Twitter tweets for 2008-11-24

November 24th, 2008
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Twitter tweets for 2008-11-23

November 23rd, 2008
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Twitter tweets for 2008-11-22

November 22nd, 2008
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  • Good morning tweeters! (Hey, at least I didn’t call you all twits this time) #

Twitter tweets for 2008-11-20

November 20th, 2008
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Twitter tweets for 2008-11-19

November 19th, 2008
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  • @SleepyGeek You tell him, Scotty! in reply to SleepyGeek #
  • @n0deal Reminder: Don’t make any national security jokes at Customs agents. Don’t want to find out they sent you to Guantanamo Bay. in reply to n0deal #
  • @bittbox Yep. HD corruption. Either the drive is dying, or you got a heap of bad sectors. Either way, that XP installation is toast. in reply to bittbox #
  • BTW, hello Twitter. I’m indeed alive. Just very, very busy today. Errands, cleaning, etc. My mother is coming in from TN tonight. #
  • OK WTF? Pirates on the open sea? Is this 2008 or 1508? I can’t tell. #
  • @WGNMorningNews Oughtta have one of the salons come in and give @robinbaumgarten a fish pedicure. I bet she’d appreciate that! in reply to WGNMorningNews #
  • Tom Freakin’ Skilling at the Field Museum tonight at 9. The man KNOWS his weather. (thanks to @WGNTV for the tip) #
  • I am _so_ going to hell for laughing hysterically at this. Damn, I needed a good laugh. http://is.gd/8b8F #

Crowdsourcing (or, Why I’m Being a Hypocrite)

November 19th, 2008
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Recently I was introduced to crowdSPRING.com, a crowdsourcing site for creatives. I even went so far as to sign up, looking through many of the projects thinking to myself, “I can do way better than that.”

I’ve got mixed feelings when it comes to crowdsourcing. While I feel it works well for open source projects and similar projects, I don’t think it’s best suited to graphic design. On the one hand, I can see the benefits. For the buyer, they post their project and get many options to choose from. For the beginning designer, they get exposure and work they might otherwise not get. However, here’s what I see as the big downsides to crowdsourcing: 1) For the buyer, the quality of the entries aren’t always the best, many rather sub-par from designers who either didn’t read, didn’t understand or didn’t get the concept of the description of what you, the buyer, is looking for in a design and 2) for the designer, your hard work going into a design project for an entry more often than not goes unpaid because it wasn’t chosen by the buyer, and if it is chosen, the price paid to you is often well below market value and 3) (this is the big one) I feel it degrades the graphic design profession and professionals who work in this field.

So why did I sign up, and even participate in a few projects, given that I (and others) feel pretty strongly about crowdsourcing and spec work in general? For that, I ask you to look at the current state of the economy. We’ve got an economy in chaos, rising unemployment, and a shrinking pool of work for an already saturated graphic design market. I guess you could say I’m hedging my bets.

Right now, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve got three steady clients that keep me in plenty of work and keep my bills paid and the lights (and heat!) on. One client is on the periphery of the construction industry, and for the time being, seems to be doing well, even expanding. While I’m glad things are going well for that client, I know that eventually the house-building (and commercial-building) crisis could hit him, and hit hard, at any time. This is what Ronnie Ray-gun called ‘trickle-down economics’. Another client deals in travel and incentive programs, and given that nobody has any money right now, I wonder how much longer his business will keep coming in. And the third deals in a startup VoIP/data backup/phone concierge service. I don’t have all the details on how well this company is doing, but they did just sponsor a NASCAR, so they must not be doing too terribly, or they have very good venture capital.

As great as my clients are, I know my income could dry up at the drop of a hat. That’s why I’m hedging my bets and participating in a crowdsourcing site, despite my feelings towards it. Now, I know there are NO!SPEC folks, and AIGA folks who will probably flame me for it. I’m willing to accept your ridicule. Because when it comes down to it, AIGA and NO!SPEC will not pay my bills. That’s up to me. And in an already sour (and worsening) economy, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do just to get by.

Twitter tweets for 2008-11-17

November 17th, 2008
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Twitter tweets for 2008-11-16

November 16th, 2008
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