Design by Design: The New OrangeSlyce
Posted on August 15th, 2010 in Small Business | No Comments »
The goal of OrangeSlyce has always been to build a platform for students and small businesses to connect as two perfect entrepreneurial complements. Each group offers the other unique growth opportunities that OrangeSlyce is built to cultivate. Since the launch of the website, we have identified an opportunity to simplify and ease the connection between students and businesses by narrowing our focus to design projects and expanding to a nationwide user base.
The Changes:
When you visit the new website, you can expect to see a few changes:
1. As always, a fresh new look. We’re kind of suckers for design too.
2. In line with the new focus, when you post a project the categories are now all design related.
3. To ensure all project postings are relevant, projects will remain open for two weeks for students to apply to (starting from the time of payment).
4. In order to maintain and improve the site, all postings will have a posting fee of 5% of the chosen budget ($10 minimum).
5. The instant matching service for up to 5 recommended students is now included with each posting.
6. OrangeSlyce is now a nationwide service.
The Reasons:
1. To sustain and grow as a community we need to guarantee opportunities for both businesses and students. It’s a “chicken and egg” kind of problem. By narrowing to a single population OrangeSlyce can offer a continuous stream of projects to students and a plethora of designers to businesses creating a better service for both communities.
2. There is a HUGE gap in the online design community. There is nothing that caters to student designers. And that’s just sad. I was reading the HBR blog before writing this and found the OrangeSlyce mantra “Learn By Doing” confirmed again in an article entitled, “Higher Education is Overrated; Skills Aren’t.” This is how education should work.
3. An extension of #2 really: The alternatives are unacceptable. A student trying to compete on Elance is like trying to push health care reform through Congress; it may work, but only by making serious sacrifices. Students shouldn’t have to set their education on the back burner in order to practice their skills under realistic circumstances.
And ”Spec work,” is a joke. It’s just unhealthy for all parties. To quote the AIGA, ”designers should be compensated fairly for the value of their work and should negotiate the ownership or use rights of their intellectual and creative property… Clients risk compromised quality as little time, energy and thought can go into speculative work, which precludes the most important element of most design projects—the research, thoughtful consideration of alternatives, and development and testing of prototype designs.”
Correct.
Still OrangeSlyce
We saw this as a chance to fill a real need and grow a sustainable community service. We’re still the same group of student entrepreneurs working pro bono and we want to thank everyone that has contributed to OrangeSlyce so far. It’s your site, you helped build it and allowed the OrangeSlyce team to have fun guiding the development.
As we move forward, we hope to add new nationwide segments to the OrangeSlyce service building a community dedicated to providing students and small businesses opportunities to collaborate and grow successful.
As always, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email at info@orangeslyce.com, with any questions or concerns regarding the new OrangeSlyce!
