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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Could you explain the 99designs reference

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?

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Designers tend to dislike 99designs because it's spec work. Twenty designers will do work, and only one will get paid -- and for a fraction of what a real designer should be paid for a logo.

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.

My experience with 99designs (on the buying side) has been that there are a _lot_ of shitty "designers", but if you persevere someone from Romania will show up and do a pretty good job for very little money. But you have to know exactly what you want and you have to be willing to play editor.

This is, as near as I can tell, a marketing campaign unique to graphic design. In other professions, spec work isn't just accepted; it's close to the norm. For instance, a good lawyer might sit down with you for over an hour to consult about your situation long before he ever starts billing for his time. A full proposal usually takes me a couple days full time, and we're billable wall-to-wall. And so on.

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.

Let's say that you wanted a really good chef. Would you go to a place where 99 chefs, each one, will cook a meal for free so you can choose the one you wanted the best? And knowing that most of the chefs had been cooking lot of free meals daily?

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.

>"Would you go to a place where 99 chefs, each one, will cook a meal for free so you can choose the one you wanted the best? "

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.

Most of us aren't sociopaths. We'll have some empathy for the chef. The reason it works out for the car salesman and real estate agent is that a commission on one sale more than makes up for many lost sales; if they could have more sure sales their commission would surely go down accordingly. This isn't the case for 99 designs or 99 chefs.

>"We'll have some empathy for the chef."

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.

I don't think any self-respecting chef WOULD participate in 99 chefs, at least, not for the money. But a better analogy would be the American tip: do you leave her 15%, 20%, or 25%? I literally have to break out a calculator to ensure I'm leaving a 20% tip, I would feel guilty otherwise, and I also don't want to overpay. I hate going to the states because of that.

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).

> 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.

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.

It's not the car, it's the salesman.

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.

Let's say that you wanted a really good chef.

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.

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