99 Designs is an increasingly popular design contest website and #1 marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services. In 2010 99 Designs was awarded Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Web Service & Application of the year. 99 Designs has hosted more than 75,000 designs already and claims to have paid designers $19 million to-date. Its Design Contest Marketplace enables businesses to quickly and inexpensively source custom logo design, web design, business cards or any other graphic design work by launching design projects to a global community of over 100,000 designers.

99designs-thumbnail

Client’s perspective
Compared to hiring a freelancer graphic designer, 99 Designs will be the much cheaper option. The quantity of submissions is overwhelming as well as the quality varies. If you provide a detailed brief and actively monitor and manage the competition by providing regular and detailed feedback you can get work as good as anything you would get from traditional design firms/people.

NBCUniversal logo redesign
For just $695, they received 861 design concepts from 238 designers!

99designs logo contest

99 designs crowdsourcing design service can also save a lot of time. The client just posts the project and, within hours, designers everywhere start competing, uploading concept designs for logos, websites or whatever else the client requires. Those will be later reviewed and rated, and in the end a single winning design is chosen and gets the prize money. So it sounds pretty simple. With a design company or a freelance designer it would probably take more time, and also you won’t get to choose between tons of designs, you’d only get one.

We used 99designs for our logo (though it required 1 contest, then hiring an “Apple” designer and throwing his work away, then a 2nd contest), but the results of the last contest were amazing with 1,200 entries and regardless of what the haters say, the guy from London who won the contest was extremely happy and he’s used our logo, pictures of our billboards, etc. to really promote himself in London and empowered him to do his own business instead of working for someone else.

Nathan Lands, CEO & Co-Founder at Gamify

Apperang.com banner ads
For just $339, they received 199 design concepts from 25 designers!

99 designs banner contest

Designer’s perspective
99 designs contests is a great opportunity for designers who is starting their career to get their work seen by lots of people, develop their portfolio (even if the design isn’t chosen), and potentially win cash and a new client relationship. Not to mention the feedback they receive on the work from clients worldwide can help improve their skills, and after the contest ends the work usually remains available for viewing, which is pretty great lead generation.

99designs may create opportunities for a kid in San Francisco to get his foot in the door of an industry or for a single-mother in Minnesota to earn income on her own time, but in emerging markets the impact is more staggering. In the Philippines, one designer was winning so many logo bids that he won an extra $10,000 sweepstakes 99designs was offering. The total was several times his annual salary as a registered nurse.

Techcrunch.

On the other hand, the designers should actually be wary of these lottery type contests. Of course some lucky folks will win some money, but the chances are that a very small percentage of them will actually manage to make a living out of the site. In most fortunate cases, it even leads to future work with the clients.

The designer-client relationship is in this situation barely existent, which can be a huge downside for both designer and client. Imagine this situation: a winning design is chosen but the designer might be unwilling to make even slight alterations to the logo in order to fully satisfy the client’s need after he or she receives the prize money for the job. So this is more like a transaction, where many designer’s hours are lost.

At first, I joined contests just for fun but when I won my first contest and a follow up project came in – I got serious. I love it here – I enjoy, learn and earn at the same time!

Mark Jarmin Lester, 99 designs member since 2008

Qfeeder website design
For just $589, they received 48 design concepts from 16 designers!

99 design website

General conclusion
99 Designs is a great way for bootstrapped start ups and small business to get a good quality design work at a bargain price. While it’s not a very appropriate place for designers to make money for a living (it could be for those living in developing countries), it’s a great way for newcomers in graphic design to build up portfolio, get a much needed feedback and exposure as well practice their trade with real projects. So 99 designs is a really win-win service.