Funding the Project Before It Exists

Kickstarter in May 2009 describes itself as a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, bloggers, and explorers. The page offers login, signup, discover projects, learn more, and a list of early campaigns.

The featured projects are wonderfully specific: an Allison Weiss EP, electronic New Orleans music, ice cream underground voices, a 12-bit adventure game, a Kinks documentary quest, horror films, tiny feature films, Edinburgh travel, and robot paintings.

Historically, this page captures patronage being redesigned for the web. The pitch is not simply "buy this." It is "help make this possible."

That shift matters. Kickstarter made unfinished work publicly legible as a promise, a budget, a story, and a community. The page's mix of creative categories shows a new relationship between audience and production. Supporters are not only consumers at the end of the process. They become part of the beginning.