Another "design contest" post warrants another "NO SPEC!" link, warrants another comment.
Here's the thing. For a brand new mom-and-pop florist, they're trying to find a logo to put on their banner out front. There's a huge crowd of entrepreneurs who only have $500 to spend on branding their new company. These contests work for them.
There are lots and lots of creatives willing to do a little work for the chance of winning $500 and seeing their work used by people not related to them. Could be a janitor doing graphic design at night for some extra scratch, or could be some dude in #{foreign_country} where the USD exchange rate works in his favor. These contests also work for them.
If someone can't (or just doesn't want to) run out and spend $10k on branding, should they not be allowed to have a logo? What should they do instead?
Bottom line: If the payment and risk is worth it to them, and the work is good enough for the client, then why should anyone else care?
Designers care about "spec work", as the idea was originally conceived, because they were routinely getting jerked around by big companies. It had apparently become standard practice among major brands to select design vendors by running contests, and then using elements of all the contest submissions to improve the work of their preferred vendor.
Designers care about sites like 99designs because the most responsive (and, frequently, most successful) contract entrants are Southeast Asians who will turn in work indistinguishable by a layperson from professional for 1/100th what an NYC designer will charge.
The weakest argument against this practice is unfortunately the most popular: that the work product of an untrained "amateur" turning out 99designs submissions all day out of Vietnam is fundamentally inferior, in ways meaningful to business, to the work turned out by an NYC designer who can take the time to study a brand, a business vertical, conduct wireframing, &c.
This argument is uncomfortably transparent: if both kinds of work product are indistinguishable to the buyer's customers, the extra work put in by a pro designer has zero value, but is instead being bundled, and this argument attempts to promote that bundle cartel-style, by arguing that no designer should break up the bundle.
There are better arguments against sites like 99designs, but I have zero incentive to make them.
Designers and agencies often do a lot of unpaid work when they pitch to a new client, and this is accepted industry practice. How are design contests any different?
They are in no sense different. "No spec work" is a totally bogus movement. Even graphic designers should reject efforts by their peers to manage their profession as if they were "realtors".
I read the no-spec site and while I kinda see the POV when thinking about large design projects, I don't see what the problem is for small things like a banner ad as the Kickoff Labs post was discussing.
There are creatives all over the world eager to get paid a few hundred bucks for a bunch of small jobs. Sites like 99designs/crowdSPRING provide an efficient market for them.
I needed a logo for a super-lean startup idea. In a few days, spending $400, I got a kick-ass logo via one of these sites.
OK, I "confess" that I downvoted your post because I considered the question disingenuous. The risk/reward may not always be clear to all participants, and in a fairer world such choices might not have existed in the first place.
My vote is really against encouraging people to view design contests as fair enough, not you personally.
You'll have to let me know what the problem is with spec work when it's the designers choice to enter or not enter a contest. I didn't hold a gun to anyones head and say "draw pixel monkey!"
I posted a request. Told them I'd select a winner. Ran the contest. Worked with the designers. Selected a winner and paid. I even was upfront enough to eliminate designers that were never going to win so they stopped wasting their time.
No topic has made me more disappointed in the Hacker News community than this one. It's frustrating to see my livelihood attacked by the very people I try to help every day. It's not the "big agencies" that spec work hurts. It's people like me. I've dedicated my life to design. I work with startups and small business to provide great design on small budgets. I don't want to go back to doing corporate work. I stopped when I realized the only people that cared less about the work than me were the clients themselves. So I decided to focus on small business. People that care about fresh ideas, innovation and quality products, like I do.
I'll spare you the book-length essay on why it's wrong to exploit the design industry like this. I'll just leave you with this: the only people that care about ethics in business are ethical businessmen. You are what you do. You can stab, claw and bite your way to the top or you can take a stand for something more important: integrity.
Next time, give yourself a couple of hours looking at local freelance designers. Call them. Ask them about rates, their design process, previously successful design campaigns and their approach to design. If you aren't satisfied after having at least tried, then go ahead and submit it to the design sweatshop in the cloud.
I do fully support the local design community. In fact our site and product design comes mainly from local resources. However... most of them simply don't like or want to take on small projects like this.
Sure, if I have to spend $500+ dollars they can tackle larger things that I would never farm out. But the GOOD local designers are generally too busy for the small stuff. And the ones that have time simply aren't as good.
Also - for smaller projects like this - the small entrepreneur (me) has a limited amount of time. Why should we spend it calling around to see if someone has a couple of hours to do this. I've tried. The people I trust are busy... so contest away.