

Weebly (YC 07) is having a US$10k theme design contest - henning
http://themes.weebly.com/contest/

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fnid2
These kinds of contests have really turned design into a commodity -- bad news
for designers. Designers argue vehemently that they are _unethical_ and
_implore_ other designers not to participate in them.

I wonder when there will be $10,000 contests for the best CRM or the best
Supply Chain Management System.

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TrevorBurnham
_Unethical?_ Seriously?

1\. Could you back up your claim by linking to someone who you feel speaks for
the designer community on the subject?

2\. If you need a CRM or SCM other than one of the existing projects, then you
clearly have very specialized needs and need to hire a contractor; no one is
going to go to all the work of creating a custom CRM (and, presumably,
providing future support and maintenance) just for a shot at winning a
contest.

I think it's great that we live in a web where there's an abundance of free
designs, in part thanks to contests like this one. There will always be demand
for truly talented designers for the small fraction of websites that need (and
can afford) that level of customization. That's not Weebly's target market.

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fnid2
The no-spec team is one of the most vocal anti design contest groups:
<http://www.no-spec.com/articles/design-contests/>

Here's another: <http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work>

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ktsmith
Of course if you don't win they can still turn your entry into a theme. Sounds
like a really inexpensive way to increase their 70 custom themes to several
hundred for only $13k.

~~~
taitems
Point taken, but they still have to invest a lot of man hours in slicing and
building the theme to work in most popular browsers.

~~~
ktsmith
Depends on the complexity of their template system and theme engine. I doubt
that it's that big of a deal if you look at the majority of their existing
themes the engine and capabilities of the site are extremely simple. There are
plenty of sites/designers/companies out there that will turn any PSD into
html/css for between $99 and $299 including ADA compliance and cross browser
compatibilities.

