FAQ Entry #25

This is a respond to a previously asked question about the A' Design Award and Competition. The full list of frequently asked questions can be accessed here.

#25: Is this a free competition or not?

A' Design Award committee organizes two types of competitions both "free" and "premium" in monetary sense. However we like to note that even the "free competitions", in terms of money, requires you to spend your precious time, energy and creative thinking as a resource to join. So there are not any single "free competitions" in the world. Furthermore some of the so called "free" competitions have absurd terms of agreements; some of these "free competitions" requires the winner designs to be transferred to the organizers or sponsors without any respect to the designers and their work, with no or little returns to winners, some of them requires winners to make further payments that you only learn after winning the awards. In this sense, we suggest you to think twice while joining a "free" competition. That being said, main categories of the A' Design Award and Competitions are "premium" design competitions; they require a payment so that a respectful jury can judge the design in an unbiased environment, so that a pr-campaign can be launched for the winning designs, and so that we could run and organize the competitions in a professional way. Custom competitions organized by the A' Design Award are usually "free" in the monetary sense otherwise stated (These competitions are actually not "free" as the payment is instead made by the sponsoring institution that organizes the custom competitions). Other than that, you are "free" to join any of the competitions given that your design matches the general category description.

Keywords: free competition, free to join competition, free design competitions, premium design competition, open for all

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