Challenge? – don’t go there

I have an announcement to make:
– Jesper W. of CPH fully intends to drop dead, or at the very least comatose, rather than participate in Bang & Olufsen’s so-called Creative Challenge.

Why, you wonder? – why would any industrial designer, and even one with a particular interest in household electronics and the ilk, balk at the opportunity to squeeze his foot in the door of one of Denmark’s most famous companies, design-wise?

Because of this:
“Vigtigt: Creative Challenge – Beovision 8 er ikke en bureau-pitch på Bang & Olufsen, men en kreativ konkurrence, hvor man deltager som privatperson(er). Konkurrencen er lavet for at fremme kreativiten og de indkomne bidrag vil ikke blive brugt til at
markedsføre Beovision 8. Alle rettigheder til indsendt materiale tilfalder dog B&O.
( – for my non-Danish readers, the bold part says all rights to any of the submissions will belong to Bang & Olufsen)

In other words, B&O presumes to harness the collective, creative power of some 200 (at this time) design teams, subsequently taking possesion of every scrap of work done by them – without paying so much as a nickle for it.
Oh sure, they’re prizing out all of 3 (yeeesh, three) Beovision 8 TV sets – come on, they loose more than that due to breakage in a single month…!

I can’t stress enough to all my hopeful colleagues – if you have thought about entering this competition, please reconsider.

Let’s not work for nothing, huh? – especially for a company that sets the tone, teaching everyone else that designers will work for free.

Update: – this topic came to my attention thanks to Line Rix’ post about it at her blog, and now Claus Buhl has also chimed in on the subject with his words of wisdom – anyone else, hop on board, won’t ya…

Update #2: – for how one might do this in a better way, take a look at Bolia’s “Design Award”. The conditions state that Bolia will hold the optional rights to start a production (not the actual IP rights for the design) and that, in this case, a separate contract between the designer and Bolia will be drafted.
Yes, B&O, it’s really that easy…

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