Justin Britten

Crowdsourced Design with 99designs and Crowdspring

We recently crowdsourced the design of the Flashlight logo, as well as a postcard sized publicity flier. We ran the logo design content on 99designs and the postcard advertisement on Crowdspring, the two leading players in the crowdsourced design space.

For those of you unfamiliar with crowdsourced design, here’s how it works in a nutshell. Basically, we used 99designs and Crowdspring to run a design contest where many contributors from around the world submitted entries over a seven day period.  At the end of the contest we picked a winning entry and paid out a bounty.  Throughout the whole process we gave constant feedback to the designers to ensure the designs were moving in the desired direction.  And, it worked!  We ended up with two outstanding designs.

99designs

We ran a contest with a $175 bounty for the Flashlight logo design.  Over a seven day period we got 64 entries from 20 different designers.

99designs charges a flat $39USD to post a contest.  They do not act as a middle-man and handle the transaction between buyer and designer.  At the end of the contest, it’s up to the parties involved to exchange emails and swap the design for money via PayPal or some other means.

The site is, ironically, bland in design, but its both very usable and fast.  It appears that the site is run by a team of three out of Australia.  At the time of this writing there have been about 17,000 contests run on 99designs, yielding an assumed half-million in revenue for the small company.  Not bad for the short period they’ve been in business (less than a year we believe).  Plus, from the looks of things, they are bootstrapping their company.  Best of luck and keep up the excellent work!

Crowdspring

We posted a $150 bounty for the design of a postcard-sized publicity flier for Flashlight.  Over a week we got 36 entries from 11 different designers.

Crowdspring charges a flat 15% listing fee to run a design contest.  So, we paid them $22.50 to run the contest, and gave $150 to the winning designer.  Unlike 99designs, Crowdspring does act as the middle-man in the transaction and places the bounty in escrow.  This helps the designer feel confident they will get paid, and to ease the minds of contest holders Crowdspring offers a money-back guarantee if you don’t get at least 25 entries.  We much preferred having this buffer — it made the entire process of closing the transaction run smoother.

The site is beautifully designed; however, it is very slow.  We’ll cut them some slack since they’re new and growing pains are expected.  It appears they’ve only been around for five months or so, and they definitely don’t attract the same number of contests or designers … yet.  The founders handled all of our support tickets.  While they’re also a small team — of about six — they have received a round of funding and it shows.  Everything seems very professional.  Let’s hope there’s room for both them and 99designs.

Closing thoughts

We got a logo designed for well below what most (decent) design firms would have charged — and we got to pick from many different creative options.  We got the postcard advertisement for a steal, saving possibly hundreds of dollars.  In both cases we saved money and got better results.  Plus, the money goes directly to the designer, supporting an independent entrepreneur, which makes us feel good.