rosskimbarovsky

I co-founded crowdSPRING. Illustration projects are perfectly appropriate crowdsourcing projects (we've done many for startups, big Brands and some of the world's best agencies). Let me offer a few suggestions that should help you get a good result regardless of where you post your project:

1. Be sensitive to your budget if the illustration is complex. Many people forget that illustrations can be rather complex - and you're talking about a large illustration (which might have many components and may need to interface with other on-page elements). You'll attract better illustrators if you can stretch your budget a bit (depending on complexity, of course).

2. Limit initial scope. If you ultimately need a full page illustration, you might initially ask for an illustration of a portion and then narrow your selections and ask a few people to show you more complete illustrations. Asking everyone to do full page illustrations - especially if your budget is modest - might limit the number of participants.

3. Identify styles you like. Even more important than sketching your idea is a reference for the types of illustrations you like. Many illustrators have a particular style and if you can be clear at the beginning, you'll help them focus on showing examples of work that you're more likely to like - rather than just take stabs in the dark submitting random illustration styles.

I hope these are helpful and wish you luck with the illustration (and your MVP!)

Ross

There are some similarities, but frankly, more differences. crowdSPRING projects are, on average, much higher in value. There are typically many more $1000+ projects, for example, and often, $5000+ projects on crowdSPRING.

crowdSPRING offers graphic and web design projects (99designs does too). But crowdSPRING also offers industrial design (products and product packaging) and copywriting projects.

More info about differences here: http://bit.ly/whycS

The crowdSPRING (http://www.crowdspring.com) community (more than 65,000 designers and writers from nearly every country on Earth) would love to help with your homepage redesign. We've worked with thousands of entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses (and some of the best agencies and Brands) from all over the world. 96% of our customers recommend us to others - here's WHY: http://bit.ly/whycS

That's certainly a fair point - proposed solutions aren't guaranteed to work. But given InnoCentive's long history of helping the government and some of the world's smartest companies solve really complex problems, surely it was worth at least an exploration. I'm certain the InnoCentive community would have helped - and still will - whittle the ideas down to those that make the most sense.

The simple truth is that BP isn't able to solve the problem. I hope they will. But for the moment, rejecting potential solutions seems short sighted.

A photo studio is a small business. Many are successful. Why wouldn't such a business count as a viable startup/business?

A good point and something that I hadn't heard before.

I also do quite a bit of writing, but the videos are a nice change of pace. A few people have suggested transcribing the videos - and I'll look into doing that. I realize video isn't an optimal medium for everyone.

All good points.

Mobile has been the next big thing for years now. And maybe there's actually some real activity in mobile now for that to happen...

I have to say that I found that stat (and the 1 out of 8 married couples met via social media), most surprising. And if true (about social media overtaking pornography), I imagine we'll see lots of porn-based social media activity going forward.

brm - The video on YouTube doesn't provide much context for what it is. Happy to link to original sources that provide some context (video descriptions don't always do that), but in this case, didn't see enough there.