Welcome to Contesterous!


Community driven design contests are,
without doubt, turning the design community upside down. More important than the effect that crowd sourcing design is having on the business of custom graphic design, open design competitions have, and continue to, allow more and more designers from all walks of life and situations contribute to, and profit from the design industry.

Just as blogging has done for the publishing of news stories (any newspaper publisher to slow to evolve will soon disappear), design contest sites allow us, the community access to a huge number of paying briefs and projects. The barrier to entry has not been lowered, the barrier has been ripped down!

Exactly like in the news industry, music, film and almost every other industry imaginable, those that embrace, adapt and morph to the strengths of this teenage internet of ours will lead the way. The graphic design world is about to explode with creativity and see off the slow, stubborn and doomed designers that are too busy complaining about copyrights issues, the non-exploitative fees and anybody who dares to break ranks from the traditional agencies.

Crowd sourcing and community submitted contest models are about to spread across many new markets during 2010. As this movement grows, so will the technology to support and improve the platforms pioneering the wave of change.

The aim of this site is not to bring down those that do not believe in change. Equally, there is no intent here to convert or prove community design contests to be the only way forward. Contesterous has been started, purely with the aim of contributing to and enriching the community of creative humans (commonly known as employees, bosses and customers) that share their time, designs, votes, comments and cash. Contesterous is all about YOU!

Because Contesterous is about you design contest loving people, I want to know what’s important to you?

So I have given you the opportunity to let me know exactly what in the world of design contests you want to explore. Make use of the Contesterous “What’s Important To You?” survey by answering a few multiple choice questions and help direct the crowd sourced development of Contesterous’s future content and features.

In true contest fashion, there will be a prize draw at the end of March April. The lucky winners will receive… well, I’m not sure what yet. The prize will be selected bearing in mind the feedback you give in this short poll. (So be honest!)

I would love to get your opinions and preferences so please help yourself to “What’s Important To You?” community survey, by clicking the link below now. (You will NOT be directed off this page.)


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Helping You Find Your Dribbble Invite

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Just in case you have not heard (Where you been hiding?)… Dribbble is kinda like Twitter for designers. Instead of being based on short text conversations designers and creatives post, or dribbble, a 400 x 300 pixels image of what they are working on. You can learn the super cool ins ‘n’ outs at http://dribbble.com/site/about
Sounds [...]

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Discover How David A.K.A Wanderingbert Increases Interest And The Number Of Votes On His Design Contest Submissions

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I recently contacted David Creighton-Pester A.K.A. WanderingBert of Scorch Design for an interview because his Tee Shirt designs on Threadless have caught my eye on many occasions. As I dived deeper into David’s design work I soon realised there is more to David’s success with design contests than simply stunning lines [...]

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Wanna Win $600 and a Sweet Championship Wrestling Belt?

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This post is part of the Contesterous’s awesome “Featured Design Contests” section. The posts in this section are simply interesting, inspiring, unusual or damn exciting contests that I want to share with you. No payment has been or will be accepted for appearing as a featured design contest.
I just had to share with you this [...]

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Don’t Just Submit Your Design… Present It!

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Inspired by the contests descriptive brief, you have come up with an awesome design that absolutely fulfills all of the various needs of the contest holder. So you submit your artwork and your done till the CH leaves feedback, right?
No!
Don’t just submit your design… Present it!
Take the advantage of the feedback section or messaging function [...]

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From Failing Chemistry To Freelance Designer Making $10k From Design Contests – With Brian Tom a.k.a. Hoshimo

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Todays interview is with Brian Tom A.K.A. Hoshimo. Brian is a creative on 99Designs that was recommended to me but his contributions to design contests had caught my eye some time ago. With a large number of winning designs clocked up on 99D I was looking forward to discovering a little more about Brian and [...]

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Get Your Design In Front Of Hundreds Of Web Startups And Entrepreneurs

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This post is part of the on going “Featured Design Contests”. The posts in this section are simply interesting, inspiring, unusual or damn exciting contests that I want to share with you. No payment has been or will be accepted for appearing as a featured design contest.
This is definately not an opportunity to be missed. [...]

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Featured Design Contests Creative: An Interview With Pete Borlace.

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This is the second post under the title of “Featured Design Contests Creatives“. I hope that this new section will help us gain an insight into how other designers approach being an active creative in desisign contests. I am sure together we can learn from each other how to be more successful with our submissions [...]

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Yes, Lets Push This Industry Forward.

Yesterday I got happily caught up in a discussion over on crowdSPRING, a discussion that was overflowing with inspired ideas put forward by creative designers with no prompting from CS needed. Community member and design contest creative JSinclair was the catalyst for the ad-hock brainstorming session suggesting, that non-winning designs could be automatically eligible for [...]

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Featured Design Contests Creative: An Interview With Kristina.

This is my first post under the title of “Featured Design Contest Creatives“. I hope that this new section will help us gain an insight into how other designers approach being an active creative in desisign contests. I am sure together we can learn from each other how to be more successful with our submissions [...]

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Got Talent? Join The Present Time Design Contest

This post is part of the on going “Featured Design Contests”. The posts in this section are simply interesting, inspiring, unusual or damn exciting contests that I want to share with you. No payment has been or will be accepted for appearing as a featured design contest.
So you think you got buckets of design talent? [...]

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