» 99Designs the Evil that Changed Names

A While back I wrote a couple of articles about sitepoint contests and how the service was nothing more than a spec nightmare. At the time I asked the positive space community to boycott the service and spread the word that it was not ethical. Then a couple of days ago I was back on sitepoint looking through the websites currently for sale, when I decided to see if the number of contests had declined. After clicking the link I was surprised to find that the contests section had become 99designs.

I would typically just ignore the site and consider it another site that hoped to prey on the ignorance of unsuspecting designers if not he image that the site portrays. Not only does the site say that it is run for designers by designers, but that it is doing them good by providing this service. There are so many things wrong with this statement that I am sure it needs no explaining.

For more proof of the site’s inherent evil, be sure to check the about us page. My personal favorite statement is the “pitch to the suits”:

“99designs is a disruptive startup which connects passionate designers from around the globe with savvy clients who need design projects completed in a timely fashion without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design.”

I just want to dissect this statement for a second, let’s look at what this statement really translates to.

“99designs is a disruptive startup”
Yeah, if by disruptive you mean unethical and that it devalues an entire industry, then yes it is disruptive.

“connects passionate designers from around the globe with savvy clients”
Do these passionate designers also happen to be young and naïve, or possibly hungry from some real experience and you plan on taking advantage of that fact. Also, what is savvy about a client who wants a product that completely removes themselves from the process. If good design is about collaboration between client and designer and accurately communicating the client’s message then why would a client remove themselves?

“completed in a timely fashion”
The designer has rushed the final product and done no research, because there is not guarantee of payment.

“without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design”
There is no risk because you have passed it all along to the naïve designer, who is willing to work for free in what is most likely 90% of the cases or more. Finally, they sum up the statement by agreeing with me on something, that this is in no way will result in professional design services.

Underneath this thin veil of a purpose statement, we can see that even the owners of the site know that what they are doing is unethical. Hopefully we can educate the new and upcoming designers of the world of the dangers of 99designs, before they give away their hard work for little to no reward.

04/09

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24 Responses to “99Designs the Evil that Changed Names”

Lil
April 9th, 2008 at 10:46 am

I don’t understand why this is a problem - maybe because I’m just a young grasshopper. The main issue is exploitation but who is really naïve enough to rely on a series of competitions as a source of income?

To be honest, spec work looks like it’s worse for the client than it is for the designer.
Timothy Long
April 9th, 2008 at 11:05 am

Despite a few minor exceptions, the clients seem to be getting what they pay for.
Zinni
April 9th, 2008 at 11:26 am

Tim, I completely agree with your statement. Unfortunately the clients probably do not realize that the design is not of the highest quality.
!nso
April 9th, 2008 at 11:43 am

Client: I need a new car

Car Dealer: no problem, we sell BMW here - which one do you like?

Client: I like none of them… Can I get one with custom paint job, more powerful engine, white leather interior, and satellite radio?

Car Dealer: No problem… Here’s the quote and the order - sign here… and here… and give me a check.

Client: Whoa whoa, how about you build it for me first, and then I’ll decide if I want to pay for it.

Car Dealer: F***, ****** *** *!! No sir, cannot do, but you can have this free poster to go home and have wet dreams about.
Action
April 9th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

@Lil
I think spec work is bad for all of us. It lowers th bar - tremendously - and de-values the experience and skill of true professionals.

Have you guys looked at the rates they are offering if you win! Ouch. On the other hand, someone with MSWord and a ten year old disc of clip art now has a new career.
D
April 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

I hate sites like sitepoint, and the like.

It does lower the bar and clients don’t actually get what they want. The sites are lower quality, and like was said before because they have removed themselves from the process what they end up with is not what they really want, just what was the best of out of the choice available.

I’ve had to do work for two clients who have used sites like this and it consists of rebuilding their site to be more compliant, and making changes to things that if they had of come to me in the first place I would have built them something they would be much happier with.

If you are at all talented you shouldn’t lower yourself to this kind of work. We’ll all make more money in the long run if people avoid these sites.

For the most part clients who use this type of service do not know what they want, but have million unhelpful opinions, and are people that if you are going to deal with make sure you bill hourly.
James De Angelis
April 9th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

As a young designer i find the entire process offensive. Other’s have already aptly put, the designer is the one who gets the screw here. If the client isn’t happy with what you produce, you get NOTHING. One of the oldest cliches is certainly the truest, time IS money. You’ve just spent 5 hours making a new logo, most of a day for a freelancer, and if you don’t happen to be the happy “winner” of the contest, you’ve just wasted that time for nothing.
Zinni
April 9th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

I am glad to see soo many people agree, in the past whenever I have talked about sites like this I usually am flooded with responses like “who cares”.

James ~ Time really is money when you offer a service and that is the truth no matter how cliche it is.

Great comments everyone! Keep up the Anti-SPEC Fight!
Jim
April 9th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

prey not pray
liam
April 10th, 2008 at 2:25 am

I have a love hate relationship with Sitepoint. Back when I never had a job, and was still at school and needed some extra cash, but didn’t have the experience I loved the site, It really did help me through a good 2/3 years of my life. I was earning as much money as some of my friends who were working, and I was doing something I actually enjoyed.

I felt I had nowhere else to go, and Sitepoint seemed a great idea. And I think even now its a great idea. But as I’m moving into the industry more, I start to hear things like, “Well I’ve seen people design decent websites for like $100” - And the moment you try to explain why, thats the point you’ve lost a client.

Nobody really knows about quality, and I’m starting to think that more and more people don’t care about quality when it comes to the web. There’s a very strange attitude people have to spending money on a website, everyone wants something for nothing, and just expect people to do things as favors or very cheap.

Having experienced a lot of good from Sitepoint(now 99designs) it’s hard for me to agree with you, although I do, I have first hand experience of how useful it can be, and I really did learn a lot from my experiences there, and it often lead to a lot of other work.

Sitepoint also offer a lot of advice about working in Business, they have various books about finding work and freelancing etc. They also have the forums which can be very useful, so they’re not all about the contests.

I guess I agree with you, but being someone who has used Sitepoint with great results I can’t really tell people not to use it, but I think it certainly does make finding clients a lot harder.

Good to hear your thoughts though.
Joram Oudenaarde
April 10th, 2008 at 3:22 am

The main problem with spec-work is that everyone but the client loses.

First:
You have to finalize a design before knowing wether or not you’ll get paid. This means an x-amount of time that you will have no money whatsoever if you lose that “contest”. Result: lost time to actually earn money.

Second:
Even *IF* you win, the payment doesn’t come close to the amount of work you’ve done. A logo for example can take about 3-6 hours in total to finish… maybe even more. That’s at least 200-600 dollar/euro for a logo. It sounds like a lot of money, but it’s a very proper amount given the amount of time that’s been put into it.
If you win a logo-spec, you might get 200 dollar/euro for 6 hours of work. 200/6 = 33 dollar/euro an hour, and taxes and insurances are going to be taken out on top of that. So you’ll basically be working for about 15-20 dollar/euro an hour.
Would you like to work for 15-20 dollar/euro an hour as a designer? I don’t think so, because that amount doesn’t even cover your monthly bills.

Third:
Because you’re working for that little amount of money (if you actually win), you let clients think that it’s actually a normal price to pay. In the end it will only hurt the entire graphic industry.

Don’t be confused though… specwork is not the same as a creative pitch. Although personally I would try to avoid a pitch as well, a pitch is always a race to get a longterm job. Specwork on the other hand, is simply a way for the client to pay less and get more: pay a ridiculously low amount of money while walking over the backs of young and/or wannabe designers.
Sarah
April 10th, 2008 at 5:12 am

This is really something new for me.
Mark
April 10th, 2008 at 9:35 pm

“Don’t be confused though… specwork is not the same as a creative pitch”. “a pitch is always a race to get a longterm job.”

I think that’s the point a lot of people are missing here. 99designs.com is as much about promoting designers and helping them win longer term clients than it is about once-off design contests with a prize at stake.

Many of the good designers at 99designs.com are pulling in decent clients off the back of winning design contests. It’s a lead generation tool for many of them - a way for them to show off their talent in a way that minimizes risk for the client.

Generally speaking clients aren’t afraid to spend good money on good design, they’re just affraid to spend good money on a designer who may (or may not) deliver for them. It’s a risk. Your design portfolio is nice, but it’s often not enough for them to commit.

Design contests are lowering the barrier to entry for many clients who wouldn’t have otherwise committed to spending money with a specific designer. Using design contests they get a taste for which designers they like best — many then go on to spend thousands directly with their favorite designer.

Then there’s the newbie designers and hobbyists - for them 99designs.com is really just a way to build a decent sized portfolio of design work and improve their skills by working on real projects with real clients. It beats working at McDonalds while you put yourself through design school.

I don’t think you have anything to worry about. There’s always going to be room for professional designers who charge what they’re worth to work through creative solutions for clients. Like it or not, 99designs.com is just another channel.
Chris
April 14th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

I’m with a small not-for-profit, and I had just a couple hundred dollars to spend on logo design. I did a google search and found dozens of companies in India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, etc. who would create a logo for us for $69 or $99.

I ended up going with a logo design contest after reading about it, because of the back and forth communication and feedback that I was able to give, and guide the process. The designer who won the logo design for $250, also ended up getting a job from us to do the businesses stationary and business cards.

I ended up finding out that the designer lives in Romania when I sent him money. The $250 for the logo and the $250 for business cards and stationary that I paid him, is more than the average wage for an entier month there…

Globalization is here to stay. There will always be a company or person willing to do a job for a price, and those of us with limited budgets, will seek them out whether through design contests, google searches, elance.com or something else. Sites like 99Designs provide a way for a certain segment of the population to improve the livelyhood for themselves and their familiy and compete on a global scale. That’s the great thing about the internet.

My $0.02.
Barb
April 16th, 2008 at 10:24 am

I’ve got to say that the part about 99designs that I think is the “most-est” evil are the people who partake in the contests - not only do they devalue the work of designers everywhere, but they tend to hand in hack work and on several occasions they have ripped off someone else’s idea or work and then submitted them to the contest as their own.

So now, my work is worth less than it was even a year ago, not only because someone will do horrible work and not worry about a level of professionalism, but because if I create something, who knows who may be ripping it off to try and win some weird contest.

Yeah, not cool.
Zinni
April 16th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Chris,

I would love to critique the result of your contest, chances are that you received a product that was less than optimal. In a situation like yours I would suggest finding a company willing to do some charitable work for you, the result will always be better. I am happy that you were satisfied with your result however citing globalization is not a reason to embrace contest sites. The term is nothing more than a way to legitimize it to yourself. In reality you had no clue that the person was from a foreign country until after you received the work. I am ok with people getting design work from overseas, its the contest format that is the problem.
PornBorn
May 14th, 2008 at 4:45 am

Want to really end 99designs?

Post porn in design submitions.
Really rude Porn.

Use proxys to avoid beeing IP Banned.

99designs is a disrespect to the design profession.
People study hard for years to have to compete for 100$.

Ask a bunch of design arquitect engenieers the same.
Draw me a good looking bridge. The winner gets free lunch.
PornBorn
May 14th, 2008 at 5:15 am

I read all the comments and really!

The guy that posted He was happy He helped a Romanian doesn’t know the meaning of the expression “fair labour”. So what’s next? pay 20$ to chinese designers cos they win that in a month? Those people have to fight for equalness and the right to a decent life in their country. Not being exploited cos some guy wants to have a top of the line logo and website for a fraction of what He would have payed to professionals in his area.

I really don’t need design to get a living but I love it. It is a family career. My family owns a big Imprenta and produces all sort of printed work.
From bank checks to High-quality books.
I didn’t study it in University because when I was twelve I had my 486 and some CAD versions to play with.

It’s up to designers to take dirty actions to avoid their years of passion and study going down the drain cos dumbasses like Mr. Romanian want cheap labour.
Rondow
January 5th, 2009 at 3:48 am

To concur,

99designs truly is unethical. No contractual work, just hopefully you win with that design.It is just a bruise that the face of G.D. is carrying.
Josh
January 7th, 2009 at 11:42 pm

I guess I’m at a loss to see how this in any way “devalues” the work of professional designers. Don’t take the the wrong way, but if you are so much better than the work that is produced by people on a site like 99designs, then where is the threat? And if the designers working through 99designs are just as good as you or I, then perhaps the real issue is that you’re pissed off that someone is horning in on your territory, lowering the wages.

This entire concept of this being somehow “unethical” or “exploitative” came about from the liberal concept of a “fair wage” in countries where the dollar is simply NOT the measure of what is appropriate to be paid. I run a small web development consultancy and send a lot of work to a select few friends of mine overseas in Indonesia. They do excellent work - are better, more savvy ActionScript developers and designers than just about anyone I’ve met here, and are literally less than 1/5 the cost of comparable talent here. I am most certainly NOT “exploiting” them, and please don’t insist that I am. $20/hour is a staggeringly good wage for someone living in a place where the average per capita income is under $500/year. Yes, a year. My one friend in particular was able to buy his first house this year and another one for his aging parents with the money he has made in under 2 years for what is “offshore” work for him. He had a full-time job at an agency, but makes at least 4-5X that doing freelance work and finally stopped doing that. If you can explain how that’s exploitation, I’d love to hear it.

If there is a market for something, it will survive, if not, it won’t - it’s as simple as that. I’m a Flash/Flex developer - have been for over 10 years, and in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I recently ran a “contest” on 99designs, and I had nothing but a positive outcome. A lot of the designers were really, really horrible (some of the stuff looked like a 5-year old did it in PowerPoint), but a few turned in very good work and met my needs - creating me a logo for a new business venture I just started. I didn’t have the time to create a logo myself and this was what exactly I needed. It was also a test to see what the service was all about. I was actually pleasantly surprised.

The bottom line is that everyone needs to get off their high horse and stop bitching about how sites like 99designs are ruining their ability to make a living and devaluing “real” design work. If someone is not in the market to pay $5000 for identity work and they go to 99designs.com or somewhere similar - that is not a client you lost - they weren’t in the market for your services anyhow. I think this just sounds like a lot of sour grapes and paranoia. It’s called competition - we web/software developers have been dealing with this for decades - welcome to the real world. Stick with what you do well, sack up and charge a premium price for your work if it’s worth it, and stop griping.
Josh
January 7th, 2009 at 11:45 pm

BTW…

“Post porn in design submitions. Really rude Porn. Use proxys to avoid beeing IP Banned.”

That sounds like the business practices of a true professional to me. Well done, my friend. I’m glad I’m paying a premium for your services and years of experience. Sounds like you’re 5 years old to me.
Josh
January 7th, 2009 at 11:49 pm

And you hypocrites just might want to take the ads for psd2html.com down off your sidebar. Same sort of service, and by your logic, is devaluing the work of countless XHTML/CSS developers everywhere. I guess it’s ok as long as it’s not *your* industry and ability to make a living that’s being trashed. Poor form, gents.