As for the readership judging the entries – I think that is a step in the right direction. I don’t know what you’re planning specifically, but I would encourage you to go all the way and display *all* the entries on the site for a time, along with names and a link. Possibly create a couple of runner up spots that will remain up in the blog post after the contest is over. This way, at least you can pay all the contestants *something* (e.g. visibility), even if it’s not money. Now if I were a younger designer coming up, I could at least attach a value to that, and in many cases that might be enough to get me interested.

Also, I know that a lot of designers appreciate feedback, so you might entertain the idea of allowing a round of public commenting and a chance for the designers to make one round of revisions before voting starts. This would give the designers something else of value and let the non-designers among your readership be even more involved in the competition.

In any case, I do wish you the best of luck and I hope there is a way that the contest can be structured to benefit both you and all of your readers who get involved.

On the other side of the fence though, I started out by always going direct to a designer and choosing based on their portfolio. In the 3 instances I did this (all different designers), not one of them came up with something anywhere near the quality of the work shown in the portfolio.

In terms of the contest here, it’s worth noting that I will not be judging the entries – the readership will. I would hope that even for those that don’t get the backing of the readers, it still gives the little guy trying to build a name for himself an opportunity to showcase what they can do.

First of all, you’re going to piss off a lot of professional designers with this move. As I’m sure you know, there are more than a couple of us that make up your readership. This undermines your credibility with them severely. Make no mistake – it’s a topic that is throughly discussed among designers and most have their minds made up.

Secondly, every time someone does one of these contests and gets a lot of entries, you have to consider all the work that you just solicited. Only the work of one lucky winner will ever be “paid for”, and you run the risk of alienating all of those other contestants who just threw their time away. Hundreds, if not thousands, of man-hours collectively. Sure, it’s their fault for entering in the first place. But now you “don’t get my vision”, you don’t see things the way I do and I’m likely to feel less connection to your point of view. And if they haven’t put that much thought into it, it was a crap logo to begin with :)

Not trying to slag you here – just want to offer a point of view that maybe hasn’t been considered yet.

I might aswell give it a try.