Check it out: Google opens logo-designing contest for kids in Ghana.

Google has announced an exciting international initiative for young people in Ghana and around the world called “Doodle 4 Google – I love Football”. The competition invites 4 to 17 year olds to design their own Google logo inspired by the topic “I love football”.

The Galesburg Register-Mail didn’t check all the facts when they wrote the article that said the Galesburg Public Library was holding a logo contest. It’s a shame, too, because I had already started writing about how a library may actually be deserving of your logo design efforts… and I want those two minutes of my life back.

So, no, it’s not the library that needs the logo, it’s the Galesburg Public Library Foundation, a new non-profit group, that does. If you’re still reading this snoozer, man, maybe you’ll want to read the article that got it all wrong.

For posterity, and because I’m in this way too deep to stop now, I saved a screenshot of the debacle. Enjoy.

You're *still* reading?

The Chippewa Herald has this report about the Rock Fest 2010′s logo contest:

Rock Fest organizers are holding a logo design contest to find a new logo.

Yup.

The deadline is April 22. More information can be had at http://www.rock-fest.com/.

Read the article here.

Kids in Montana are taking a stand against drugs — not only that, adults aren’t trying to wrangle work out of designers for free. In Montana, the Montana Meth Project is putting together an event like the one they did four years ago.

Man, I guess this is a good thing for Boone County Missouri’s taxpayers, and the winner’s ego, but still. Athlete storms logo contest: Hunter Allen wins Stormwater Management logo contest, and $100.

I’m not sure you can get any lower than this. Google exploits child labor with logo contests on their “doodle 4 google” contest.

Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to play around with our homepage logo and see what new designs they come up with. This year we’re inviting U.S. kids to join in the doodling fun, around the intriguing theme “What I Wish for the World.”

They make it seem so happy, so nice, so … free. And free is what it is: Free child labor. Stay classy, Google, stay classy.

Are there more logo contests during a recession? From my sporadic searches for logo contest on Google News, well, the answer is: yes.

I’m a member of the Online News Association. I pay my dues. But, man, is the ONA one cheap bastard. Every year they ask online journalists to pony up and spend time designing a logo for them, for free, with no guarantee that anything will ever come from it. That’s devotion, right? Riiiiiiiight.

Not only that, they list some of the past winning logos in this year’s call for entries … and they forget to mention who designed the winning logo. Yes, that’s the thanks you will get. If you win, you get free admission to the ONA conference, and after the conference you will never be mentioned again.

From their website, this is how you enter:

Send your 7.125” wide by 1.125” tall, 300 dpi submissions to Danny Dougherty at ONA09logo@journalists.org with the subject “ONA Conference Logo” and you’re in! Please keep in mind that we may ask the winning artist to edit his/her design as the conference planning process continues. Acceptable file formats include PDF, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Gif, JPEG, PNG, Tiff, EPS, Freehand, SVG or as a static SWF.

Deadline is Monday, Feb. 9, at 5 p.m. ET.

This is the first of an occasional series on the Logo Contest blog: The Logo Question of the Quarter.

This quarter’s question goes to the professional designers out there: What would it take for you to participate in a logo contest?

The Delaware County, Indiana, airport took an interesting approach with the logo contest it held. Instead of blindly asking designers to provide their work for free, they pitched the contest to local college design professors, who then assigned it to their students as homework.

From the Ball State Daily News:

According to a press release, senior Visual Communications major Samantha McIntire won the design contest for the airport out of a pool of 165 entries.

McIntire was awarded with the $500 contest prize at the Airport Authority Board meeting Tuesday.

According to the press release, the contest had designs from students of Ball State and Ivy Tech Community College and Ball State professors assigned the project as an assignment.