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Old 07-23-2014, 10:44 AM   #425
Regular_John
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Originally Posted by V View Post
I'd be interested to hear more about the unethical nature of contests. To me it seems like if you don't want to work for free, you don't, and if you do, you do. Nobody's forcing you to do anything.

I work in more of the engineering side of the design world, and I can appreciate that I would not be interested in providing anything more than a conceptual design for free. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that such an arrangement would be unethical.
It's the amount of "free" work being provided from potentially dozens of designers. I'm not exaggerating either, take a look at any project on 99designs and look at the number of entries they are getting for any given project. Here's 112 designs from 15 designers, all for $350

You are right though, no one forces anyone to work for free, but if I choose to work for free (say a charity or community group I suppose) I get some say in the matter.

But it is hard to look past the for profit business throwing out a bone of say $500, and getting 100's of designs for it. Even if we say each designer's time is worth an even $500/each (times 15) they are getting closer to $7,500 work for that $500. And once again, they are a for profit company, getting custom made work, specifically for their product.
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