99designs Reviews
When you sign up, there are 45 different packages to choose from, or you can create your own. Then, just fill in information about your company or project, what you need, and any ideas you have. After the basics, you’ll be shown a few different design styles and you should select the ones that best fit your needs. This helps the designers understand what kind of feel and design you’re looking for.
You also choose the kind of designers you want to work with, bronze ($299), silver ($499), gold ($799) or platinum ($1,299). Bronze are the least experienced while platinum are obviously the highest quality designers. 99designs takes a commission fee from these amounts, which is usually around 5 percent.
Once the pricing is sorted out, designers can create something for your project in a huge contest, and you can look through all their ideas and even message them to give them feedback or ask them to tweak certain aspects to make the design perfect. At the end of the week, you get to pick the winner, pay them, and gain full copyrights to the work. If you don’t like any of the designs there is a money-back-guarantee.
Additionally, instead of crowdsourcing the project, you can work with a designer one-on-one.
REVIEW
99designs is a lucrative idea all around – it allows people who need any type of design to choose from as many as 60 submissions, give feedback to sculpt the perfect finished product, and finally own the design and maybe even work with the designer in the future. For many, this is a lot cheaper than hiring a local designer, and gives you a lot more styles to choose from. Designers benefit as well by getting a chance to get their name out there and even work with the same client again on another project. They can earn money, build their portfolio, and have a chance to move up to become top and higher paid designers.
As a designer, 99designs has one huge drawback – while thousands of designers submit their ideas, only one gets paid, even though all of them put in a lot of work. However, this might be offset somewhat by the fact that 40 percent of the projects lead to more work with clients, so although much of the website’s revenue comes from contests, there’s still room to work and earn directly with one person.
Buyers also assume a risk – although being able to choose from a variety of submissions may sound appealing, ultimately, you may not be the best judge of which design will appeal most to your customers. Just because a design speaks to you doesn’t mean it’s the best image for your company. That being said, there are ways to share the designs and even allow other people to vote on the best one, which might be a good way to get around this personal bias. 99designs also makes it difficult to learn more about the designers who submit to your project. You can’t see resumes or their portfolio on the site, so it’s hard to know whether or not they can produce consistent quality work if you want to hire them for an ongoing project.
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- Affordable graphic design
- Ability to choose your graphic from many
- Give feedback to designers
- Work directly with designers
- Low commission fee
- Money-back-guarantee
CONCLUSION
99designs is a great resource for buyers, especially if you have a small budget. It can help you discover new talent and find someone to work with on long or short-term projects. However, if background and reputation are important to you, going to a crowdsourcing site that allows you to see in-depth portfolios and conduct interviews might work better. For designers, experienced designers can make better money working one-on-one with clients, but it is a good option to help you build a portfolio (if your submission gets rejected you don’t get paid, but you retain all the rights to your graphic) and build a reputation if you’re just starting out.
Have you had an experience with this company? Please share your 99designs reviews below.
these guys i’ve used for higher end graphic contests. you get really good end results if you do the contest right. do lots of invites to top designers and communicate with them during the whole contest. you will get lots of subimssions then and have lots of good quality options to choose from.