Stop holding «contests»

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I use a ter­rif­ic piece of soft­ware in my busi­ness called Time Mas­ter. It’s a time track­er and invoice gen­er­a­tor that runs on the iPad. I’ve gone through sev­er­al time-track­ing pack­ages in the last fif­teen years and even con­sid­ered writ­ing one when I was unsat­is­fied with the avail­able options. It speaks well of Time Mas­ter and the devel­op­ers at On-Core Soft­ware that they have pro­duces a soft­ware pack­age that pass­es muster.

Recent­ly On-Core released a new ver­sion of Time Mas­ter and announced in their release notes that they are hold­ing a «con­test» for some­one to redesign their appli­ca­tion icon and splash page.

Their logo and splash screen could use some love, it’s true. But hear­ing that a com­pa­ny I’m spend­ing my mon­ey with is hold­ing a graph­ic design «con­test» is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.

In On-Core’s announce­ment, they used words designed to make it sound as though they respect the work and tal­ent it takes to do cre­ative work. They use the word «guru» to flat­ter us. I’d appre­ci­ate the flat­tery if it weren’t part of a solic­i­ta­tion to get pro­fes­sion­al work for free.

A bigger problem

It’s not just this one com­pa­ny. Recent­ly on a min­i­mal­ist run­ners’ forum a store that caters to min­i­mal­ist run­ners announces that it was crowd­sourc­ing their logo design using the web­site 99Designs.com. They asked for feed­back from the mem­bers of the list, who were hap­py to dis­cuss their opinions.

99Designs is a site that invites any­one to start a «design con­test» where­in the «con­tes­tants» sub­mit fin­ished designs on spec­u­la­tion. One out of dozens of sub­mis­sions is picked as the win­ner and that one gets the (usu­al­ly min­i­mal) bounty.

The appeal of such a site is clear. No one is get­ting forced to give their time and cre­ativ­i­ty, which makes it hard to paint the par­tic­i­pants as vic­tims. The «clients» have a good chance of get­ting their work done inex­pen­sive­ly. Every­one loves inex­pen­sive, right?

How­ev­er, busi­ness trans­ac­tions involve more than bal­anc­ing cost against ben­e­fit. Often it is very much about assum­ing risk. The old apho­rism says: the more risk, the greater the reward. That’s why those tak­ing on the risk should be get­ting greater reward rather than less­er rewards. Design «con­tests» ask the design­er to take on greater risk with lit­tle reward even if they «win». The work is done up front and whether they are cho­sen or not no one can get their time back.

Spec work isn’t good for anyone

Ulti­mate­ly this sort of arrange­ment can’t serve the clien­t’s inter­ests either. Work­ing one-on-one with a pro­fes­sion­al means get­ting the atten­tion to your par­tic­u­lar busi­ness needs. Often times what a busi­ness actu­al­ly needs is very dif­fer­ent from the per­ceived needs. A «con­tes­tant» can only focus on the specs of the job, and can­not get a feel for a busi­ness’s mar­ket posi­tion­ing or the kind of impres­sion that would be most use­ful to present the market.

The faulty assump­tion behind the «con­test» is that there is no val­ue to the designs that don’t get cho­sen. Most design­ers when giv­en an assign­ment will present mul­ti­ple options. Ask the design­er for dozens more options and the design­er will have to take addi­tion­al time to cre­ate those options, time which will be billed to the client. 

A thought exercise

Giv­en the above, is it fair to ask one design­er to spend the time to cre­ate dozens of designs but pay only for the time it takes to cre­ate one? On the face of it, that sounds like an unrea­son­able request. So why is it rea­son­able to ask dozens of design­ers to each sub­mit one and pay just one of them?

The dif­fer­ence is that a scheme like 99Designs puts greater risk on the design­ers, but spreads the risk around. Each design­er will put a com­par­a­tive­ly small amount of time into solv­ing the prob­lem, which makes the risk afford­able, the same way a $1 lot­tery tick­et seems like a small price to pay for the chance at mil­lions. You’d nev­er get one per­son to trade $50 mil­lion dol­lars for $20 mil­lion dol­lars, but it’s easy to find 50 mil­lion peo­ple to trade a sin­gle dol­lar for a myth­i­cal shot at that $20 mil­lion. The inher­ent­ly abu­sive nature of the trade isn’t any dif­fer­ent, just the amount that each per­son gets abused. That’s why in most places only gov­ern­ments (and approved non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions) can hold lot­ter­ies. At least there the mon­ey goes into the state cof­fers and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly keeps tax­es lower.

There are oth­ers who work on this same prin­ci­ple. Oth­ers who most city-dwellers encounter on a dai­ly basis. It’s the prin­ci­ple behind pan­han­dling. The pan­han­dler is count­ing on the amount of mon­ey com­ing from each per­son to be so low that indi­vid­u­al­ly no one gives it much thought. You’ll nev­er get any­one to give you $500 for doing noth­ing, but get­ting 2,000 peo­ple to give up a quarter? 

It’s not much of a stretch to say that 99Designs makes their liv­ing tak­ing a per­cent­age off of pan­han­dlers. These pan­han­dlers are most­ly busi­ness own­ers who aren’t think­ing about what they are ask­ing; only look­ing for­ward to get­ting some­thing for cheap.

Intellectual property theft

There is a greater and more insid­i­ous dan­ger to what 99Designs does. Since these design «con­tests» are held in the open where all the sub­mis­sions are vis­i­ble, it’s easy for some­one with lit­tle imag­i­na­tion to get ideas from the oth­ers, mix aspects of dif­fer­ent con­cepts togeth­er and come up with a strong sub­mis­sion. Steal one per­son­’s idea and it’s pla­gia­rism. Steal a dozen peo­ple’s ideas and it’s called crowdsourcing. 

There’s noth­ing wrong with this col­lab­o­ra­tive approach, even when the par­tic­i­pants don’t know one anoth­er aren’t try­ing to col­lab­o­rate. What’s wrong is that the peo­ple who get reward­ed are not the ones with the good ideas. The peo­ple who get reward­ed are the ones who copy the peo­ple who have the good ideas. I rec­og­nize the val­ue in the per­son who can see mul­ti­ple ideas and syn­the­size them, but reward­ing only that per­son and not the ones who had the ideas is dangerous.

Won’t the invisible hand sort it all out?

The more lib­er­tar­i­an among us may say there’s not a dan­ger. Even­tu­al­ly the mid­dle­man will real­ize that they need pro­duc­ers in order to have some­thing to dis­trib­ute. The invis­i­ble hand of the mar­ket may well cre­ate a sec­ondary mar­ket where the top con­tes­tants at 99Designs hire the idea peo­ple they need. Maybe.

There’s anoth­er way to look at it, a way with which most lib­er­tar­i­ans should be famil­iar. Remem­ber John Galt’s vow in Atlas Shrugged? «I swear by my life and my love of it that I will nev­er live for the sake of anoth­er man, nor ask anoth­er man to live for mine». Note that this goes beyond a vow not to force oth­ers into servi­tude. It’s a vow not to even ask oth­ers to live for our sake. The fact that design­ers who par­tic­i­pate on 99Designs do so will­ing­ly does­n’t change the fact that the rela­tion­ship is inher­ent­ly abu­sive and should not be entered into by any pro­fes­sion­al with integri­ty. That a busi­nessper­son would ask oth­ers to work for free cheap­ens my opin­ion of their business.

I sym­pa­thize with small busi­ness­es who feel con­stant finan­cial pres­sure and don’t believe they can afford to pay the rates that pro­fes­sion­al design­ers charge. Aside from the abun­dance of stu­dents and begin­ning design­ers who will work for low rates, my con­cern comes to an abrupt end when I remem­ber that I too am a small busi­ness­man who pays to use the prod­ucts of oth­er small busi­ness­es. I don’t ask oth­er busi­ness­es to give me their prod­ucts for free; why should they?

I need billing soft­ware, and busi­ness cards, and a place to work, and count­less oth­er things both tan­gi­ble and not to run my busi­ness. I pay for all these things not because I’m legal­ly oblig­ed to, but because I respect the time and skill that goes into pro­vid­ing me with the ben­e­fits I enjoy. What rea­son do I have to busi­ness with any­one who does not share that respect?

It’s a very com­mon obser­va­tion giv­en as advice to peo­ple who date that the per­son who is nice to you and rude to the wait­er is not a nice per­son. In deal­ing with oth­ers it is impor­tant to look not just how we our­selves are treat­ed but how our busi­ness part­ners treat oth­ers and their own oblig­a­tions. It’s a bad idea to shop at the store where the sign in the win­dow reads, «we cheat the oth­er guy and pass the sav­ings on to you!» Sure, it might work out favor­ably once, but even­tu­al­ly every­one has their turn being the «oth­er guy» get­ting cheated.

The busi­ness corol­lary to the above dat­ing advice there­fore is: a busi­ness that is pro­fes­sion­al with its clients but not with its sup­pli­ers, is not a good busi­ness partner.

More information

There is a web­site devot­ed entire­ly to pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about spec­u­la­tive work, called No-Spec.com. And I’d be remiss if I failed to men­tion that the Graph­ic Artists Guild has a set of guide­lines for hold­ing actu­al design con­tests in its indis­pens­able Hand­book of Pric­ing and Eth­i­cal Guide­lines. You can get a peek at this with­out buy­ing the book here: Guide­lines for Art Com­pe­ti­tions.

Published by splicer

6 Replies to “Stop holding «contests»”

  1. I am not as opposed to these

    I am not as opposed to these con­tests as you are. I don’t dis­agree with many of your points, but feel that this should be an indi­vid­ual deci­sion. If I feel like design­ing a new logo for HP and they feel like buy­ing it, sobeit. There is no compulsion.

    How is this con­test any dif­fer­ent from a com­pa­ny that asks for pro­pos­als for a project and expects every­body to do the eval­u­a­tion, analy­sis, pro­pos­al, and pre­sen­ta­tion free? That’s how much of busi­ness works in this country.

    As for work­ing on spec, that is how most fine art, new hous­es, auto­mo­biles, etc. are sold. I think you are paint­ing this with too broad a brush.

    My ques­tion would be: Are they offer­ing a fair price for the select­ed win­ner? I could­n’t quick­ly find the link from their web­site, but think that the design­ers would bal­ance the reward and the odds of win­ning against the effort and work accord­ing­ly. If they are offer­ing $25,000 for the logo, that might be an appro­pri­ate fee as well as an induce­ment to a lot of low-paid design­ers. (I know that major cor­po­ra­tions pay mil­lions for their logos, but.….) If they are offer­ing $250, why both­er? But that should be an indi­vid­ual deci­sion in a free coun­try. I real­ly don’t think John Galt would object as long as there is no coercion.

    Dad

    1. Every­thing is an indi­vid­ual deci­sion
      If I want to sub­mit a design to On-Core’s «con­test» (which offers the win­ner no prize mon­ey) there’s no com­pul­sion either. I’m still enti­tled to believe that the behav­ior falls short of the stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism I expect those I do busi­ness with to meet. I high­ly doubt that your vision of a free coun­try is one where I am forced to con­tin­ue to do busi­ness with a com­pa­ny that is behav­ing unpro­fes­sion­al­ly. I also doubt that you believe that tak­ing my busi­ness else­where con­sti­tutes coer­cion in any way.

      Fine art, new hous­es and auto­mo­biles are all items which can be sold to any cus­tomer. Cre­at­ing a prod­uct which holds val­ue for the mar­ket is dif­fer­ent from cre­at­ing some­thing which holds no val­ue for any­one but the buy­er who request­ed it. If H/P does­n’t like your logo, you can’t take it across the street, change the H to an A, the P to a C and sell it to Apple Computer.

      The Graph­ic Artists Guild guide­lines for design con­tests for com­mer­cial projects solve these prob­lems by stat­ing that the con­test be judged on con­cept sketch­es rather than fin­ished artwork.this would be more in line with oth­er kinds of busi­ness where, as you say, research and plan­ning needs to be done before pitch­ing an idea.

      With­out look­ing I can’t tell you whether the guide­lines say any­thing about the sub­mis­sions being pri­vate, but they should. If you had a great idea you want­ed to pitch to a busi­ness, you’d do so in a closed room so that your com­peti­tors would­n’t hear your ideas and plans, not post it on a web­site so that the next guy could make the same pitch at a dis­count­ed rate. 

      Final­ly, I don’t buy the idea that any­thing that’s vol­un­tary is auto­mat­i­cal­ly OK. When smug­glers bring ille­gal immi­grants across the bor­der in ship­ping con­tain­ers, those immi­grants vol­un­teered for the ride and paid for the chance to risk their lives to come into the coun­try. I still hold that the smug­glers have com­mit­ted crimes not only against the US, but against the pas­sen­gers who were smug­gled in. 

      Per­haps the dif­fer­ence is that there is a form of coer­cion inher­ent in liv­ing in the coun­tries those peo­ple come from. I don’t believe that excus­es the per­son who took mon­ey to pack those peo­ple into a ship­ping container. 

  2. I think it is a stretch to

    I think it is a stretch to say that I said that any­thing done vol­un­tar­i­ly is OK, even if the act is ille­gal. You know me bet­ter than that.

    As for this con­test, would you be OK with it if the prize was $25,000? That would be more than most design­ers would charge a com­pa­ny of that size for a logo design.

    The prob­lem with a con­cept sketch for a logo is that there is next to no dif­fer­ence between the con­cept and the actu­al design. For exam­ple, say­ing to HP, “Let’s do a black low­er case ital­ic h & p on a white cir­cle.” or IBM, ” Let’s use IBM in upper case serif let­ters with half a dozen white hor­i­zon­tal lines through it.” The text is not explic­it enough to win the design con­test, and any sketch IS the logo.

    I think we agree in gen­er­al on all this stuff. The ques­tion is whether this offends you enough to not use their prod­uct which you have already paid for. There are no (or very few) com­pa­nies out there that are 100% pure to my eth­i­cal stan­dards. (My com­pa­nies weren’t either, but I tried.) Yes, that includes Apple. 🙂

    Dad

  3. OK, the human smug­gling
    OK, the human smug­gling exam­ple may have been a straw man. I’ll still say that not every­thing that is both legal and vol­un­tary is OK. Of course, now there’s the ques­tion of what OK means. I guess the real ques­tion is: is it any of my busi­ness how the busi­ness­es with whom I do busi­ness do their business?

    I’m not ceas­ing to use On-Core’s prod­uct and I’m not call­ing for a boy­cott. If I had it to do over again, I might still buy it. I might not. I’d have to con­sid­er it and this issue would be a factor.

    And Apple? I love their prod­ucts but they’re far from pure in my eyes. All of their pro­duc­tion is done in Chi­na, which does­n’t make very hap­py. But I bet they pay their graph­ic artists. 

  4. About the contest

    I fig­ured I’d chime in since we’re men­tioned in this blog. Ok, I designed the orig­i­nal icon & splash (I’m a pro­gram­mer, not a graph­ic artist, dammit).  Some peo­ple liked it, oth­er’s hat­ed it and so it goes. I do not know of any graph­ic artists and fig­ured we’d try to hold a com­pe­ti­tion to see what hap­pened. I thinj that Time Mas­ter holds on it’s own, despite those who did­n’t like the graph­ics and even if we nev­er changed the graph­ics, it would still be well received.

    The win­ner, Mr. Boudreau, did an amaz­ing job (imho) and we could­n’t be more thrilled with his work.  He will be get­ting cred­it in our doc­u­men­ta­tion, so oth­ers will be able to con­tact him for future work, if they are so inclined.  We like his work so much that he will be doing and icon and splash for our next app…and yes, we will be pay­ing him for it.

    So was this the worst thing? For us, we found an artist that we real­ly like and will be using in the future. For him, he will be get­ting more paid work.

    Cheers,
    Adam.

     

    1. Thanks for chim­ing in,

      Thanks for chim­ing in, Adam—

      First let me express how pleased I am that you are pay­ing Mr Boudreau. Did I miss in your descrip­tion of the con­test that there would be com­pen­sa­tion for the artist you chose?

       

      I agree that Time Mas­ter would be well-received by those who bought it and took the time to learn its use­ful­ness regard­less of the icon or the splash screen. How­ev­er, like it or not, whether you get your chance to prove your­self to users often has to do with the emo­tion­al response your users have to the expe­ri­ence of look­ing at your descrip­tion, icon, and in the first few sec­onds of using it. Ulti­mate­ly, you don’t change your graph­ics to please the per­son who has already bought it, you change your graph­ics to please the next customer.

      Cer­tain­ly I did not in any way mean to malign Mr Boudreau, and I’m very curi­ous to see his work. I can’t see it as yet because anony­mous mem­bers on your forum can­not view images and I’m wait­ing for my account (which, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, I signed up for today to report a minor UI issue) to be approved.

      Was this the worst thing? Of course not. But I’m dis­ap­point­ed if you can­not see that you got val­ue from what looks like a half-dozen oth­er sub­mis­sions and a few months of feed­back and revi­sions based on those sub­mis­sions. Is this how you would go about hir­ing a pro­gram­mer for a short-term one-time job? Have you tried to invite a half dozen pro­gram­mers to write the mod­ule you want, offer­ing to, after let­ting each one look at the oth­ers’ code, exam­in­ing the sub­mis­sions and offer­ing feed­back, and then at the end you decide to pay one of them? If you were to put on such a «con­test» would you expect pro­gram­mers to think it was a good oppor­tu­ni­ty? Would you par­tic­i­pate in such a con­test? And if not, why is buy­ing design dif­fer­ent from buy­ing code?

      I invite you to take a look at the Graph­ic Artists Guild guide­lines for art and design con­tests (linked in the main post) and con­sid­er whether you think those guide­lines are unfair to peo­ple who pur­chase design. Con­sid­er whether you think those guide­lines would be unfair to you. Maybe you will think so, maybe you won’t. I’m curi­ous to find out but I hope you’ll take a look even if you don’t report it back to me.

      And con­grat­u­la­tions on such a fine piece of soft­ware. Over the years I’ve pur­chased prob­a­bly two dozen licens­es for time track­ing, report­ing, and invoic­ing pack­ages. I’ve built cus­tom solu­tions for myself using every­thing from Perl code to spread­sheets to pen and paper in a note­book. Time Mas­ter on the iPad is the one that has worked best for me, best­ing even my old favorite, TimeRe­porter for the New­ton (none of Iambic’s ver­sions for oth­er plat­forms were as ver­sa­tile). You have a great prod­uct that I hope becomes even more suc­cess­ful as time goes on.

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