inner geek. Taking a page from Stack Overflow, I created a reputation engine. The goal was to mathematically qualify a the knowledge of a foodie based on level of participation, dining experience, and community recognition. I won't go into the boring (and super secret) details, but from a high level, it borrows concepts from SO, and Google's PageRank concept.

"Why should I care?" you ask. Now, when you read somebody's comment card, check out their ratings, or view one of their lists. More specifically, this approach attempts to solve the problem of user-reviews being less valuable due to lack of experience or potential bias...a point that is well articulated in the first question of this article.

Well, that's it for today. Next up, I'll tackle "Ratings by Reputation".