Comments on: The kiddie designers of 99designs

By: Erin

Erin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:14:00 +0000

Amen Christina! Methinks really pushing this with the media, getting business magazines to talk about it would be a huge lifesaver for all of us – it’s all in reaching clients on their level so that they can actually understand what’s going on. And if we can just come up with a hot pink No Spec shirt…

By: Christina

Christina — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 08:22:06 +0000

Organizations like AIGA need to step up and get more funding to help educate society, especially small businesses and start-ups about the value of design. This needs to be addressed more in business school as well. I still don’t understand why there isn’t a license to practice design for graphic design/art direction/creative direction/etc but interior designers require a license. It frustrates me that our industry isn’t taken seriously on a professional level!!! So we just make things look pretty and appealing?
Now I can understand the appeal of 99designs to many businesses who are not educated about design and struggle with finding talented designers that fit within their tiny budgets. What do they do? Google I need a logo? Sad. Let’s face it, many of those business owners on 99 don’t have a clue about branding or how to go about it the right way. Maybe we can convince Paris Hilton to wear a NO SPEC shirt at a public event.

By: Dominic

Dominic — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:38:20 +0000

@ Mohammad Fuaad

Hell yeah, I still do…

By: Dominic

Dominic — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:36:29 +0000

Hey Jon, guess what – 99designs is teaching them nothing more than how to design bullsh*t! If there is no-one who teaches, there is nothing to learn!

By: Spec work and 99designs.com | Superior Motive - web design & development, Joomla & Drupal CMSes

Thu, 13 May 2010 14:18:17 +0000

[...] While a client might get a bunch of design options for little money this way, this process cut out the whole discovery phase of the project. For example, as a client you might want a new header and logo for your site. You can request this and receive many responses, and there’s a good chance one of them will strike your fancy. Normally there would be at least a small phase of getting to know the customer, their needs, business model, etc. That is entirely missing in the 99designs.com model. It might work in the end, but it’s exploitative. In some cases, designers on there are even under 18 (reference). [...]

By: Jani

Jani — Sun, 09 May 2010 07:07:16 +0000

I played around a bit with 99D and it became apparent very quickly how little this company “for designers by designers” cares about designers – better to rename it 99 Ways to Have Your Ideas Stolen. But if an 11 yr. old kid wants to putz around on their computer and enter then so what? Let’s not forget to ask if the parents are monitoring their kids use of a computer…finger pointing needs redirectioning here. I know what my kid is doing on the computer…it’s called a good relationship with your child. But this does not excuse 99Designs corporate mentality with “the little guy” branding…it’s a giant scam and best avoided. They’ve got some talent in the pool but it’s a duplicitous business and the talent generally ends up feeling ripped off.

By: Javier

Javier — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:47:47 +0000

We live in a cheap world, where everyone wants everything for nothing. I’m tired to see on the briefs a company that make 1m per year, and offers 150 dollars for their logo contest…
The real designers like all of us, won’t last even 2 contests without being eliminated. They don’t want good designs… They want 3D logos! they want web 2.0 sh*t!
I’m really tired.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:50:13 +0000

The writer of this post is a [expletive deleted by post author so as not to influence 11-year-olds] moron. These 11+ year olds are getting a chance to perfect their craft and not only become better but strive to become better in order to win more jobs. Not only is it teaching them to excel their skills but it is teaching them the benefits of healthy competition in a capitalistic world. 99designs is a beautiful thing for young aspiring designers who no matter what would be spending hours making these logos on their own time regardless of whether or not 99designs was available.

By: Mariano

Mariano — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:59:19 +0000

David, thanks for this post.
I really believe companies that use this site have no idea of what they are looking for. It’s sad but true, there’s a long way to make them understand the importance of professional design.

By: Dione

Dione — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:51:35 +0000

Even if you were naive enough to trust your business communications strategy to a child, and even if one child DID produce a decent enough design, consider the remainder of the naive and desperate ‘contestants’ from whom you have now solicited slave labor.

From an ethics standpoint, THAT is the real issue.

It is exploitation and ignorance on the part of the contest holder, then add in greed on the part of the site owners who are raking in the profits. Involving children just makes it worse than it already is.

And if you have NO ethics and are okay with both child and unpaid labor, I present another point to consider: Not many children or third-world hobbyists will have invested $1200 on Photoshop & Illustrator, so in using stolen software there is an inherent disregard for copyright law to consider… you may just be buying a lawsuit along with your cheap logo. See how that affects your bottom line.