18 years old!

Hi,

I was very excited when I came across this site! I thought it would be a great thing to get involved with. Even if I didn't win many (if any) contests, I could get some real world experience with graphic design (web design too). I know I'm not that great of a designer yet, but I was hoping that this might give me a little practice and eventually I might have enough experience to put together a winning design. I started perusing through the forums looking at the contests and I even popped open Illustrator and started to work on a logo for the ***** contest going on.

When I felt like I actually had an idea down that I thought looked pretty good I looked around to see if I could enter (I guess I was doubting it anyways). Then I found the requirements... and I didn't even come close!

I'm not 18 years old, I'm only 15 . I don't understand why you have to be 18 years old as long as you have some good ideas and know how to turn them into vector graphics. I don't have much of a portfolio yet (I've only done three websites and two logos), I haven't been an active member of the forums for one week, nor have I made 10 recent posts (I could have done that easily though) so it doesn't look like I'd be able to submit this ***** logo anyways, but why do you have to be 18?

In my opinion, as long as you can prove you can make a logo, you should be able to enter, so I was just wondering what the reasons were for all these restrictions.

Also, does anyone know of any contest places like this one where there aren't age restrictions.

Thanks

P.S. Here are my rough draft ideas. I figure since I made them I may as well do something with them. Any comments to help me improve?

Hi, FredT:

Welcome to CD! I think it's great that you are so passionate about design and at such a young age. Even though I know you don't think that you are that young.

The DC community is committed to providing professional, quality solutions to the Contest Holders. (That's what keeps the contest holders coming back!) I think you'll be ready to apply for the Design Team by the time you're 18 years old. Just keep working at it: learn as much as you can and hone your skills. You're off to a good start -- can't wait to see the other designs that you have worked on.

FredT, thanks for being honest about that, we appreciate it. The reason we need Design Team members to be 18 or older is because certain privileges for winning designs get legally transferred to the contest holder after the contest ends. Now, if you were just circulating the designs amongst friends, they can probably trust you not to try and rip them off later. In business, it doesn't work that way; you need to legally give certain rights to the company or individual that buys your design.

If you're a minor, you cannot enter into a legally binding contract (written, verbal, or implied). If you did enter into one fraudulently, it would most likely not be upheld by the legal system. To give DC contest holders the assurance that their designs are being provided by people who are eligible to transfer or share some of their rights pertaining to those designs, we have to either a) make sure that all persons under 18 are supervised by a parent/guardian, or b) disallow those persons to participate. While we would love to take the first approach, we are simply a group of volunteers, and it would be more trouble than it's worth at this point.

We certainly welcome you to visit the site for other purposes, and invite you to apply for the Design Team when you've met the age requirement. Until that time, however, please refrain from posting designs for active contests publicly like you've done in this thread (I've had to remove your images and references to the company name). Based on the way our system works, it can cause us problems if your designs are posted when you're not on the Design Team. If any such problems were ever to arise, your account would be banned. In fact, some people have been banned for even just posting designs because we don't support that type of behavior at all. I don't want to scare you off, but please be careful about that.

I learned about business the hard way. Some day you'll understand. Good luck Fred!