We’re big fans of Emily Grenader’s 365 Postcards, and over the weekend Emily posted an even better project: Giant Crowd Painting. Emily wants to paint a 6’ x 9’ mural of a giant crowd scene… where the entire crowd is made up of the Kickstarter backers who funded the project.

For $30 you get to be part of the crowd. Simply email Emily two pictures of yourself (following her instructions) and you’re painted into the work. You get a postcard and a hi-res image of the finished painting. Higher-priced tiers include actual prints, blow-ups of your part of the painting, and more. A very clever idea.

What Emily understands is that a project needs to benefit its backers just as much as its creator. Her postcard project got it: for $5 you get a handmade postcard on a random day. Emily wasn’t getting fat off the cash or using it to do something else, she simply wanted to do something creative with a willing audience. There was no greater aspiration than that.

Giant Crowd Painting is similarly structured, and I would recommend that creators think about how their project’s benefits balance out. Is there a real benefit for potential backers, or are you offering $10 Twitter mentions and $40 T-shirts? If the balance is too unequal, it’s hard to get excited about a project.

Kickstarter pledges are somewhere between patronage and commerce: there is a direct exchange of value (what’s in it for backers) that commissions the realization of an idea, dream, or ambition (what’s in it for creators). Without value, the exchange doesn’t make sense.

If I could sum it up simply, it would be to say: Do something great, and make sure that supporters are rewarded with something even better. Simple as that.