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Why Design Contests Are Bad
In contests you always determine a winner, which also implies that there is a loser, or rather losers. How is that fact a good thing in any design discipline?
I'm less concerned, actually, with whether or not any contest's winner deserves to win than the fact that a whole load of people would think, create, and work and then turn over all that effort to someone for free. Call me pisher, but as a book designer I'm quite tired of people offering me nothing but "exposure" for work I normally get paid thousands of dollars to do. Mighty big of them. And then such contest promoters still have access to all the losers' work for free.
Contests devalue the work of designers and make it less likely that neophytes starting out will find a climate that welcomes them as paid professionals without first giving work away.
And this is not to suggest that there aren't groups or associations, non-profits, genuinely worthy of pro bono assistance at times. In fact, I think straight out giving like that to worthy groups is far preferable than contributing enough free content to populate a paid-for issue of a sponsoring publication, say.
Watch Jerry Seinfeld's acceptance speech for the "HBO Comedian Awards" and replace every instance of the word "comedian" with "designer": www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_OqvUbBNA4
"The whole feeling in this room of reverence and honoring is the exact opposite of everything I have wanted my life to be about."
Ravi P.S., Check out my book Predictable Magic under the Pearson/Wharton label, it started shipping this week.
The other issue, is that a lot of contests are ditching the use of experienced, educated judges, and instead using "crowd sourcing". Unfortunately, this usually results in online voting, which usually picks the most outrageous, unrealistic, yet cool looking solution. Never mind manufacturing. Never mind materials. Never mind the real world. Never mind research. Just OOOOOO PRETTY, click! The simple fact is that the average person cannot accurately judge design contests, because they simply don't know enough about the process.
Another issue with the crowd sourcing/online voting aspect is that it becomes a popularity contest. As an entrant, you watch godawful designs get thousands of votes, due to school size, nationality, or other unknown factors, and you must fight back by literally whoring yourself out by writing to blogs, your friends, family, and coworkers to vote for your design.
MAYBE, just maybe, if online voting for a crowd soured idea required some sort of test in order to vote. A few quick questions about materials, human factors, etc, that made sure the people voting wasn't someone's grandmother and nursing home staff.
Anyway, nice article, and it definitely highlights a real problem with our industry.