Creativity is not a commodity! Or is it?
I had a very interesting discussion with a designer friend of mine about whether a design or a designer’s creativity can be seen as a commodity… And both of us agreed that neither of these are a commodity and a designer should thus demand to be paid a premium, project-specific price for his work - instead of selling a “generic” skill at a commodity price. Nothing will ever change my opinion about this, but this post about how Coudal have found a balance between design products and services has summed out where my head is at… Let me explain…
Design & Uniqueness
My reason for saying that design can’t be traded as a commodity, is due to the fact that a commodity will be sold over and over, which means that several different people will end up with your work and none of them would have a unique solution. But obviously, when you go to say a web designer for a redesign of your website, then you want an unique design - right? So considering that it is impossible for a designer or design agency to trade with their skills & creativity on a commodity market.
But there’s a way around it - as Coudal has proved - and sub-consciously, I’ve already been implementing this “mindset” into my own operations…
Design “Products” & Premium Themes
If you read through Coudal’s About Page, you will find various mentions (and links) to some of their other business models / revenue streams. At the core, they’re still a design agency (of sorts), but they’ve managed to diversify their product offerings, so that they don’t need to rely on custom design work. All of their products / services are still design-related (to a varying extent) - so they are still leveraging their core competencies. And in my (sometimes humble) opinion, they haven’t “sold out” or betrayed any kind of design ethics or principles (read: design is not a commodity).
Now to some extent I think I’ve managed to replicate this (very successful it seems) model when I set up Premium News Themes last year. Back then, I wasn’t thinking about business models, passive income streams or design commodities; instead I was just focused on running a profitable online business through my freelance skills. My main aim with Premium News then, was to supplement the income I was generating from custom design work.
So what the premium themes does, is to take all of my skills (design, developing, WordPress etc) - the same skills I’d apply to custom design work - and basically commoditize itself into a more generic product offering. At the core, all of the work that goes into the themes is design-related, but because it is geared to be generic and sold over and over, it has become a “design commodity” of sorts.
Resource Constraints, Passive Income & Crappy Custom Design Work
In my mind, there’s two main reasons why this model works so effectively…
The first one is the fact that a designer (or design agency with 10, 100 or however many designers) will always face time as their main resource constraint. Unfortunately there’s only 24 hours in a day and any design / development gig will demand x amount of hours and there is thus a limit on the amount of custom work that anyone can handle. By commoditizing a design product - you’re essentially sidestepping that limitation, as our themes (for example) will continue selling without requiring more development time (sure there are other tasks i.e. admin, support etc. that does take up time, but not as much as development).
Second consideration (and this ties into the first), is that by implementing this mindset, you’re creating a passive income stream that is not dependent on your time and attention (which is the limiting factor). So you’re diversifying your business (making your monthly revenue more stable), whilst also growing it without having to invest further resources (time & attention).
The last point that I allude to in the title of this section is the fact that the themes has allowed me to be very picky when choosing what custom design projects I will be taking on (something that Coudal mentions as well). What this essentially means, is that I can choose the most inspiring projects over the most profitable ones (if I want to). So the whole “when you love your job, you’ll never work again” vibe comes into consideration, which is always a great work platform to have.
What does this mean to you?
Whatever you want really… 
I blogged about this, since the Coudal post got me thinking about the principles and business models involved (something I’m quite passionate about) and once I realized that my premium themes was nothing else, I figured that it deserves a blog post.
I’d reckon the most important thing to gain from this information / discussion is to always keep the possibilities in mind i.e. don’t pigeon-hole yourself into only doing one thing, because that’s the way the average person does it. If you’re a freelancer of any sorts, there must be another business model you can experiment with to supplement your earnings.
Just think about it… Use it don’t use it…
(Image by =Barbroute)
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