- Your site's design doesn't make me feel confident in wanting to work with you.
- That 'Become a Designer' form field is way too long. I'm not filling out a dating profile. You should be able to determine my ambition to work with you based on my reply alone, and you should be able to determine the quality of my work by my Dribbble and portfolios alone. All of the rest is just fluff.
- You don't mention the guaranteed rate?
- '..co-founded 99designs..' Ahh, I see. I'm done here.
I have looked into getting a professional designer for two sites now, instead opted for the faster route of buying a template and hacking
next time out I want a human but why not 99designs?
At 99Designs, people are entrusting the branding of their site/firm/etc to someone willing to maybe make $100 for a logo. Exceptions aside (Nike, Google), branding should has more thought and work put into it than someone can do for a few bucks.
The campaign against spec work began as a reaction to a genuinely abusive practice: companies would hold "design contests" and solicit whole campaigns from multiple firms, then cherry-pick their favorite ideas from all of them while only paying one firm. But it's evolved to a mythology about all spec work, and that mythology mostly covers up the real issue: the Internet has made "good-enough" design cheap for the majority of companies, including the majority of 8-9 figure revenue tech companies. PepsiCo will still pay you $100k for an important campaign, but most of the design business isn't PepsiCo.
99designs has issues (the biggest isn't quality, it's plagiarism), but there's nothing unethical about its structure, and anyone who suggests that the people who helped build it should be ostracized are saying much more about themselves and their own fears than they are about anyone else.
You may be lucky and find a world class dish by a struggling undiscovered great chef, but most likely you'll settle on whatever doesn't make you vomit.
That sounds to me like a great way to choose a chef, no?
When I go to buy a car, I haggle with salesmen and test drive cars, all for free, before I choose one. When I am condo shopping, I go see many buildings, and many different agents give me the sales spiel, free, before I choose which condo I want and provide the commission to that realtor.
I don't understand how this method is in any way bad for the consumer.
As far as this service, it's good idea, but that price point is pretty intense. I'm not very good with PowerPoint, but I can definitely "prettify" more than 4 slides per hour. At that pace, I'm paying you $100 an hour for equivalent work? If you can find enterprise clients willing to pay, that's good stuff for you. But I couldn't pay this.
Yeah, but you're viewing pre-built cars and condos, rather than asking for a completely original work to be created from scratch before you buy.
I'm occupying the salesman's time, time he could spend making a sale to someone else. Just like I've used the designer's time by not choosing their design. It's where the term "tire-kicker" comes from. Ask your realtor how they feel when they get clients who they know have no intention of buying. It's part of the job.
I must have missed the part where the chefs were obligated to participate, rather than out of their own free will in the hopes of winning the contract. God forbid they're forced to demonstrate their skills in the most practical, open way possible: direct competition. If they don't want to, they can get work through the multitude of other, regular channels. That hasn't gone away.
>"Most of us aren't sociopaths."
Let me guess, you're a designer? Do you feel sorry for me when I have to terminate design contracts mid-project, after spending real money, because the designer couldn't pull off what he promised? Or just flaked out and ended communication? Because that happens. Often. Ask anyone who is forced to contract out for work.
Again, no self-respecting GOOD designer is going to participate in 99 designers, not with the effort needed to come up with good choices for their clients. At least everything must start with a good faith contract, and then maybe contracts get cancelled sometime for non-performance (but really, the designer might avoid that at all costs even if it means working off clock). Now how would 99 designers change that and make it better?
I'm not a designer, but I work with many (and my partner is one).
Let's say you wanted a chef and it's not necessary for the chef to be really good because you have objectively determined that the quality of your chef has no meaningful bearing on your business's bottom line beyond 'the food must not make me want to hurl'
Sounds like 99Chefs is good enough for this use case.