1) It takes the design itself to be a matter of taste. Obviously taste is important, but to design based on taste means designing without knowing anything about your company.
2) People entering the contest have nothing at stake. As they do not receive anything to just participate, they will invest very little. You would not do something you care a lot about if there is a very big chance of it turning to nothing.
3) It takes the "billion monkeys randomly typing" approach: assumes that variety must lead to quality. In doing that, it precludes depth. You have 100 ideas that took at best 1/10 the time a consistent idea would require to develop, and hope that luck will do the rest.
4) It fails to value the person creating the design: It implicitly says that they were not good enough to be sought after. And more importantly: It gives them no power whatsoever to control how their art will be used. If the company decides to paint it green, the guy just has to suffer it.
5) It fails to be "open source" because contests feed competition, not collaboration.
6) And further it fails to empower the community because collective involvement is at best a poll for the winner (AKA mob-think). No one in the community can suggest changes in an already proposed design, for example. There are no community practices of design-using involved, and so on.
And just as a final comment: 7) If you don't care about a logo enough to go to the Uni and find a teacher who will use your logo as an exercise for a class, why not simply have your programmers get together and do some fancy 133t svg thing? At least then it would have some connection to the people it is supposed to represent...
Notice that i all for "designers are not as important as they make themselves to be". But a contest is just not a good way to design, no matter what.
Totally disagree on all points. Some of the most iconic logos on the planet were designed in an afternoon (Nike). There are a lot of design efforts that require depth and iteration-- logos aren't one of 'em (note: I was a designer for a good chunk of my life and still sling pixels pretty frequently).
Entrepreneurship is all about risking work for the POSSIBILITY of reward. You can build/launch a product that fails. You can spend 40 hours trying to land a customer and have it fall apart at the last minute. This is no different-- it's an army of design entrepreneurs who think the reward is worth the risk. And yeah, if you offer a crappy reward, you'll get minimal effort. Offer $100k and you'll get tremendous effort.
"But a contest is just not a good way to design, no matter what." The growth of 99Designs seems to indicate otherwise. I know lots of startup folks who have gone that route and have been VERY satisfied. In my opinion (again, with a design background), a contest with a big reward is the PERFECT way to get lots of perspectives and leverage the global economy to your advantage.
Why so:
1) It takes the design itself to be a matter of taste. Obviously taste is important, but to design based on taste means designing without knowing anything about your company.
2) People entering the contest have nothing at stake. As they do not receive anything to just participate, they will invest very little. You would not do something you care a lot about if there is a very big chance of it turning to nothing.
3) It takes the "billion monkeys randomly typing" approach: assumes that variety must lead to quality. In doing that, it precludes depth. You have 100 ideas that took at best 1/10 the time a consistent idea would require to develop, and hope that luck will do the rest.
4) It fails to value the person creating the design: It implicitly says that they were not good enough to be sought after. And more importantly: It gives them no power whatsoever to control how their art will be used. If the company decides to paint it green, the guy just has to suffer it.
5) It fails to be "open source" because contests feed competition, not collaboration.
6) And further it fails to empower the community because collective involvement is at best a poll for the winner (AKA mob-think). No one in the community can suggest changes in an already proposed design, for example. There are no community practices of design-using involved, and so on.
And just as a final comment: 7) If you don't care about a logo enough to go to the Uni and find a teacher who will use your logo as an exercise for a class, why not simply have your programmers get together and do some fancy 133t svg thing? At least then it would have some connection to the people it is supposed to represent...
Notice that i all for "designers are not as important as they make themselves to be". But a contest is just not a good way to design, no matter what.