Why you shouldn't enter design 'contests'

Paul Murray

Paul Murray

Ultimate Member
I'm sure the majority of us already know this, but I thought this might be a prime example of why design 'contest' sites are bad for your freelance business…

crowdsourcing.jpg

All those people who previously submitted designs (the client no doubt kept the ones they liked) received a bit fat zero amount of money for their time. Meanwhile the 'client' walks away with a design and all their budget.

:violin:
 
Not only with a design - but also all the designs that were submitted, basically get a bunch of designs and concepts done for free.

Although - the reason for the refund is not disclosed, from what I can see - it could be that the designs were plagiarized and the client copped that and requested to be refunded?

Design contests are bad in general. FAQ about spec work | NO!SPEC
 
Possibly. Or it could be that they didn't get any designers submitting work that they were that confident in (I wonder why???).

From what I could tell the 'client' wanted 9 pages designing for the sake of the contest, with 35 pages in total. So that's 9 pages to be created with deposit and no guarantee of payment, plus a further 26 pages, all for $3100, and people STILL entered?

I'm starting to lose sympathy for designers who use such sites to be honest.
 
I see it's only at the qualifying round - so they didn't even select a finalist!

It's so sad that people take the profession as a contest! It makes me want to cry.

The worst is when someone say "Can you make a billion changes... oh I don't like it... what do you think... " - "Eh I think it was better the way I did it first time" - "Oh I don't know, play around with it"

I hate that phrase with a passion!
 
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