A little over a week ago (Saturday March 21st, 2009), I posted a 1 week competition to develop a new logo for a 'Real Time Search' engine that I am currently developing. The prize for this competition was set at $150 USD and would be awarded to the winning entry (only.)

The summary brief for this project follows...

Over the past 3 - 6 months, there has been an explosion in interest in 'social search'... more specifically 'right now' search or 'real time' search.
 
In essence, Real Time search is where the search engine provides search results from what people are saying 'now' about a particular topic as opposed to what was archived by a major search engine yesterday, last week or last month.

I wish to develop a simple (to start with) search engine providing real time search results for Australian users.

All up there were over 100 designs submitted from 31 different designers.
 
As per my previous post on this competition I was not only keen on finding a quick and affordable way to develop a logo for a new project I am developing in the 'Real Time Search' space (called appropriately enough, 'Real Time Search') but I was also keen to use so called 'crowd sourcing', the heir apparent to traditional outsourcing.
 
What was especially attractive about the particular service on offer from 99Designs (http://www.99designs.com) was how their model resolved what was for mine one of the inherent weaknesses of other 'crowd sourcing' models, most notably sites like eLance.

With eLance you post a project on the site and service providers bid for your work.
 
This usually means service providers from all over the world bid against each other to win the job. And by bidding against each other this often means one party undercutting another.
 
The winning service provider is most likely a combination of being cheap (sometimes the cheapest), has a good folio of past work completed, is well established and has good customer feedback.
 
While someone's folio of work, the price they quote you and their aggregated feedback score may point you in the direction of a particular provider, who's to say they will 'get' your particular job and create something as good for you as their previous work that helped you chose working with them in the first place...?
 
So the issue for mine with sites like eLance for creatively driven services, is that you may chose someone that on paper is perfect for what you require yet the work they end up doing for 'you' isn't what you were after.
 
Don't get me wrong, I think eLance is an exceptional resource for many services (and in fact I will be using eLance shortly for some web development) however I think it isn't a good fit for creatively driven services, ie Graphic Design.
 
99Designs' model (and others like it) is for service providers to provide design work for you on spec in a live competition where you, the competition owner can rate and provide feedback on designs developed for you in real time.
 
While admittedly this isn't an ideal process for designers (and there have been many posts from designers up in arms over these sorts of services) it works brilliantly for people requiring basic, easy to brief design work.
 
In my particular case I developed a basic brief and posted it to the 99Designs site Saturday March 21st, 2009.
 
The initial set of designs were very professionally developed but not 'on message'.
 
As the site allows for, I modified the brief to include more of my personal wants and don't wants for the competition. I also provided detailed feedback to the contest as a whole 'and' to individual designers on submitted designs both to weed out those that weren't appropriate and to hopefully have those designs that I liked, improved and re-submitted.
 
This particular part of the process is the knock out punch for these types of services and what really sets them apart from early crowd sourced sites operating in the space.
 
The quality of designs being submitted improved (in my opinion) markedly over the week of the competition as did their appropriateness vs the brief.
 
With 3 days to go I I had narrowed the process down to 3 designs from 3 different designers and was at that stage satisfied that with some further revisions, one of those 3 designs would go on to win the competition.
 
With only 48 hours to go, I had a flood on new designs submitted, including several by a 20 year old designer going by the name of Hagios whom would eventually go on to submit the winning entry (number 75 as shown below.)

All in all, an extremely positive experience and one which I am confident will be even more so with the next competition I post (and there will be many more.)

Several weeks ago, I noticed a trend towards users using Real Time Search engines (ranging from Twitter Search to those embedded within the major Social Media sites) when looking for information that was more time sensitive. Things like a review of the new Watchmen movie to reviews of the latest Audi Q5 to what's going on with Andrew Bolt.
 
The sorts of things that are better suited to social media's vast, regularly updated repository of user generated information than traditional search where the information is days, if not weeks out of date in some cases and the content skews more towards those sites that are deemed more authoritative (read into that what you may.)
 
After playing around with some of the Real Time Search sites out there, I decided that I would build one focusing on Australian user generated content for an Australian audience. This project will be hosted at realtimesearch.com.au (domain not yet live.)

During the week I received a proposal (which I have accepted) for the outsourcing of the sites development, earlier today I uploaded a design brief for the logo element to 99Designs.

The brief for this job follows...

Over the past 3 - 6 months, there has been an explosion in interest in 'social search'... more specifically 'right now' search or 'real time' search.
 
In essence, Real Time Search is where the search engine provides search results from what people are saying 'now' about a particular topic as opposed to what was archived by a major search engine yesterday, last week or last month.
 
I wish to develop a simple (to start with) search engine providing real time search results for Australian users.
 
I require a simple design that will work a) alone, b) as the main feature of a search engine front page and c) a top a list of search results.
 
For context, this simple search engine is part of a broader search project (including the eventual development of a US based site.)
 
For now the site will be very basic and will feature real time search results using Twitter's API with a focus on results from Australian Tweeters.
 
Once that basic user experience has been nailed, we will then move to expanding search features and data sources.
 
Wants
 
* Preference for 'Real Time Search' logo to stand alone and not include the full URL (that is I want 'Real Time Search' as a logo... not 'realtimesearch.com.au' as a logo.
* Would like it to be colorful, warm and fun.
* Very fond of many of the logo's/brands that exist in the broader 'Twittersphere'.
* Visually needs to convey difference between 'real time' and (for want of a better term) 'regular' search.
 
Don't Wants
 
* Do not want the logo to look like any existing search or social media brand. As per 'What I Want'... I would like a logo that looks like its DNA is from the broad social media space... but not a copy or something that too closely resembles an existing logo.
 
Payment Methods
 
This contest has been pre-paid with 99designs. The winner will be paid directly by 99designs for the full prize amount, excluding any third party transfer fees.

You can view the design brief/contest in full here... http://99designs.com/contests/19525
 
Setting up the contest was a breeze including paying for it.

The competition has only been online a few hours and already I have had 5 entries. As you will see by my comments on the site, the initial batch of logo designs have not been what I am after, but I am confident that by providing timely feedback as designs are submitted, the quality and 'appropriateness' of the designs will improve.

The design contest runs for 7 days and is binding (that is I have pre-paid the prize and will need to award a winner when the competition closes.) I will update this post when the competition closes.
 
Having a logo or website designed in this way is not for everybody, nor suitable for any and every job.
 
I should point out that I have owned/managed several graphic design, web design and programming businesses. I appreciate more than most quality design and website development and until this particular job I have 'always' used professionals.
 
This job however is a bit of an experiment both in terms of dipping my toes into the Real Time Search space (ie I don't want to spend a lot of money this early in the project) and also in finding within my projects, one appropriate for testing these sorts of services.
 
I will be posting regular updates on Twitter for this and you can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/whodeani if interested.
 
Wish me luck...

*** Update ***

Real Time Search competition now closed.

To view the winning submission go here.

Have also updated my blog with a post titled 'Real Time Search Log Competition - The Results'