After reading about the bootcamp, I became even more excited because the Zappos bootcamp isn’t about boots at all - it’s an event with a small group of people where Zappos shares its secret sauce for how to create a strong culture at OUR company. Freeki!

It’s been almost a year since I joined crowdSPRING to lead the Customer Service team (reminder: ice-cream anniversary cake would be nice). When I started working at crowdSPRING, our community was 5,000 creatives strong. Now, more than 30,000 awesome and talented creatives from all across the world (150+ countries) work on crowdSPRING. I stopped counting the number of projects that are posted (just kidding - I still love to count!). During the past year, I’ve answered many thousands of customer requests - directly and on Twitter, and my team has handled tens of thousands. I absolutely love working with our customers - and have been thrilled to have met a few in person.

Throughout my time here, I’ve tried to learn as much as I could about culture. I’ve absorbed everything I’ve heard from Zappos and other great companies with awesome cultures. Among many other books, I’ve read the past few Zappos Culture Books and have been so impressed with the awesome people who work at Zappos. I’ve written many posts sharing our views about customer service.

I cannot imagine how a company, or community, can thrive without a great culture. Zappos aims to create happiness. And crowdSPRING fully believes this is the right way to conduct business. I’ve written about this - Helping is Happiness, as has Ross - Happiness Is Helping. Great customer service shouldn’t even feel like customer service, as you’ll hear me say in the following short video:

But my excitement about the Zappos Bootcamp was quickly tempered by two things: Pete kicked my ass at ping-pong and I learned that the Bootcamp costs $5,000. For a startup, that’s about $4,993 more than we can afford. And yet - there is a tiny, little, itsy-bitsy glimmer of hope. A scholarship! Zappos will give two scholarships to its Bootcamp, and I would absolutely love to get one.

I know that chances are extremely thin that Tony Hsieh would be crazy enough to let a Frenchman on board but you never know. So I need your help.

I’ve probably interacted or helped you one way or another during the past year. And I want my team to do an even better job. If you can, please leave a comment telling Tony Hsieh and Zappos why it would be absolutely awesome for them to honor crowdSPRING with one of the scholarships to the Bootcamp. Let them know about our great community and how we’ve worked together through good times and bad (especially during our site problems in May). Let’s show them that great culture can live within a small company and within a large community of people who come from every corner of the world.

Merci!

Jerome - The French Guy

Every revolution needs a unifying symbol. Iran’s citizens have bravely stood up to the repressive rule of the current regime, risking injury and life. Neda Salehi Soltani has become the worldwide face of Iran’s revolution when she was killed while watching a pro-democracy protest. Many others have been killed and injured during the ongoing demonstrations in Iran.

People around the world have come together to provide support and assistance to the citizens of Iran.

We here at crowdSPRING want to help by asking the world to create a common unifying symbol for this opposition that the world can give to the people of Iran and Iranians around the world.

We’ve asked our community to create a symbol/small illustration that can be used by people in Iran or around the world to show their support for the ongoing opposition in Iran, while keeping in mind to use the color green.  This color has become a rallying color for the demonstrations. We ultimately want a symbol that speaks to the bravery, hunger for democracy, and sacrifice of the Iranian people.

For its part, crowdSPRING is supplying the award and its marketplace to the world - the rest is up to you, our community of amazing designers.

This project ends at 11:59 pm on July 4th. July 4 is an important day in American history because it commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of democracy in America.

On July 6, we will invite the world to come and vote for their favorite designs and we will keep voting open until July 10.

We’ll be working with a small group of respected Iranians who, along with the world’s votes, will assist with the final selection of the winning design. This design will then be released into the public domain, under the broadest Creative Commons license, for all to use.

Visit this link to view entries or participate in the project.

Since then, we have collected a great deal of data on Pro projects, including Creative participation, submission levels, average awards, numbers of NDAs executed, and project lengths. These projects have been very successful and we continue to see growth month over month both in the number of Pro projects posted, and in the average awards offered for these. The data also clearly shows a direct correlation between the amount of an award, the complexity of the project, and the level of participation. One of the lessons we learned is that Buyers sometimes ask for too much and offer too little. One of our primary goals is that every buyer on crowdSPRING ends their project with the great creative that they came to us for. We want each of them to be successful, and we want Creatives to feel that a project is worth participating in. To that end we are adjusting the minimum awards in Pro projects to differentiate across the categories. Take a look here:

The new prices will take effect later this week. We believe that these new prices better reflect the value offered by our community and the feature set that come with the Pro level, including search engine exclusion, privacy settings. non-disclosure agreements, project invitation tools, and more. We also hope that the increased minimums will attract even more participation in these projects and provide more value to our wonderful community of Creatives!

So, heres to lots of great new projects and lots of great new ideas!

To this one of a kind incredible and troubled human being we feel a little tribute is in order. Rest in peace sweet prince. May angels carry you to a happier place.

crowdSPRING’s Chris & Kevin - Tribute to Michael Jackson from Ross Kimbarovsky on Vimeo.

1. Does crowdSPRING have specific policies to protect people’s intellectual property rights?

Answer: Yes. crowdSPRING has two specific, written policies designed to protect intellectual property. First, crowdSPRING’s  Copyright Policy makes it easy for copyright owners to report alleged violations of their intellectual property rights. Second, crowdSPRING’s User Agreement prohibits people from selling, reproducing, modifying, displaying, preparing derivative works from, reposting, or using the content found on crowdspring.com - without the express written permission from the owner of the work.

2. What does crowdSPRING do to prevent people’s intellectual property from being stolen?

Answer: The International Chamber of Commerce estimates that the global fiscal loss due to theft of intellectual property is over $600 billion USD per year. Stealing someone else’s intellectual property is a crime in just about every single country on Earth.  However, it is impossible to prevent people from stealing intellectual property (whether the theft occurs online or offline).

Just because it is generally impossible to prevent theft doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t make reasonable efforts to protect intellectual property. Here’s what we do at crowdSPRING:

• We’ve developed and published detailed, comprehensive written policies concerning intellectual property (as you saw in the answer to question 1 above).
• We’ve developed and published detailed, comprehensive written standards of conduct for creatives (see Q&A 4 below).
• We’ve developed rules and procedures recognizing the importance of original ideas in projects so as to protect original ideas and prevent concept copying (see Q&A 14 below).
• We make it very easy to report possible violations of intellectual property (see Q&A 5 below).
• We work together with our entire community - nearly 30,000 designers strong across the world (our designers come from over 150 countries) to identify possible violations of intellectual property.
• We permanently bar people from crowdspring.com for violating others’ intellectual property rights (see Q&A 7-10 below).
• We enforce the licensing restrictions of third parties (see for example, Q&A 13 which deals with stock images).
• After a project is completed, we screen with a gray filter all except the winning entries for that project to make it very difficult to review any details associated with non-winning designs.

We have a number of other systems in place that we keep confidential, that help us to protect our community from the theft of intellectual property, and we continue to look for other technological and non-technological ways we can improve our efforts in this area. If you have suggestions, we’d love to hear in the comments to this post.

3. How does crowdSPRING inform its community about crowdSPRING’s intellectual property policies?

Answer: Every time a creative submits a design to a project, they are required to pick one of three statements about their design:

• I created everything in my entry and I didn’t copy anyone else’s concept.
• This design includes photos, illustrations or fonts created by others but I have the right to both use and resell.
• This design includes photos, illustrations or fonts created by others and if the buyer picks it, they’ll have to buy the rights.

A creative cannot participate in a project unless they select one of those three statements. We also publish links to our policies on the participation pages, and in a creative tip’s page visible to everyone in every project.

4. Does crowdSPRING have standards of conduct for creatives?

Answer: Yes. In January 2009, after a lengthy discussion with the crowdSPRING community (in our forums), crowdSPRING adopted a Standards of Conduct for Creatives policy. The standards require creatives to submit only original work. In projects where third party work is included (such as stock photography in web design projects), the standards require clear and unambiguous disclosures that the work by a creative includes elements created by others and that the creative has the right to include those elements.

From time to time, we remind members of our community about those standards. Here is a short version of our standards of conduct for creatives:

• Always tell the truth.
• Never, ever undermine the reputation of another person.
• Follow the buyer’s requirements and submit only original work.
• If the buyer asks you to break one of these rules, it’s not OK.

5. How does crowdSPRING help people to report possible violations of intellectual property?

Answer: Every design submitted on crowdSPRING, in it’s detail view, has a “REPORT VIOLATION” button immediately below the image. Any person (you do not need to be a registered user), can report a violation. A short form asks for some basic information about the report so that we can properly investigate.

6. What does crowdSPRING do when it receives a report of a possible violation of intellectual property?

Answer: From the day we launched (May 2008), we’ve had in place formal procedures for responding to alleged violations of intellectual property. We follow these procedures every day (weekends included). Allegations of intellectual property violations are fast-tracked and always assume the top priority for our customer service team. Here’s what we do:

First, assuming we don’t need additional information from the person reporting the possible violation, we acknowledge in writing that we’ve received the report. If we need additional information, we ask for it.

Second, we send a written notice of a possible violation to the person who is accused of violating another’s intellectual property rights. In that notice, we provide specific links to the accused designs, the alleged infringed design, our Standards of Conduct and User Agreement. In most cases, we require a written response within 24 hours. In some cases, where waiting that long would harm the buyer or the owner of the alleged original copyright, we request a response in a much shorter time-frame. In very rare cases, we act immediately because any delays could harm the buyer or the owner of the alleged original copyright.

Importantly, crowdSPRING will NEVER allow any project to be completed where there is a pending claim of an intellectual property violation. In some cases, we temporarily suspend accounts of all people involved until we can adequately resolve the issue.

In cases where we act immediately and withdraw a design, we make an effort to give the accused creative an opportunity to respond and we will restore the design if they present a compelling response (many accusations of violations turn out to have no merit). We always give the creative a chance to voluntarily withdraw their entry and tell them that if they choose not to do so, a three person panel at crowdSPRING will evaluate all of the facts and will issue a decision.

Importantly, when we notify the accused creative, we tell them that:

We take the protection of intellectual property very seriously. The standards of conduct were developed in collaboration with the crowdSPRING community. If you violate the standards, you will permanently lose your right to work on crowdSPRING.

Third, we follow-up to make sure that we’ve received a timely response from the creative. If the time to respond has expired, or the creative has responded, a three person panel at crowdSPRING meets, reviews all of the available facts, and decides (by a vote). Most decisions are unanimous.

Fourth, after the panel issues it’s decision, both the person who submitted the initial notice of possible violation and the accused creative are informed of the panel’s decision. If the panel has found a violation of intellectual property, the offending design is immediatedly withdrawn by crowdSPRING.

7. What does crowdSPRING do when it has determined that a person has violated another person’s intellectual property rights?

Answer: We evaluate each incident on its own merits. It’s not uncommon for designs to look similar to other designs in the marketplace. We don’t presume that every time we’ve found a design was infringed, that the infringement was intentional.

Generally (there are exceptions), we will permanently remove a creative after a third violation of intellectual property. We use a number of different technical and non-technical tools and procedures to help us make sure that they never work on crowdSPRING again.

We have on occasion acted after two violation of intellectual property (and in a few cases, after a single violation). Because we evaluate each incident on its own merits, we recognize that a general policy (of three violations) might not be appropriate for all cases.

We’ve also suspended users for different periods of time (ranging in time from days to weeks to months).

8. Why doesn’t crowdSPRING always permanently bar the person from its community after a single violation?

Answer: We believe that people are generally good. We all make mistakes. crowdSPRING is not a court of law - we are a community. We believe that a zero tolerance policy that would in every case, permanently bar a person from crowdSPRING after a single violation, can be unfair and unreasonable. For example, as I wrote above, there are times when two designs can look very much alike. Moreover, we’ve found in some cases that the accuser was actually the person who infringed the rights of the accused.

Most importantly, our experience over the past year has shown us that the vast majority of people deeply respect intellectual property rights. Time after time, we see creatives who’ve made a one-time mistake turn a new leaf and become excellent members of our community. This experience tells us that when possible (and appropriate), most people use a second chance to better themselves.

On the other hand, our policy isn’t carved in stone. As I wrote above, we’ve acted after only a single violation. We will continue to evaluate each incident on its own merits.

9. Has crowdSPRING permanently barred creatives from crowdSPRING for violating others’ intellectual property rights?

Answer: Yes. While we are deeply saddened when we have to permanently remove someone from our community, we expect that people in our community will share the community’s core values, which includes the protection of and respect for intellectual property. Since our launch in May 2008, we’ve unfortunately had to permanently remove a number of users from working on crowdspring.com.

10. Has crowdSPRING permanently barred buyers from crowdSPRING for violating others’ intellectual property rights?

Answer: Yes. Respect for intellectual property extends to every person on crowdSPRING, including buyers. Although it is rare to see buyers abuse or ignore another person’s intellectual property rights, it has happened and our procedures - and response - is the same as for creatives. Since our launch in May 2008, we’ve had to permanently remove several buyers from posting projects on crowdspring.com.

11. Who owns the intelectual property for the work submitted by creatives on crowdSPRING?

Answer: Under our User Agreement, the creative who submits the work to a project on crowdSPRING at all times owns the intellectual property rights to their original work. Of course, if the work (such as a website design) includes work of third parties (such as stock photographs), those third parties would retain ownership to their own work.

Once a buyer selects their favorite work by “awarding” the project to a creative (or to several creatives when there are multiple awards), the buyer and creative(s) go through project-wrap up and after the buyer approves the final deliverables, we pay the creative and the rights to that work transfer to the buyer under a written contract. The terms of the written contract for the project are published in the DETAILS tab of every project and are available for everyone to review before they decide whether to participate in a project.

The intellectual property does not transfer to a buyer until the winning creative is paid. Those creatives whose work is not selected continue to own full rights to their work, and we make it very clear to buyers (in the User Agreement and in the specific project contract) that they cannot simply modify the work of another person and use it - they acquire full rights only to the work they’ve selected and only after the creative is paid.

12. What rights does crowdSPRING receive to the designs that are submitted to projects?

Answer: crowdSPRING is given limited rights to the work. When users submit work to crowdSPRING, they give us:

a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform the content in connection with the Site, in any media known now or in the future.

Without such rights, we would not be able to host projects or maintain the marketplace. You’ll see similar language in the terms and conditions of service of other popular sites (for example, YouTube)

13. Does crowdSPRING have policies about the use of stock images in projects on crowdSPRING?

Answer: Please review the following post Ask crowdSPRING: Can Royalty-free Stock Be Used For Logo Design? for an answer to this question.

14. Does crowdSPRING help protect original ideas in projects so that creatives who submit original concepts have the opportunity to refine/improve their work without concept copying by others?

Answer:Yes. It is not difficult to tell when something is the exact copy of something else -the two look alike, after all. It is far more difficult when the copy is not an exact or nearly exact duplicate, but simply another way to express an identical or similar concept. In the creative field, a “concept” is an abstract idea that is typically described in words or represented visually.

Concept copying is a very important subject in the design community - both for professionals and non-professionals, offline and online. After all, while it’s commonly accepted that all design is inspired by other design, mere copying is NOT inspiration. But it also should be said that not everything we create is unique. We are influenced by our culture, our history, and our environment. Yet there is a very clear difference between inspiration and influence, and outright stealing.

Because standard projects on crowdSPRING are visible to all users, it is not uncommon for creatives to come up with similar ideas. We extend our intellectual property efforts to protect the originality of ideas in a specific project, even if two designs aren’t exact copies of one another. For example, if the buyer’s project brief and/or name of the buyer’s company or product doesn’t naturally suggest certain design elements, we will protect any original entries that introduce original elements into a specific project and will not allow other creatives in the project to use the same elements (especially after a buyer reacts positively when seeing the ideas from the creative who first introduced those elements).

How does this work in real life? Let me illustrate with an example: a consulting company called James Consulting is looking for a logo. Nothing in the name or buyer’s brief suggested any specific design elements. A creative submits a logo with an orange (the fruit) and the buyer reacts very favorably to that design element by giving that design 5 stars and in the comments to the design. We will protect the originality of that idea by protecting the original creative’s right to continue to refine/improve their design and will, when asked by that creative, bar others from using the orange design element in this project.

We do this to be fair. If the galleries were closed, nobody would know that the buyer liked the orange and so it’s highly unlikely that others would submit designs with that same element.

On the other hand, we won’t protect unoriginal ideas, even if they are submitted first in a project. For example, in a project for a sea shipping company, we won’t protect design elements using ships as graphics - the name itself suggests that such elements are appropriate.

15. How can I ask a question that isn’t covered by any of the above?

Answer: Please feel free to ask your question(s) in the comments below and I’ll answer them in the comments and/or add to this article.

Photo credit: loan Sameli.

We’re very proud to feature Vicky Willingham (crowdSPRING username: VictoriaAnnDesign) today. Vicky lives and works in Suffolk, UK.

1. Please tell us about yourself.

Well I’m currently on maternity leave from my full time job as a design manager where I design flyers, brochures, conference material, logos, web advertising and any other print and promotional design items.  I live in Suffolk, UK with my partner and our beautiful 6 month old daughter.

2. How did you become involved with graphic design?

I went to college after school and studied media.  I wanted to go into radio.  Not long after the course started I discovered that I really didn’t like my voice!  Part of the course was focused on design elements for magazines, CD covers, etc. and I began to really enjoy that more than anything else.

3. How did you start out as a freelancer doing graphic design work?

This was a long time ago!  I was looking around the Internet for a way to earn some extra money and came upon one of those old forum-based design contest sites.  I threw myself into it and pushed myself to improve.  It was quite a good starting point for someone with no professional experience. Because I wasn’t sure whether my designs were good, I found the feedback invaluable.

4. Who/what are some of the biggest influences on your design work?

I would say the environment around me has influenced me more than anything else.  When I’m stuck for ideas, I tend to stare out of my office window and gaze over the field past my garden and take a moment of thought.  I’m a thinker!  I also love bold colours and design, and have always enjoyed pop art.  I remember learning about Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol and thinking how their work looked really modern even though it was created around 30 years ago.

5. How do you come up with ideas for concepts after you read a buyer’s creative brief?

Sometimes an idea comes to me straight away. Sometimes I go off and look at the dictionary definition of a word and use that as a starting point.  Sometimes I have an idea, and just play around with it until it becomes something great.  If after spending time on a project the ideas still aren’t flowing, I admit defeat and move on to something else.  Sometimes projects just aren’t suited for everybody and the beauty of crowdSPRING is that I am able to pick and choose projects.

6. Which of your designs are your favorites and why?

I really like the Underground Labs logo - although this wasn’t chosen as the winning entry.  I just love the overall final effect and colours.  I also really like the Jamaican Miracle logo as I think it responded to the brief perfectly and would have really stood out on a shop display.

7.How has technology affected your work?

Well I started out with technology so I haven’t really known any different, although I have to say that the software I use now are far superior to what I was using back in college 10+ years ago!  I love the Adobe software, and can’t imagine using anything but Illustrator for logo work.

8. What are your favorite websites for inspiration or learning about graphic design?

I have to admit that I don’t really look at web sites for inspiration - but for learning I quite like to just google whatever it is I need to know.  If I can’t get an answer there, I would probably turn to the crowdSPRING forums as everyone is so helpful there.

9. Please describe your typical work day.

Well there is now nothing typical about my work day!  It could start out well as I get stuck into a design, but I am currently working around my baby so anything can happen there!  Sometimes I will work into the night when she is in bed. That way I know I can focus.

10. What are the most challenging and rewarding parts of being a creative professional?

Most challenging is definitely being able to come up with fresh concepts each time and making that fit what the client wants.  Finding out what a client really means when they say they want a design to be bold but not overpowering, up-to-date but not modern, professional but edgy, etc. is often a challenge!  The most rewarding is definitely seeing your logo go live and look fab!

11. What advice would you offer to someone considering graphics design as a career?

Look at work that you like, figure out what it is about it that catches your attention and try to use a little of that style or attitude as inspiration.  Practice practice and more practice.  Learn the software you intend to use for design, know it inside out or at least as much as you can.

The quickest way to lose focus is when you need to dig around to figure out how to do something, by the time you have found it you have probably forgotten exactly what you wanted to do!  Take criticism, ask for criticism.  As long as it’s constructive try to learn from it.

12. What do you do with your free time?

Free time?  Well my days are taken up with the little one. I mostly spend any free time singing nursery rhymes or scraping up pureed cauliflower cheese from the floor!  When I’m not doing that I like the cinema, shopping, cooking … and when the sun comes out spending time in the garden.

_____

Thanks, Vicky!

We realize that the performance issues made it very difficult to use the site. We did our very best to communicate about our efforts to solve the problems (in this blog, via email and on Twitter).

Yesterday, we believe we turned the corner and got a handle on the problems. Today, we sent the following email to our community of creatives:

Next week, I’ll have a detailed post (or series) explaining the problems and our efforts to solve them. We want others to learn from this experience and we’re happy to share.

We believe in transparency. The response from our community to that email has been truly wonderful.

We love our community. And we take every opportunity to let our community know this.

Lucy (Pete’s Chocolate Lab) from Ross Kimbarovsky on Vimeo.

A few months ago I shared some data about crowdSPRING users and visitors and the various parts of the world we come from. I recently met a writer who is interested in publishing an article about how people from different parts of the world leverage sites like crowdSPRING to connect, to work, and to learn. His interest was the developing world so I have collected some interesting nuggets:

• 65,000 people visited the site in the last month
• People are visiting from some pretty cool corners of the earth. In the past month we have had visits from 108 countries including from the Palestinian Territories, Mongolia, Ghana, Malta, Mauritius, Jamaica, Bolivia, Bahrain, Qatar, Cyprus,Uruguay, Sri Lanka, Estonia, and Nepal!
• We had visitors from 61 emerging and developing nations. In the past month they accounted for over 19% of site visits.
• Gender-wise we seem to appeal nicely to both of the major groups: our visitors are 56% male and 44% female.
• We seem to appeal to a slightly older demographic with users age 35-49 accounting for 39% of visitors.
• Well-educated folks seem to find crowdSPRING of interest. 68% of visitors had college or graduate degrees.
• Some pretty interesting companies have been visiting, too: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Global Crossing. Not to mention Sprint, Verizon, Time Warner and AT&T.

Kevin DeLury Reading Shakespeare from Ross Kimbarovsky on Vimeo.