Here at Uni Watch, we get lots of inquiries from people who want new uniform or logo designs: “Hey, could your readers design a new uniform for our high school baseball team?” or “Could you run a design contest to create a logo for my business?” That sort of thing.
It’s great that you hold the Uni Watch community in such high regard. Unfortunately, though, Uni Watch is not a resource for free design services. Creative work has value, and that value deserves to be compensated. As a creative professional myself, I’m concerned about recent trends that devalue creative work. I wouldn’t work for free (you probably wouldn’t either), and I’m not going to participate in something that gets other people to work for free.
So: In these types of situations, I’m willing to consider holding a design contest, but only if the winning designer receives a fair fee. If you’re not willing to provide a fee for the winning designer, I can’t help you.
Just to be clear: I don’t want any compensation for myself for holding the contest; I just want the winning designer to be paid for his or her work.
(You may be thinking, “Wait a minute, you run team-redesign contests on ESPN all the time, and nobody gets paid!” That’s true, but those are just fantasy concepts — they’re not being executed and used in the real world. Someone who creates a real-world design should be compensated. When I held a contest to design a Uni Watch smart phone case, for example, I gave the winning designer a $100 cash prize plus a free phone case.)