a kick in the pants…

…courtesy of kickstarter!

as a designer coming out of pocket, i’m all too aware of how costly it can be to get a small creative business up and running. yes, there is a certain amount of pride in funding your materials, putting all of your love and energy into production and the self satisfaction in seeing your finished product in front of you. suddenly your mind starts churning and new ideas and realizations broader than the original scope of the project begin to form and with them comes the promise of spending more money.

i’ve been aware of kickstarter for some time now and what an answer it’s been to entrepreneurial dreams. the idea is simple: share your project and goals with the public at large and couple that with incentives for donors to pledge funding for your endeavor by a certain end date. your project should be music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields but believe me, the range within these categories runs far and wide!

my first thought was that you’d have to be a hi-tech product designer to receive any funding but i was pleasantly surprised to see some of the most humble projects succeed above and beyond their target goals:

you determine the amount that you need to realize your dream, create a persuasive online pitch and promote your vision via twitter, facebook and any other social networking venue that may apply. the only caveat is that you have to receive full funding by the pitch deadline. roughly half of the projects pitched have received full funding and sometimes much more so it helps to be realistic about what it will actually take to reach your goal.

i’ve got champagne dreams with regards to my product line and my slice of the government cheese can only go so far. my product line as it is launches officially on august 29th and i’m hoping to broaden the scope of the line with a range of product pricing. the result, is that the next kickstarter idea you see, just may be from me!