Awesome! You F***in' Made That!

You all knew I'd have to crowdsource some element of a book on crowdsourcing, right? A few weeks ago my British publisher, Random House UK launched a "coversourcing" campaign which, if you didn't guess from the name, involves crowdsourcing the design for the dust jacket of the British edition of the book. It's pretty standard-issue crowdsourcing: The crowd submits the designs and votes on their favorites. It's already generating some awfully nifty covers, and I couldn't be happier to see my ideas given such wonderful visual treatment, as the title of my post—a riff on the Beastie Boys' crowdsourced concert film, Awesome! I F***ing Shot That!—surely makes clear.

I'm declining to endorse a candidate for the time being, but here's an example of the level of quality design coming in:

(Above: "Crowdsourcing" Cover Design, by hello.vickibrown)

Here are some details on the contest:

Design submissions will be welcomed until midnight GMT 10th February 2008. Following this period we will invite users to vote for their favourite Crowdsourcing designs between 11th – 25th February to create a shortlist of the 20 most popular designs. These will then be put to a panel vote from which the winning entrant will be chosen and crowned winner of the Coversourcing competition. The winner will be announced on 3rd March.

And here's the creative brief:

We are seeking a striking, iconic book jacket design which should engage on the strength of its concept and composition rather than rely on finishes and production values. The cover design should be bold, dynamic and eye-catching and should sit as comfortably on shelves at your local high street book shop as it would as a thumbnail image on Amazon. We’d love it if the chosen jacket was a collaboration - a true expression of the power of crowdsourcing. So if you want to collaborate with other artists & designers - illustrators, photographers, typographers - we heartily recommend it.

For more on creative direction and rules, go here.

I'd initially suggested Random House UK allow the crowd to pick the ultimate winner, but I understand the reasoning behind having a jury. Frankly, it's remarkable that a big publishing house would relinquish as much control over so crucial an element as cover design. Kudos to Adam Humphrey and his team in Random House's marketing department for putting together such a innovative promotion.

It is, as far as we can tell, one of the only times book cover design has been tossed out to the crowd. Guy Kawasaki—a guy who got more done yesterday than we did all year— conducted a similar campaign for his book The Art of the Start. If the final results are half as good as Guy's, I'll be stoked.

Comments

[Gaynor Gritzi]

Seeing as there's no contact information on the Coversourcing site, I'll post this here.

Why has my design been left off the list?
And yes it is properly tagged, but the thing is it seems to never migrate onto the site itself, despite more recent designs easily floating there.

Is it because of the slightly scathing coments I made on my blog about the coversourcing idea that made you think I wasn't serious?(http://slconceptual.wordpress.com/)
Is it because the design might appear to have a nude woman on the cover? (In which case you have no idea what sells books).
Or could it just be paranoia on my part and the whole things just been overlooked, to be corrected at your leisure?

[Gaynor Gritzi]

Well, four days has gone by and no explanation for my design being left off the list.

Do you actually read your own blog Mr Howe?

[Jeff Howe]

Hi Gaynor,

I hadn't responded because I assumed your issues were simply a matter of logistics on Random House's part. While Random House UK has asked the crowd to design my book cover, I'm tasked with cooking up the content for the other 300 pages. That's kept me far too busy to disqualify designers for submitting racy designs. I quite like your submission, and frankly have no idea why it hasn't showed up with the other entries. I imagined it would have by now. I'll look into it and my apologies for the delay.

[Gaynor Gritzi]

Well thanks for that.
Although my design still hasn't appeared.
And there must be an advantage to having your design appear early, and have more time to garner votes.

We will wait a little longer.

[Jasmine Antonick]

Hey Jeff!
We pumped this out to our community and a bunch of members are now collaborating on designs.
Very exciting! Good luck :)
http://www.cambrianhouse.com/blog/cambrian-house/doodle-your-way-to-fame-create-the-cover-for-jeff-howes-upcoming-book/

[Gaynor Gritzi]

Apologies!
It was my fault for flagging my design as Art/Illustation rather than Photo - but then you would wouldn't you?

[Jasmine Antonick]

Cambrian House submitted something like 8 designs today :)

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