Yes, I am a designer and I have thought about this as well. However stating your message as We/you should be giving back is not going to resonate with a lot of designers. Let me tell you why: Most designers fight of the "why-dont-you-design-a-logo-for-free-for-my-business-because-you-like-to-design" for years. Even though I say "no" most of the time, I still spend a lot of nights designing free stuff for a lot of people.
Buy, like I said: I want to follow this call to arms. Not because I "should" but because occasionally I see a lot of nice Open Source projects out there I'd like to be a part of. Or a great concept I'd like to design the logo, icon or UX for. Why? Because of the best motivator out there: ME. I want it for my own portfolio, or for my own network of cool-people-building-cool-stuff or just to learn and become better at some field. So if you want a designer, tell them you'll work with them and give them feedback, make them part of the team for a specific piece of the project.
I realize people are going to downvote me into the 7th ring of hell for this 'selfish' reply, but I'd like to see this happen and I hope this motivator helps.
Agreed, as a developer we also get the occasional "code for free" pitch but I find it much more satisfying to code for free on things I've decided. I would love to see more designers come and help us make open source look great.
EDIT: Is there anything as developers that we can do to attract designers as contributors to our projects ?
Is there a hotlist of projects you developers like? A description and what team is building it? Add a few keywords on what is missing (design-wise) for the project and let me reply on the keyword.
Not really. We all have our source of hot new projects (eg: http://thechangelog.com/) but things we end up using usually come from our own projects / work. From my point of view I see two types of contributions.
The first one is a drive-by contribution. You're using project XY to help reach your goal but it wasn't perfect. The contribution is providing the fix for that. I guess the equivalent for you is that you see the website's using Helvetica and it hurts your eyes so you want to fix it. I would love that kind of contribution but never saw it happen.
The second one is a owned project. It's your baby. I have a couple of those, they're things I think are great and I would like to help them grow. For that I give some of my free time to nurture them. I would love to see a designer adopt them as well and have discussions on the content and form of the documentation or how we could improve the message by changing the design.
I'm not sure if I'm conveying the approach but what I want to say is that it's not really a task list. It should also be your drive-by contribution or a baby. Just choose what you want, no pressure. And let us know if there's anything that we're doing wrong that throws you off.
Good insights. Never thought of it that way, but you're right. Thanks for the changelog link. I'll bookmark it and perhaps I'll contribute. Oh, and great name for a url: http://drivebydesign.com Too bad some squatter already holds it.
Just some last parting words: It also feels really empowering. You see something that is wrong, you can fix it. That is not something you can do with closed software, you have to cope with whatever the vendor has decided to handle the issue.
The closest I've seen to this in the design world is people doing site re-designs and posting them on their own blog. It shows the world an alternative to the existing design but then it's no a direct path to updating the actual site like we could do in software. I wish there was a solution for that.
EDIT: It reminds me, the Amaya browser which only a few have heard of supports of writing back the changes of a page if the server supports it: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/
Totally agree - I'm a crappy writer and I really hoped that sentiment didn't come across, but hey. Totally not what I meant :)
I've been burnt too by people not paying, people underpaying, and people not wanting to pay — but the big realisation I had before writing this was that these projects are not the same as someone wanting a full redesign of their new 'Airbnb for X' for £50; they're community things.
Thanks for the reply. You're not a crappy writer, don't bring yourself down, you're on the frontpage of HN :-) Even if it's a commercial project I don't mind, as long as I can agree with their "thing" and I always like to get some credit (could even be a quote about working with me on my Linkedin profile). I am currently in two non-paying projects ;-)
Comments
Yes, I am a designer and I have thought about this as well. However stating your message as We/you should be giving back is not going to resonate with a lot of designers. Let me tell you why: Most designers fight of the "why-dont-you-design-a-logo-for-free-for-my-business-because-you-like-to-design" for years. Even though I say "no" most of the time, I still spend a lot of nights designing free stuff for a lot of people.
Buy, like I said: I want to follow this call to arms. Not because I "should" but because occasionally I see a lot of nice Open Source projects out there I'd like to be a part of. Or a great concept I'd like to design the logo, icon or UX for. Why? Because of the best motivator out there: ME. I want it for my own portfolio, or for my own network of cool-people-building-cool-stuff or just to learn and become better at some field. So if you want a designer, tell them you'll work with them and give them feedback, make them part of the team for a specific piece of the project.
I realize people are going to downvote me into the 7th ring of hell for this 'selfish' reply, but I'd like to see this happen and I hope this motivator helps.
Agreed, as a developer we also get the occasional "code for free" pitch but I find it much more satisfying to code for free on things I've decided. I would love to see more designers come and help us make open source look great.
EDIT: Is there anything as developers that we can do to attract designers as contributors to our projects ?
Is there a hotlist of projects you developers like? A description and what team is building it? Add a few keywords on what is missing (design-wise) for the project and let me reply on the keyword.
Not really. We all have our source of hot new projects (eg: http://thechangelog.com/) but things we end up using usually come from our own projects / work. From my point of view I see two types of contributions.
The first one is a drive-by contribution. You're using project XY to help reach your goal but it wasn't perfect. The contribution is providing the fix for that. I guess the equivalent for you is that you see the website's using Helvetica and it hurts your eyes so you want to fix it. I would love that kind of contribution but never saw it happen.
The second one is a owned project. It's your baby. I have a couple of those, they're things I think are great and I would like to help them grow. For that I give some of my free time to nurture them. I would love to see a designer adopt them as well and have discussions on the content and form of the documentation or how we could improve the message by changing the design.
I'm not sure if I'm conveying the approach but what I want to say is that it's not really a task list. It should also be your drive-by contribution or a baby. Just choose what you want, no pressure. And let us know if there's anything that we're doing wrong that throws you off.
Good insights. Never thought of it that way, but you're right. Thanks for the changelog link. I'll bookmark it and perhaps I'll contribute. Oh, and great name for a url: http://drivebydesign.com Too bad some squatter already holds it.
Yeah too bad for the domain.
Just some last parting words: It also feels really empowering. You see something that is wrong, you can fix it. That is not something you can do with closed software, you have to cope with whatever the vendor has decided to handle the issue.
The closest I've seen to this in the design world is people doing site re-designs and posting them on their own blog. It shows the world an alternative to the existing design but then it's no a direct path to updating the actual site like we could do in software. I wish there was a solution for that.
EDIT: It reminds me, the Amaya browser which only a few have heard of supports of writing back the changes of a page if the server supports it: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/
I'm going to whip up a quick site I think - if you shoot me an email at opensauce@designedbygold.com I'll make sure I send you a link :)
Hey - author here.
Totally agree - I'm a crappy writer and I really hoped that sentiment didn't come across, but hey. Totally not what I meant :)
I've been burnt too by people not paying, people underpaying, and people not wanting to pay — but the big realisation I had before writing this was that these projects are not the same as someone wanting a full redesign of their new 'Airbnb for X' for £50; they're community things.
Thanks for the reply. You're not a crappy writer, don't bring yourself down, you're on the frontpage of HN :-) Even if it's a commercial project I don't mind, as long as I can agree with their "thing" and I always like to get some credit (could even be a quote about working with me on my Linkedin profile). I am currently in two non-paying projects ;-)