99 designs is a disgusting waste of resources and talent. If you're a designer like me, you'll get much more value investing your time in building long lasting relationships.
If you're looking for a design, please put in the effort and get to know a designer. Most are incredibly hard working and won't be happy until your happy.
I see from this comment and others on the page that you're very angry about 99designs, and people who use it. I can see why - it commoditizes your profession.
But can you see it from the other side? There are clearly designers (starting out, living in low cost economies, etc) who are happy enough to use it, and it's not always possible to pay a designer until we're both happy.
>"...not always possible to pay a designer until we're both happy."
In my opinion a fair amount of work should receive a fair amount of pay. There would be untold wasted hours invested in 99design jobs that were never won because of a trivial differences between two or three leading designs.
Graphic designers aren't pitching to invest time and labour for the opportunity to work. They're actually investing the time first and just crossing theire fingers.
I'm not angry at companies using 99 designs, I'm annoyed at the system and those who enable it, including the designers themselves.
If you have $300 to spend on a logo, there are hundreds of good designers out there who will take the time to get to know your needs and develop a solution that you're happy with.
Choosing a designer is hard. Using 99designs freed me from that task. The final comparison comes down to $300 for a logo vs. $300 plus the time and effort required to find the right designer plus the risk they'll produce something you don't like. I took the former deal, and I continue to think it was the right one.
Dribbble does not change the value proposition I outlined. What rational business owner will choose picking a designer from Dribbble and hoping they'll produce a desirable logo instead of picking a logo from 99designs? To me, 99designs seems like a vastly superior option.
The system is the free market. I'm no Randian, but its pretty clear there is both supply and demand for 99designs.
> If you have $300 to spend on a logo, there are hundreds of good designers out there
Note that this is a different service than 99designs provides, and to be honest, I much prefer the 99designs version. Better to get 12 good ideas without putting much effort in, rather than tracking down a designer who'll do it, having a few skype calls or coffees, and then taking what they give me.
I understand your argument, and I realise markets(unregulated) will dictate whether a service is viable or not. I just think it's an unfortunate stance to have.
For the good of the design community I would encourage people to put the effort and source a good designer.
I take the same stance when consuming anything. I try to source products/services based on value and ethics, not just price and convenience.
BTW Dribbble(dribbble.com) is a great hub of good designers for hire.
> For the good of the design community I would encourage people to put the effort and source a good designer.
This is insane. Nobody in their right mind would do this over what 99designs offers. It's an order of magnitude better in terms of both price and convenience, and I'd wager that on average you're more likely to get what you want out of it.
> BTW Dribbble(dribbble.com) is a great hub of good designers for hire.
I beg to differ, having tried multiple times over a year to find designers there. Anyone whose work I liked wasn't interested in being hired, or had a price tag way way outside my range.
> If you have $300 to spend on a logo, there are hundreds of good designers out there who will take the time to get to know your needs and develop a solution that you're happy with.
The problem here is that customers aren't certain that a specific designer will be able to pull off what they have in mind. Looking at the designer's portfolio helps to a degree, but committing to a service of a single designer is still a bit of a gamble. This uncertainty is what 99 designs capitalizes on. They appear to help hedging the risk.
To each his own. 99designs is not going anywhere, but they serve people who would've not contracted freelancers anyway.
> In my opinion a fair amount of work should receive a fair amount of pay
"Fairness" is immaterial in a free market. Who gets to decide what's fair? You? Why is your concept of fair pricing more legitimate than that agreed upon by others? Your industry is being disrupted, get over it.
I see a lot of this going around, particularly on this topic. Usually as part of an angry rant.
It's a common theme for most industries to want to control who is in it, how they buy and how much they pay. The whole retrospectively-name mercantilist period of economics lasted for centuries, and collectively reduced the living standards of millions, just because those in charge thought setting prices and reducing access to industries was a good thing. It wasn't until markets were opened up and anyone could enter or leave at will that things improved for many, many people.
The point is - you either agree with free markets for anything or you don't. It's hard to accept that it's OK for you to buy cheaper goods caused by some industry disruption somewhere else, but it shouldn't apply to your own industry. It's hard to accept, but you still have to.
Commoditization of products and services happens, and if it happens to you, you've just to got to suck it up and get on with it. Hectoring or whinging to your clients is a no-win strategy. Doubtless many restaurants have been killed by McDonalds and low-cost, low-quality meals, but the public vote with their feet and dollars.
In the case of 99 designs, most of the designs are below the floor level of the cost of engaging a designer. If I were a designer, I would hope that 99 designs provides a gateway to people using more design services, rather than doing without or (worse) doing it themselves, which is the far-more frequent outcome.
In the case of new companies (like stackoverflow once was) it makes a lot of sense to just get a little bit done in order to get launched. If it's successful, there will be plenty of money later on to form proper relationships with real designers.
Having worked with both crowdsourcing websites and professional designers on a one-on-one basis, I am by far more satisfied with crowdsourcing sites on the whole, for simply delivering what I ask for at an appreciable rate. I don't just like the guaranteed levels of service or the straightforward payment terms many crowdsourcing sites offer, I like the idea of crowdsourcing, for the same reason I like open source.
Just as open source developers want to maximize the number of eyeballs on their codebase, I want to maximize the number of eyeballs on my creative project. So do you, you professional designer, or would you actually prefer to start a creative project without the benefit of having 1,000 different artistic directions to draw inspiration from?
I strongly believe a good idea can come from anyone, anywhere. In light of this, it makes no sense to trust that you, Mr. Designer Extraordinare, of 10s of 1,000s of other Designer Extraordinares on Earth, have the ability to supremely encapsulate my project in PSD format from the great subconscious better than everyone else. In all likelihood, you don't - because that is the nature of human creativity. This is why I want 1,000 different designs to look at early on.
Honestly some of you designers make it seem like crowdsourcing contests are compelling designers everywhere to become robot slaves. First of all, who's to say you can't run a crowdsourcing contest and then hire out the rest of job; or hire first and then run a crowdsourcing contest? These are merely tools at your disposal in a free market.
And in regards to the supposed waste of resources, my assumption is most designers who participate in an early stage crowdsourcing contest sit down for a few hours tops and submit a thoughtful initial concept to get noticed. You see this pattern repeating itself over and over when you run enough contests with ample promised payment. 80% of the entries are a joke, submitted by people who couldn't be bothered to read your design brief, or who couldn't understand English well enough to do so; 15% have potential and maybe 5% really hit it out of the park.
I offer premium rates when I run a crowdsourcing contest, and I wait for competent designers who understand my creative brief well enough to at least pretend to meet it to submit something half decent, and then I work with those designers for the next few days to hone the design. What is so wrong about that?
If you're looking for a design, please put in the effort and get to know a designer. Most are incredibly hard working and won't be happy until your happy.