A while back, there was a bit of a flap about design competitions, specifically web design. I took a pass on the issue, because i didn't really see the problem. Architectural design competitions have been a part of the profession for at least a century, and usually provide winners with a contract. Now the debate over competition ethics is rearing its head in the architecture community as well.
The (web) graphic design world, by contrast, tends to end their competitions with a flat fee. Sometimes that fee is equal to what a contract would have paid, sometimes it's 'a roll in the hay'. When I entered the wordpress 2.0 theme competition, I did so because I was involved in the wordpress community. Being an open source project, I felt I was contributing in the same spirit that the developers. Despite the fact that the competition organizer never took the competition to completion, I don't feel taken advantage of. I released the competition entry previously under the GPL, and i had never intended to make money from it. And I was contributing to a community that I was a part of.
WARNING: flash site, resizes your browser (link nofollowed)
Wikipedia actually has a page on architectural design competitions, in which they suggest that most competitions are run by governments or non-commercial organizations. I suppose this is the reason that most architectural competitions don't leave a bad taste in my mouth, although tropolism suggests that some architects are opposed to them altogether. Competitions are usually the realm of small or new architectural firms, because they have the most to gain from the publicity. Commercial architectural competitions are often invitation only (WTC, for example), with a stipend for invited firms. This goes hand in hand with the AIA rule that working for free will get your membership revoked. Designers working on commercial projects, for free, cheapens their profession, and makes it more difficult for other designers to charge reasonable fees.
Coming back to the web design debate, the problem is that commercial entities like Sixapart and OSTG hold competitions for projects that serve communities, despite being commercial. I'm of the opinion that these organizations should be able to ask their community how they would like the community to look. The problem comes in with professional, or semi-porfessional designers in the midst of that community. Are designers in those communities meant to tell their friends, that no, they won't do design work for free? or stand back and let less talented designers win by default? Are these organizations to tell their community that they have no stake in how the community looks?
Two middle-ground solutions:
- Community competitions should never have a completed design as a deliverable. no floor plans, no CSS files, no mocked up websites. Deliverables should be presentation materials only (boards, descriptive layout images)
- Community competitions should be invitation only, with the winners decided by the community
Problems: #1 gives the organizers little guarantee that the winner can actually complete the project successfully. #2 gives the community the right to bitch about the components of each design, and may result in the community not being properly satisfied with the winner.
Either way, Scion's competition isn't ethical. And SixApart wasn't much better.
Post a Comment