It’s The Market

“Fellow designers: Please stop participating in contests. You r devaluing the industry.“
– Lawrence Andrew – Tweet

It’s the market……. you know, that enormous thing you’re involved in.

A fairly recent evolution in online web design is the design contest.Essentially how it works is this:

• Someone wants a web site designed.
• They go to one of the popular online design competition sites.
• For a few $$$ they enter their brief and ask designers to submit designs that meet the brief.
• Designers submit their design hoping to win the prize.

The prize can be quite substantial – we’ve just set a contest with a $800 US prize for a graphic of a web site design.

Not Everyone is So Thrilled

Not everyone is thrilled with contests.

You see, various designers around the place moan and whine about how competitions devalue the market. Like Lawrence in the quote above.

Here’s the thing – this is the market. The market dictates what’s valuable. Not some random designer.

If the market doesn’t say your product or service is valuable, then it’s not.

All everyone of us in business do all day long is try to ‘help’ the market see our value.