So much going on. So much to say, but where to start?
Let’s start with progress on the book.
It’s going well. We’re on track for our March 15 final manuscript submission.
Today saw the completion of the 99designs contest that generated a visual language to help us articulate the major concepts and processes in the book.
This was the second contest we ran there. A few months back, we ran one for the main logo design of the dragonfly that you see here and there already. We’re exceptionally happy with the result, but it was an adventure getting there. As the Mayor says at the beginning of the New Year’s party in Thailand “Thank you for coming. We learned a lot at Christmas!” So did we too learn a lot running our first design contest.
It might come as a surprise to the uninitiated that it’s not always a good thing to have over 900 entries in your logo contest. Why,you might reasonably ask? Well first of all, each entry represents some thoughtful work on the part of a designer, and it’s quite reasonable that they would want some feedback on their work, so they might improve upon it and thus get selected and win the contest (and I might add here: only the winner gets paid — at all).
So to make a long story short, when you’re one person, without a design background, calling all sorts of qualitative shots (and inadvertently being both vague in the initial design brief and arguably confusing in post-launch feedback) trying to guide a few hundred designers from around the world, with widely ranging ability to interpret direction from an untrained client, and in some cases, English, you’re in for quite a week.
I learned a lot at Christmas….
The icon contest fared distinctly better (try, fail, learn, try again). This time no designers resigned or suggested that I was running somethign that qualified as “worst _____ ever.” In addition to having escaped with my soul intact, we now have some amazing icons that add power and clarity to our work.