Hasta La Ideas

By Edward Betts (Own work.) via Wikimedia Commons

It seems like every day the editors at Core77 receive at least a dozen pleas from designers who have elected to get on the hamster wheel of crowdfunding. In fact, it’s become so ubiquitous, we’ve dedicated a whole category to kickstarting designs. Undoubtedly, 2012 is the year that crowdfunding went mainstream, but now that it’s firmly established as a viable way to start a project or business, it’s going to start maturing. Don Lehman, Core77 contributor and author of our series, The Crowdfunding Revolution, identifies a few areas of growth for 2013:

• A deeper understanding by Backers of what Crowdfunding is really about (Crowdfunding is not Amazon. You’re supporting a journey, not buying a product. Delays are part of the journey.)
• A deeper understanding by Creators of what Crowdfunding is really about (It’s not winning the lottery, it’s winning the opportunity to not sleep for months on end.)
• Better rules to protect both Project Creators and Backers: With Kickstarter’s rendering ban and the launch of new product-specific crowdfunding sites like Christie Street and Ideacious in the mix, we look forward to see if a more defined playing field will yield better products.

Core77 editor hipstomp has a slightly more pessimistic view on what the Kickstarter rendering ban might mean for designers: “[The ban] really reinforces the fact that just as we think the general public is finally beginning to understand our profession, turns out they ain’t.”

But despite the general uncertainty for the future of crowdfunded products, here are some of our favorite crowdfunded projects from 2012:

(more…)