Blanco on Design Contests (42645)

A very good article with a lot of insight on the matter!

This is one of the main tendencies that really weaken the position of designers as PROFESSIONALS.

It lends itself specially for crowd sourcing, meaning, that the outcome could simply be the contest poster walking away with "good ideas" and later hiring the lowest bidder to simply do a "trace over" of one or several "good ideas".

Thatʼs why I like elance.com, you compete only with budget and time, not ideas or proposals. The down side: you compete with people who budget ANYTHING under $10 (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc).