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I need to design a logo, a business card, and website for an idea I'm developing. I want to use one of the "Design Contest" websites. But I'm not sure which one. Seems like there are some differences between them. One of the major differences I found is that some of them are "blind" while others allow all design contest participants to see the all the designs submitted.

The main ones I have found are:

  • designcontest.com
  • designcrowd.com
  • 99designs.com
  • crowdspring.com

Does anyone have recommendations or insights on which one I should use? Or have you come across any insightful blog posts/reviews comparing the different services?

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6 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

If you've prepared a full brief, and you're prepared to invest time providing feedback, the leading sites are all going to work well for you if you're offering a reasonable prize. I like the 99designs simplicity, but I've heard good (and bad) of all of them.

If you're actually looking to work with a designer, and just want to manage the process and its cost, there are ways to leverage (most of) these platforms, and you also open up other communities such as deviantart, to find individual talented designers.

Open vs private for contests - I'd go for private, which helps weed out the clip artists.

I love these sites. And I try and remember they're numbers games. If I get 100 submissions, 99 designers have done work for nothing. 80 of those were just dashed off, but that still leaves 19 who tried. So if I want something pretty turnkey, everyone wins. But if I want people to engage with my brand, I'll try and have an initial contest 'concepts only', to select 1-3 designers to get the full, detailed brief. Then a closed contest with a handful of entrants, who have better odds and a fairer reward if they give their best work.

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That's interesting, thanks for the tip on creating a "concepts only" contest and then a closed contest for the "finalists", seems like a good idea! – Christian Feb 9 '11 at 16:16
up vote 2 down vote

We've used 99designs for logos (Project Dirigible and Ironclad) and toolbar button icons, and had great results. The important thing we've found is to give lots of feedback; every day during the contest, we log on to the site and rate all of the new entries, and leave comments saying what we like and don't like. I suspect that would be equally important whichever site you choose to use.

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The artifacts you get back are they in a format you were easy to use or did you need a tool to change the format into the graphic format your use to for actual use? – John Bogrand Feb 7 '11 at 19:50
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I think (don't have the data to hand right now) that they all sent us Photoshop files, which we were able to save at whatever resolution we wanted using GIMP (which is free). This was a good thing, especially with the logo. – Giles Thomas Feb 7 '11 at 22:23
OK so there is a free solution for converting the artifact into a useful format. Great thanks. – John Bogrand Feb 10 '11 at 18:44
up vote 2 down vote

Here's why DesignCrowd.com is the best option:

1) Participation payments (More ethical) - DesignCrowd pays designers participation payments so designers don't have to bid for free. This attracts higher quality designers to DesignCrowd and means designers get paid for their work (which is fairer for them). DesignCrowd calls this Crowdsourcing 2.0.

2) Invite system (consistent quality) - DesignCrowd lets you invite unlimited designers from their Designer Directory. DC publishes rankings and feedback scores for each designer. By inviting designers you have better control over the quality and style of response you get. As you can allocate participation payments to designers you can also stimulate interest in a contest that isn't going that well.

3) Blind contests (less copying) - designers can never see eachother's work on DesignCrowd during a contest (i.e. the contests are blind) this prevents group think and copying.

4) Flat fees (cheaper) - CrowdSpring and 99designs charge large % fees to customers on top of the budgets. DesignCrowd only charges $40.

5) Polling / voting (easier) - DesignCrowd offer a free voting/polling tool to help you poll your friends, get their feedback and find the best logo/design.

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Thanks for those details. Those definitely look like great features, will consider using DesignCrowd. – Christian Mar 16 '11 at 18:34
up vote 1 down vote

We tried turning our sales website into a 3 page brochure through 99Designs, and I was not impressed by the work. It all was something I could do in 2 hours myself, and I don't have much design talent. I haven't tried any of the others, but here is a great interview with the founder of CrowdSpring on why it is a better service. You can read the raw transcript if you like.

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up vote 0 down vote

If you have an idea of how design should look and feel of your company then go to any of that, mostly 99designs.com and then just look which are similar to your idea.

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I've only used Crowdspring and 48hourslogo, and both are hit and miss. You'll probably get a lot of poor submissions but a few really good ones, and that's all it takes. Take a look at which sites work process and cost structure suits you best. Whichever one you use, make sure you give quick feedback on all submissions so that creatives can better understand what you want and do additional submissions.

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