What is the general consensus in the HN community on the business model of 99designs especially in light of the protests against "spec" work from the design community at large. There's obviously a market for what they're doing but would your company consider using 99designs?
For designers: good for practice, bad for business
For businesses: good for unimportant stuff that needs a bit of design, bad for serious stuff
As a designer/business owner, I'm past the point of using this service and since my product is UX/design focused, I wouldn't dream of outsourcing design work in this way.
Building apps for the iOS marketplace is "spec" work. I'm working for free until someone decides to purchase my app.
Bootstrapping a startup is "spec" work. No one is paying founders anything.
It's a choice to do "spec" work, no one is forcing someone to work for free. 99design is building an amazing marketplace for customers and professionals on a global level. This will change the way the restrictive nature of supply and demand in design.
EDIT: When I graduated from college, I worked for free. I bootstrapped a startup with my savings that failed to support me and then I worked for free at a development agency doing random projects. From that experience, network, and portfolio I now am living very well doing contracting work and personal side projects.
For a designer, it's generally a lousy deal. The upside for the iOS apps or a startup is a lot better than the $300 for winning a 99Designs contest. Yes, you can build a relationship with the contest holder, but you're starting in the basement and it's unlikely you'll make any actual money from that relationship.
That said, it can be good practice for those who need it (and the quality of available designs typically reflects this).
I've watched my friends work hard in basement for months when they were forming a band. All they got from that work was the chance to play for tips at a local bar.
There are a lot of designers who are passionate and have amazing potential, but no access any markets.
It can take months to build an app and startups can take a lifetime to build into a company.
The upside to all spec work is pretty bleak everywhere, but we do it out of passion and our audacity.
If it is too lousy of a deal, then 99design wouldn't even exist or be viable. There would be no startups, everyone would work at major established companies and Android and iOS would be terribly boring devices with only apps made by the platform manufacturers.
That’s not spec work. Investments ≠ spec work. You are not building an iOS app for one person/entity and getting paid if and only if they preferred your app to others built to the same spec. You are building and iterating and marketing something to be sold to any number of individuals. There is a world of difference there.
You appear to not know what spec work is. For bootstrapping to be spec work, there would have to be (for example) 20 different entrepreneurs who attempt to bootstrap a business according to specifications that a third party dictates to them. They pour in their blood, sweat, and tears to build the business by those specifications and at the end of it the third party chooses only 1 of them. The other 19 are contractually obligated to throw their business in the garbage and will have wasted their time and effort simply because they weren't chosen.
Same thing for building iOS apps. Want an iOS app designed on spec? Get in touch with a few dozen developers, all of whom build the exact same app using your specifications. Pick only 1 of them as the winner and the losers are contractually required to throw their app away.
We actually used 99 designs with a lot of success. I think the best part of it was establishing relationships with a lot of different designers. We currently use 2-3 of them pretty consistently for a variety of different projects. A lot cheaper than a regular freelancer and they're able to meet our usual crazy demands.
I recently tried 99designs for a logo design attempt and wasn't happy with the results. I wouldn't use it again and wouldn't recommend it. The response wasn't great in quality or number of applicants. The main benefit I suppose is it got a variety of different perspectives, which was the main reason I tried it.
The last time I tried it the results weren't great. That in itself isn't a problem but most of them were plagiarized from other designs (from the web). It wasn't easy to track all of them down, so it is probably reasonable to assume that a lot of the designs are rip-offs, and most people don't notice.
99designs refunded anything that was paid, and apologised, and it felt like something that is so common they have a well oiled process for it.
Given the risk of this, and that it is up to you to find if it is a rip-off - I wouldn't use it ever for anything that may be seen publicly (I expect you as the "owner" would be responsible).
(this is ignoring designer objections, which are another topic).
The general quality of the logos were poor. Like others have said, it's best for simple little jobs or logos that aren't that important and don't need too much creativity. Maybe some side project website you made and you just want a quick logo for $50 or something. Also, many of the designers were from Indonesia (I think) and there was a bit of a language barrier and difficulty communicating ideas.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 37.5 ms ] threadFor businesses: good for unimportant stuff that needs a bit of design, bad for serious stuff
As a designer/business owner, I'm past the point of using this service and since my product is UX/design focused, I wouldn't dream of outsourcing design work in this way.
Bootstrapping a startup is "spec" work. No one is paying founders anything.
It's a choice to do "spec" work, no one is forcing someone to work for free. 99design is building an amazing marketplace for customers and professionals on a global level. This will change the way the restrictive nature of supply and demand in design.
EDIT: When I graduated from college, I worked for free. I bootstrapped a startup with my savings that failed to support me and then I worked for free at a development agency doing random projects. From that experience, network, and portfolio I now am living very well doing contracting work and personal side projects.
That said, it can be good practice for those who need it (and the quality of available designs typically reflects this).
There are a lot of designers who are passionate and have amazing potential, but no access any markets.
It can take months to build an app and startups can take a lifetime to build into a company.
The upside to all spec work is pretty bleak everywhere, but we do it out of passion and our audacity.
If it is too lousy of a deal, then 99design wouldn't even exist or be viable. There would be no startups, everyone would work at major established companies and Android and iOS would be terribly boring devices with only apps made by the platform manufacturers.
Same thing for building iOS apps. Want an iOS app designed on spec? Get in touch with a few dozen developers, all of whom build the exact same app using your specifications. Pick only 1 of them as the winner and the losers are contractually required to throw their app away.
99designs refunded anything that was paid, and apologised, and it felt like something that is so common they have a well oiled process for it.
Given the risk of this, and that it is up to you to find if it is a rip-off - I wouldn't use it ever for anything that may be seen publicly (I expect you as the "owner" would be responsible).
(this is ignoring designer objections, which are another topic).