Shitty behaviour from Unmatched Style
Update 10/07: James at leihu.com has more to say on the matter
The showcase site Unmatched Style have recently taken to advertising ’(re)design contests’ for various websites and organisations. There has been a fair bit of discussion on the subject of speculative work in the form of design contests, provoked in part by some big names (Slashdot, the BBC) hosting contests of this sort, and even a No-Spec website to push home the point to designers tempted by these kinds of ‘opportunities’.
The most recent contest promoted by Unmatched Style was for a site called Nursing Homes, and was announced on June 19th with the promise of a grand prize of $1,500 (£810). There was no small print; the ‘rules’ of the contest were as follows:
- All the really good entries will be featured here on Unmatched Style.
- The winner will receive $1,500 in cash.
- You only have to submit images for three pages — no code.
The contest requirements were re-stated with some descriptions of the pages required on the homepage of the Nursing Homes site, and the further statement “the design we like the best will win $1,500 in cash” (my emphasis).
And the results are in…
On July 6th, the results of the contest were announced – and apparently it was won by Massive Blue – but (unfortunately for designer Sam Brown) a little further down the page we discover that:
...none of the four entries won the $1,500 prize because each was missing a critical piece of the requirements.
Say what? You announce a $1,500 contest, get four great designs submitted, then decide that rather than not paying three designers for their hard work, you’d rather not pay any of them? I’m sure if the contest rules had said “oh, and by the way, we may decide not to pay the eventual winner and give some pathetic excuse about non-existent requirements” the number of entrants may have been somewhat smaller.
Shane at Unmatched Style goes on to say:
There are many possible reasons why that is, and I think it’s different for each entrant, but at the end of the day I think one thing it highlights is the importance of a good back-and-forth discussion between the client and the designer during the entire process for a project like this with any sort of unique requirements.
No shit, Sherlock – and people are going to think twice before entering any more of your design ‘contests’ if this is the quality of partner you are choosing to work with.
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Comments
- Jeff
- 726 days ago
- Seems to me that the winner could clearly take unmatched style to court for the $1,500.
- #2
- nortypig
- 726 days ago
- I’m actually just stunned it can happen. Not only am I against such strategies to get ‘cheap work’ from ‘vulnerable hopefuls’ but to actually pocket the $1500 – no small dip in the ocean to decide to not pay out!!!
Either give one winner the money or give the four of them a quarter each…
If the issue is the client won’t pay unmatched style then that’s the risk on his end – not the competitors. That’s like the worst PR rap… shameful. - #3
- Matthew Pennell
- 726 days ago
Exactly. Obviously we’re not privy to every behind-the-scenes discussion, but it seems to me that if the ‘client’ had a specific requirement that wasn’t met, a quick email would have solved that problem.If it would have been me and my design I would have felt very very – let’s keep it neat – unhappy.
- #5
- Andy Pearson
- 724 days ago
- Wow, that is just so unfair.
So now this nursing company has an x number of high quality designs, all they need to do is submit one of them to http://xhtmlized.com/ and they have themselves a mighty fine website for the fraction of the prize money. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. - #7
- Matthijs
- 724 days ago
- @Andy: I assume the copyright is still with the original designers, and using the designs without paying anything for a usage license is out of the question. Otherwise I think the laywers who want to pick up this case will be lined up :)
- #8
- Matthew Pennell
- 724 days ago
- Andy: I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the Nursing Homes site will use any of the submitted designs without paying, although one has to assume that their future design decisions may will be influenced by features submitted by the four designers.
- #9
- Matthew Anderson
- 724 days ago
- Legal issues and future use aside, I can’t even believe how Unmatched Style felt justified in actually posting this to the public. Requirements, has to be the lamest excuse they could have come up with. Like everyone has already stated – if there was a requirement missing, I’m sure that the designer in question would have added it in for about…oh I don’t know…$1,500 maybe ;)
UnmatchedStyle has taken a big piece of the puzzle for granted here – the time all those designers took to crank out that work? Sure, you can argue that only one of them was going to get paid in the end. As far as I’m concerned though, there is a huge difference between working on a design knowing that there is a chance you’ll get paid $1,500; and working on a design for free. - #11
- Richard Kooistra
- 722 days ago
- That’s really unfortunate since ‘Shane’ from Three Twenty Interactive was the one to post Unmatched Styles reponse of not awarding the $, and if you go to his website and read his post from July 5th you’d think that he’d have learned something by it.
- #12
- Matthew Pennell
- 722 days ago
- Well spotted, Richard.
From that post you linked, Shane said:
I look forward to UMS doing the right thing soon, then.- Admit you screwed up.
- Say what you’re doing to fix it.
- Offer some kind of appropriate compensation.
- #13
- Matthew Pennell
- 722 days ago
- Apparently Unmatched Style has now been removed from the 9rules network, according to this comment by Scrivs on leihu.com – it’s a pity for Shane really, but it just goes to show that you can’t screw up on the internet and have nobody notice…
- #14
- Robert Wetzlmayr
- 722 days ago
- More to paint the whole picture: They are expectedly deleting comments from their site regarding this issue.
- #15
Even if not every requirement was met, wouldn’t it be nice to hand out the prices anyway? Or at least find some other solution? What about all the hard work these people put in the designs?