how to host a local t-shirt graphic design contest for a bar/restaurant?

Don't do it.

When you run a contest like that a number of negative things are likely to happen. For starters, unless a talented designer happens to adore your bar/restaurant, no one worthwhile will likely participate. In fact, even if a professional designer adores your enterprise, they may just be insulted at the notion of spending their freetime doing work for you when they already spend their hard-earned money at your establishment.

Long story short, it is unlikely you will receive any genuinely good submissions, as (unless the prize is outlandishly good) no serious person will likely waste their time to effectively give you free work.

Solution: Hire a professional designer whose work you like to design/ illustrate a cool tee shirt for you. They will work with you to find out what you want and need, you will have more control over the final product, and you will almost assuredly end up with a superior design than you would have with a contest. Just pony up, it's not that expensive, and if the design is good you'll have no problem recouping your initial investment.

/mytwocents

I guess I have to disagree here. It can happen as they say, but I enter every contest I find. I don't care what the prize is. I've won $500, the logo i designed for the local chamber of commerce contest is still used to this day, I've been rewarded with a 3,000 shirt job because a customer saw a poster I had entered in a contest and it won. To me, it's free advertising. If it's a widely advertised contest, the winners usually get published in the paper. And I am not some unprofessional fly by night designer. I design all day for shirts, pumping out two new designs and working with other customers to perfect their designs, then i come home and freelance in the evenings. I just LOVE what i do. So don't just assume nothing good will come out of a contest. Some of my best stuff i did for contests.

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Well, it's not really free advertising, because it cost you time. Obviously it's completely up to you how you spend your time, but to me, spending my time working on something I might not get paid for isn't worth it, and I know that's true for many designers. Just because you love making commercial designs in off-hours doesn't mean you shouldn't be paid for your time/skills/experience/work.

Also, I think it's a little different if you choose to help out your community by giving the chamber of commerce a facelift than it is to give art to a retail establishment like a bar for next to nothing when they're going to go out and make money with it.

In the end, if you're doing it for fun then I really don't see much of a problem with it, but I don't think spec-work contests are a good way to make a living, and I think a lot of the time the people running said contests would be better off just hiring a designer.

In any case, best of luck

Being on the other side as well, it really does suck when some organization holds a contest and the winner is some crayon drawn poster design that you end up having to put on shirts. :-/ But the way I look at things, is that it WILL pay off in the end, and it always has. I entered a poster contest, and I won that contest, I received the $500, then a man saw that poster and ordered his 3,000 t-shirts from our little company. And to us, 3,000 shirts is a lot. Word of mouth in our town is pretty much all we have. We don't advertise, I don't advertise. Our work speaks for itself, and the only way I can get out there is putting my work out there. I'm only 26, so I have a long way up. I can't just sit around and hope someone will call me. I'm still in the point of time to where I may have to do a few free works to get ahead in the future. The problem with most people now-a-days is they want to start at the top, and that just isn't how it goes. I started designing for t-shirts my sophomore year in college, worked there until after I graduated. So I had a head start, but I still don't see myself at the top. Know what I mean? I also know plenty of other designers like me, who are willing to enter a contest to try and win, and more than anything, to be able to say "I did that." And be proud. I have my day job, that pays my bills. I do extra in the evening and even more contests and stuff for free so that I can eventually be at the top.

whimsywhit said:

I guess I have to disagree here. It can happen as they say, but I enter every contest I find. I don't care what the prize is. I've won $500, the logo i designed for the local chamber of commerce contest is still used to this day, I've been rewarded with a 3,000 shirt job because a customer saw a poster I had entered in a contest and it won. To me, it's free advertising. If it's a widely advertised contest, the winners usually get published in the paper. And I am not some unprofessional fly by night designer. I design all day for shirts, pumping out two new designs and working with other customers to perfect their designs, then i come home and freelance in the evenings. I just LOVE what i do. So don't just assume nothing good will come out of a contest. Some of my best stuff i did for contests.

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I don't mean you any offense here, but like has been stated already... good designs take time. If you take part in these contests then either you spend no time on your designs or you have a ton of free time on your hands.

I don't design just because I like to draw pretty pictures, but because I like to get my client something that is helpful to what they are doing (making money, gaining exposure for a charity, brand awareness, etc.). Clients have no idea of what sells and what is good branding... that is why they hire professional designers.

People go on these contest sites because they usually want to steal work or get a bunch of different ideas and choose what they like. While that is awesome for something on their fridge, clients wouldnt know what designs sell or what a well thought out logo looks like if it bit them in the ***. What they need is for a professional to sit down and use our expertise to point them in the right direction for their business, not for the quick buck, but for the future of the client's business.

A good designer that can make money from their work will not waste their time doing things for the possibility of payment... not when they could work and actually get paid.