From left to right: Yancey Strickler, Tad Toulis (moderator), Scott Wilson, Tom Gerhardt and Ben Kaufman
The second day of keynotes at the 2011 IDSA International conference in New Orleans was framed up as "Methods and Means" but the real theme of the day is the power of storytelling. With inspirational presentations from Core77 friends Scott Wilson (MINIMAL) on the Tik Tok+Luna Tik and Tom Gerhardt (Studio Neat) on the Glif, the real star of the day was Kickstarter. The crowd-funding site shared headlines in these design Cinderella-stories—the success of the Tik Tok+Luna Tik came on the heels of an unfortunate business venture for Wilson and Gerhardt and his Studio Neat partner were able to quit their dayjobs to dedicate their energies to a dream of innovative product launches. Luckily, Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickland was on hand to share his own unconventional success story surrounding the unique platform.
Founded by Strickland, a former music writer, and Perry Chen, a former gallerist, musician and jack-of-all-trades, in the two years since it's launch, Kickstarter has funded 12,000 projects—about 44% of the projects featured on their platform. In a few weeks, the team projects that they'll hit an impressive crowd-funded number: the $100 million-mark. The number is not only a powerful testament of the platform's ability to connect people in a real and very human way, but it's also a lens onto a new type of crowd-sourced economy. Although the Kickstarter team intentionally provides no guidance to users on how to build a project, typical projects feature some sort of pitch video, what Strickland calls an anti-commercial, and a scale of pledge rewards for backers.
"Working with the Kickstarter model, having 6000 backers is like having 6000 clients," jokes Tom Gerhardt from Studio Neat. A great example of the "every project is a story" idea, one of the most powerful tools for driving the success of the Glif on Kickstarter was their use of video. I loved learning that Wes Anderson's offbeat, helvetica style was the creative inspiration for Studio Neat's video productions. Throughout the creation process—from pitch, to manufacturing, to assembly—Studio Neat documented and shared the story of the Glif in a lighthearted and personal way with their backers aka cheerleaders aka clients.
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