My hubby and I are knee-deep in developing our own design competition site. Most of the feedback has been really good, but we are getting some comments that it is like "spec" work because we are not giving all the designers freebies. The concept is a custom playing card design competition. So designers submit their design for a specific card, once the contest closes the artwork is voted on and the winner gets their artwork in the deck. We then get decks produced for sale. It takes us a lot of time to maintain and update the site, as well as artwork set up and ordering of the decks. We barely make any money and so we cannot give all the designers free decks, or else there wouldn't be anyone left to buy them! We do give the top 5 designers with the most votes a free deck. The decks are very professional and we enjoy seeing all of the wonderful and interesting artwork on each card - it's so fun to play cards with the decks. Anywho, as designers interested in design contests, what do you think? Is it cool? Would you like to have your artwork on a deck? Or do you think it is like asking for 'spec' work???? You can check out the site here: www.custom52.com. It is something we wanted to create as designers for designers - and in no way do we want to take advantage of anyone's creativity.
Thanks for listening!
