The bigger the prize, the more people who enter the contest.  http://ecopedia.org had a logo design contest and ended up with 6 pages of entries, with at least 10 logos to a page, maybe more.  About 60 people entered the contest.  That would be 600 logohours.  Obviously some of the designs took less time and used the insta-logo-design software packages out there, but that’s a digression I don’t wish to address, since I don’t really call that Design :P

One person wins.  Say the prize is something worthy—$300 or more ($30/hour, which is OK).  59 people are out a total of 590 logohours.

If those 59 people had walked into a gas station or grocery store, they could have spent 1 minute each playing the lottery ($1/2 games availability and price in your state may vary).  For far longer a shot at winning much more money.  They could even exchange 1 hour worth of their pay (say $30) to play the lottery (in NY that’s 60 chances to win).  It’s still a rather long shot, but look at the payback if you DO win… and how much less of your time you wasted—an hour of pay, a few minutes in the store you were probably going to anyway.

I’m thinking the odds of winning the Wikipedia contest are approaching those of the lottery.  Then there’s how much of your time you need to spend—both entering their contest, and after winning it.  Maybe supporting Wikipedia would become a full-time pro-bono occupation—exactly how much post-contest work is there to do?  Since you entered a contest with no contract specifying how much more support is implied by winning (same goes for cash logo contests!) you don’t really know if you’re getting what you “paid for” in the end.  Will you have time for all that supposed exposure and extra business it might generate?

Those $30/hr return contests, after dealing with the post-winning aftermath could be $10/hr—$5/hr or “Oh, G-d how do I get out of this! What a huge mistake!” per hour.  Not only is there poor return on the time you spend on them, that’s time you can’t spend with a full-price client, marketing yourself, doing your taxes, playing Solitaire, hugging your kids, planting your garden….

I hear most people who win the lottery end up broke rather quickly.  I wonder if that’s true of winners of logo design contests too.

I mean…what are the odds of being chosen in this globally recognized website? Extremely slim to none, I’m sure.

I understand the temptation to put your name out there in the expense of your time. What if you don’t win? Will future clientele believe your story that this was the actual piece in the portfolio presentation you submitted to Wikipedia (or any other big name corp)? Would they care?

In my approach, I see it as “saving your energy for better things”.

“Golden” carrots need to be banned or discouraged.

What does it matter if the contest prize is $1 or $1,000,000?

If it’s a laptop or Wikipedia exposure?

It doesn’t matter.  What matters is that the one winner may put X hours into the contest and get wonderful payment in return while the other 100 or 1000 or 1,000,000 contestants also put X hours into it and have “Here’s my failed contest entry” to put into their portfolio.

Big name long-experienced designer or not—you’re on an almost anonymous playing field if you enter the contest along with the amateurs.  Someone hits the nail on the head—beginner’s luck—and your time is gone.

The sponsoring company, no matter what they’re dangling, is wasting the loser’s time.  It’s disgraceful.  I’ve said it before in comments on other design blogs, I’ll say it again: Time is my one finite commodity.

They are looking to waste people’s time.  If I wrote a religious rule listing for what attains nirvana and what gives you eternal purgatory, wasting one another’s time would be in the top 10, because the Deity only gives us so much, we can’t buy more, we can’t borrow it from one another—and people who waste it are doing us a mortal disservice.

NO!SPEC Period.  I don’t care if it’s a golden carrot.  They’re still dangling a carrot, and the best “man” is not always the one that wins.

I realise the pro bono aspect may x out the newer designers. If you think about it though, there are loads of similar opportunities out there for the newbie. Ok, perhaps not at this level but hey, sometimes you have to pay your dues!

If Wikipedia handles this right (getting the advice of those in the know before choosing), by sending out a call for portfolios they should assured of a decent range of experienced designers to select from, and not find out later on they are totally stuffed because they went with someone lacking in the experience and knowledge needed to pull this off.

I’m not saying there aren’t those coming up couldn’t do the job, but seems to me to be sure of a positive outcome, a serious project of this caliber calls for a seasoned, professional designer (or design team), not a youngin.

And think about it. As the campaign against spec and spec contests takes hold around the internet, there should be more decent pro bono jobs out there and less spec contests flying around. Plenty for everyone who wants to make their mark by giving back to their communities without being taken advantage of.

cat

What I think is offensive is the way in which Wikipedia is framing the job: as a contest. By referring to the selected designer as the “winner,” and promising having “their work on one of the most heavily trafficked websites on the Internet and the pride of helping make knowledge more accessible to all,” Wikipedia is absolutely devaluing the professionalism of the design field.

Asking users to volunteer by tagging pictures, editing copy, etc. makes sense; it’s relatively immediate work that can be done in one’s spare time. Asking for designers to submit an entire branding/image redesign, on the other hand, is a little bit ridiculous. I’m with Andy: ask for designers to submit their portfolios, then see whether any of the favorite firms would be willing to do the work pro bono (though I admit, this effectively bars any talented-yet-new designers from getting their feet in the door).

As a budding graphic designer, the potential of having my work visible to such a large audience is hugely alluring. At the same time, I’m so turned off by the idea of treating this as a contest that I probably won’t do much more than sketch out a few logo concepts.

Many of these designers seem to have, from my POV, a history that just begins with something impressive – as far back as I dig in their portfolios I find no crappy tiny nobody-knows-em clients like I’ve gotten over the years. Like, all of the sudden they were designing for Nike or something – I always wanted to land a client like that (not with the state of my current portfolio, however!). I wonder if doing what I admit would be spec design for Wikipedia would qualify as a “big break” for those like myself.

Not saying I’m dumping the time into it – I’ve paid that bill before.

It sounds to me like Wikipedia think that a design for a website is a flat visual and are thus approaching this task like a children’s painting competition. Reminds me of all those art competitions on Blue Peter. Did Mark ever tell you that he had a picture on Tony Hart’s Gallery ;0) (one for the Brits that).