As the title states.

I’m currently attending college and I’m about to finish my ATA in MIT as a Web / Graphics Designer. In an attempt to earn some extra cash, I’ve decided to enter a few design contests online. If you’re not familiar with exactly what a design contest is… well, I was going to link to one of the sites that does this, but they don’t deserve the traffic, so I’ll just explain.

Ok, if you don’t know, a design contest is essentially where someone in need of a design service, as in graphics or web design, posts a brief explaining what it is he/she needs or wants. Then, stupid people, myself included, foolishly do the work on the sometimes 1 in 1000 chance that we will “win”, and earn the prize money.

This process only works to benefit the person in need of the design. For every one contest, there ends up being one happy person, and many people who wasted their time designing just so the purchaser can say… “Sorry, it’s just not my style.”

Please, heed my advice designers. While it may seem like a good idea at the time, don’t do this. It is encouraging those in need of design services to seek there results in this manner, thus further decreasing the amount of quality work that is available. And not to mention, the majority of these contest’s prizes are well under where they should be.

I have entered many over the past week, and won few. I’m done with these contests, and you should be too.
That rhymed.

For further consideration: http://www.designers-who-blog.com/index.php/archive/things-that-suck/ and http://www.creativelatitude.com/articles/article_0804_habib.html.

Edit: Thank you for the comment regarding http://www.no-spec.com/. I’d like to point out that NO!SPEC has a good way that you can represent your feeling in regard to design contests.

Supporting the cause!

http://www.no-spec.com/