Comments on: Logo design contests are bad for business

By: David Airey

David Airey — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:56:35 +0000

Hello Mali,

With most of my clients coming from overseas, I don’t often get the opportunity to meet face-to-face. It’s great when it happens though.

By: Mali

Mali — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:45:53 +0000

NO!SPEC

Excellent post, I admit to doing 1 competition to which I was very innocent at the time. I spent time making the logo and developing ideas from sketch to final ideas (more than one). Then realized the time and effort and attempt at communicating with the Invisible client was pointless as they picked a logo with stretched text ridiculous colours and no relation to the Clients profile at all! Sorry for people who may use Paintshop Pro or Microsoft Word to design logos but come on!! Its just wrong so so wrong. Hmmm I never went back to the competition site and never will. I love to meet people and have a real passion and enthusiasm for design and there is nothing better than getting to know your clients face to face.

Eating Design

Mali’s last blog post…Denise Richards Photoshop Fantasy Face.

By: David Airey

David Airey — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:47:44 +0000

Hi Sara,

You mention that when a client comes to you, you gather all of their needs and requirements, which is great, and good working practice. In your experience as a moderator on SitePoint, what percentage of the submitted designs do you think were properly researched? Taking account of the company background, competitors, target audeince etc.?

With most contests, there’ll always be a winner, although as mentioned above, one contest organiser had no intention of giving a prize, and listed his website on SitePoint purely for SEO reasons. I wonder how often this happens.

The thing is, where there’s a winner, there are countless losers, who don’t receive any feedback or payment for their work. So they’re working for free. It’s great how you picked one of the people who didn’t win, and offered additional work on the back of the designs they submitted, but I can’t imagine this happens very often, although you have a much greater insight into the talent, being a moderator.

So sure, there are good things, but in my opinion they are heavily outweighed by the bad.

Thanks for your thoughts.

By: ses5909

ses5909 — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 10:48:15 +0000

Ok, I’m brave for writing this so don’t flame me too hard. Here is a little disclosure: I am not a designer by any stretch of the imagination. I can do layouts just fine, but I am a developer first and foremost. That being said, I have had a logo contest before with excellent results and am actually a regular “watcher” of these graphic contests. I am a moderator at SitePoint and one of my tasks is to moderate the contest. //end disclosure

When my clients come to me and want a new website, I gather all of their needs and requirements and when they need custom graphic work, I will call on one of a few designers I regularly work with. I met these designers in the SitePoint Marketplace. The designer I work with the most, actually entered my logo contest I held 2 years ago, but her entry didn’t win. I loved her work and her professionalism though and I approached her for other work. Since then, she has received numerous jobs from me and will continue to do so. She did all of the custom graphics for TheBlogExperiment.com to include the logo (through direct hire) and I am currently employing her for additional work as well.

My point is, there are good things that can come out of these contests which I think are often overlooked. I like to watch the designers and see who I would be interested in for future work and I know several other people/businesses who do that. Not everyone who has a contest does so with the intent on paying peanuts for something that is worth much more. Many people want to forge a relationship with someone and this is one way of establishing that relationship.

Flame away :D

By: David Airey :: Graphic Designer

David Airey :: Graphic Designer — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:06:32 +0000

Nice one, Doug. Thanks for letting us know of your success at bringing more exposure to the issue.

By: edgydoug

edgydoug — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:02:35 +0000

to those who may have read Maryann’s comments (oct 13, 14) about the Canadian magazine “Marketing” will know that they are running a logo design contest for their 100 anniversary. Both she and I had contacted them and asked their reason for running a contest. In my message to them I pointed out the drawbacks and why this type of contest hurts the design profession. To follow up, I received and email from their executive editor asking if they could run my message as a letter to the editor in their next issue (nov 26). I agreed, and feel regardless of the response my letter is given it’s great exposure for the issue.

By: cat

cat — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:50:03 +0000

I was hoping the panel would be put forward. The no-spec.com campaign is not perfect (what campaign is?) so I was interested in hearing well thought out presentations from both sides.

By: Smitty

Smitty — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:40:06 +0000

Cat graciously let me in on a little forum that Kevin Yank opened up. He is a technical director, I believe, for Sitepoint. He is trying to get some feedback on these contests
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/604?return=%2Fideas%2Findex%2F2%2Fpage%3A20 - So far there doesn’t seem to be much feedback one way or another, which is surprising to me.

By: cat

cat — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:11:11 +0000

Janice,

Did you see the SitePoint article at creativepro.com? Terri Stone (editor of CP) gave me permission to post her views on no-spec.com

You can read them here –>> http://www.no-spec.com/archives/the-spec-trap-sitepoint/

By: Janice

Janice — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 05:00:02 +0000

I found this blog via a Google search for discussions on SitePoint contests. My motivation for this search is to document designer’s opinions of entering contests with no monetary compensation whatsoever… the kind of contests that SitePoint offers.

I have been watching the SitePoint contests closely for about 3 months. The contests are a smart marketing tool for SitePoint. It also is a trove of individuals, smart buyers and agencies - stealing designs as a ‘contest holder’. Unfortunately, it is also a poor education for new designers (and even professionals) on the creation of logos and the communication involved in the development process.

SitePoint claims they are merely a ‘facilitator’ of bringing designers and potential clients together (via their contests). However, (the) SitePoint (website/company) are also ‘enablers’ (on a very large scale) of intellectual and creative property thief.
The contests are loosely run. You can log into SitePoint, create an account, and post a contest. The ‘rules’ for the contests in a nutshell is to ‘play nice’. But SitePoint does not take responsibility for running these contests. Each ‘Contest Holder’ creates their own ‘rules’, and they often change during the course of the contest.

Better still, the Contest Holder can abandon a contest and never declare a ‘winner’. However, he will have at the very minimum at least 50 designs to choose from in a logo contest. All these designs of course can be scoffed up with a click of the mouse and off he goes into the wild unknown yonder never to be heard from again… until he creates a NEW account and starts the process all over again.

Our industry needs to continue the movement of ‘no specs’. We are only shooting ourselves in the foot and our pocketbooks by silently accepting this grand theft on a grand scale.

David, thank you for this blog post!