2013 turned out to be a very good year for crowdfunding site Kickstarter, not to mention the people and companies aiming to get their projects funded. Three million people pledged a total of $480m, resulting in 19,911 projects being backed.
Which is pretty cool, and Kickstarter's marking its achievement with a neat and minimal page celebrating a selection of the projects that got funded in 2013. From the big success stories such as the Pebble smartwatch and the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, through to more unlikely projects like an Emoji translation of Moby Dick and a hovercraft made out of a De Lorean, the site introduces you to just a fraction of the projects that have got off the ground thanks to lots of people elbowing their way into the venture capital party.
It's not all bucks, either. Tucked in amongst the headline grabbers are projects such a school building a classroom out of shipping containers, which raised $16,567, and Grandma Pearl's Happy Canes: decorated walking sticks that received $5,039 of backing.
With a mix of embedded video loops and photography, with the minimum of text and links through to the Kickstarter pages for all the included projects, the JavaScript-powered site showcases its successes with the lightest possible touch and only occasionally blows its own trumpet; it's nice to see the moment where "If early inventors were on Kickstarter" is used as a Jeopardy category. In all, this is the sort of annual report that we can really get behind.
Words: Jim McCauley
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