99designsReviews 412

I am graphic designer from last 3-4 years, specialised in Logo design and Stationery designs. I earned nice and positive feedback from my clients all the time by providing them best quality work with all necessary formats. But recently I tried 99designs because I had heard so much appreciation that this market place respects designers and pays the money worth to design, not like useless fiverr with just 5 dollars logos... I tried 99designs but after submitting best of my work, they refused me to take. I thought, may be there standards are much higher, then I approve my work and again try to get in but again rejection, I tried three times on 99designs with different emails because they only gave 2 chances on one email under one year time period. But all the time, they sent emails with full of love and best wishes but with REJECTIONS... So much I have to say about that ***** marketplace but... So disappointed that in todays time, no one is taking new registrations seriously, I'm talking about new registrations, not the newbies* thanks for the time... And if anyone from 99designs community is reading this, take some time to accept new registration

Maybe this could be a great service, however, my first experience with 99 designs has not been great. We choose the Silver, 3 day contest and payed extra for blog promotion and fast 3 day delivery. The "promise" is lots of response from top designers. We've had 4 responses to our contest, all of very poor quality. So my advise is: when you have no experience with setting up contests, either contact the customer service to help you or choose to work with a designer you like directly. Big cheer to the customer service, they are very helpful and respond quickly!

At first we had some trouble getting approval, but now we're approved as a mid-level designer and we're looking forward to entering some design contests! This site is great for clients who want to get several high quality designs submitted for a project. We look forward to working with 99designs now and into the future. Chris

There are very few interesting projects to illustrate.
Logos are everywhere.
You give up and start making logos too. Clients can change the brief or choose something completely different from what they originally asked for. That's their right, but it's frustrating if you spent more than 5 hours on a logo for free.
If you think your design looks great, but the client gave it a bad rating, you won't be able to add it to your portfolio, as if this is not the subjective opinion of a person who does not design at all, and your work is of poor quality.
If you want to make money, you need to track orders and do something every day. Do you have time for free work? There is no guarantee that you will make money on your next order, but you might get lucky.
Yes, for poor countries one gain = monthly salary. But you don't win every competition, and you don't win all the time. Don't think that 99 designs will save you from poverty.

If you don't have a portfolio, use 99 designs. You can parse 15 designs in 28 days. Create them all and... Look for a permanent job because you now have a portfolio.

The practice is the only plus of this site. You will receive real tasks to complete them. Perhaps you will receive a nice bonus - money. But you definitely need a regular job where you can talk to a client, make edits and get guaranteed money.

A client can ignore your ideas, not go to the site, postpone the choice of the winner for a week, not answer you, close the contest ahead of time, even if you managed to discuss something and you made edits for it. He just decides to stop submits artwork and choose someone else, even though he loved your design so much. The guaranty won't help. Clients can unlock their contest at any stage, even when it's day 60. And you won't get anything as a finalist.

99 designers are a toy. If you always have extra time or designs to spare, then this is worth a try.
If you want a portfolio, you should give it a try.

But don't take anything seriously. You don't have normal customer feedback, you can't discuss anything, you can't offer sketches and discuss an idea. You just do the design with your eyes closed and it all depends on luck.

I've seen really cool guys get 1 star and ignored, so don't think professionalism will help you win enough contests.

99 designs is a demo version of a designer's simulator.

SLAVERY AND THE IDIOTIC CUSTOMERS ARE PURE IDIOTS WHO WANT QUALITY FOR PENNIES, LISTEN TO ME BOSSES OF IDIOTIC COMPANIE: $#*! YOURSELF IN THE GRAVE!

While I liked working with the particular designer who did my logo, the process at 99designs didn't meet my expectations at all. The contest idea felt a little misleading, as you're guaranteed "30 designs," for example, but really, most of those are just a designer submitting the same design with different font options or icon-based designs, which I could have done myself. I was far from impressed with most of the designers and especially with the number of options for the contest. I debated about hiring a designer directly (which would have cost a third to half the price) and probably would have netted me the same result. It felt expensive and underwhelming.

The quality was good, but not as stellar as I had hoped for. I chose amongst the options I had because I had already committed the money to the project. There is a wide range, but some of the submissions were not as good as the existing logo I already had. I liked that the designers were open to design tweaks I had suggested. Some designers definitely showed more creativity than others and some seemed to understand my business and the goal for my business better than others. All in all, it was satisfactory and I am glad I tried it.

I really was enjoying the whole process, until all the hard work was done and I had a poll set up and emailed to all my people, that one of the logos was taken down because it was a stock photo. So basically out of 6 designs on poll one was off thats 15% of my creativity and all the days work put in to it was waste. I am glad it was detected but it seriously affected my logo selection process. Also I was not offered any compensation apart from thats I can select a new design. How in the world thats an option when I have submitted the poll by email, thats extremely embarrassing. As a small scale start up business I felt this was great option, but I felt let down. The designer who won and all the designers who submitted were great but one bad apple spoilt the taste and the nature of this experience.

I've used 99designs a couple of times to source designs for ebook covers. The creativity of designers is sometimes hit and miss, but it's always fantastic to get a wide range of designs, and it's great to be surprised when a creative designer comes up with something fantastic that I hadn't even thought possible. I plan to use 99 designs for all my future projects. Ideally, one has a good working relationship with a fantastic and creative designer that understands your needs - but, that's sometimes hard to find. When you don't have someone like that in your network, 99designs fills the role spectacularly.

I wanted a combined logo for enhanced Safety, Maintainability, and Readiness Through Technology. I got tremendous response and options from, literally, 4 dozen designers in 1 week. I ended up choosing two options and asking for a combination of the two from one of the designers. In less than 6 hours from choosing the winners, I had 3 top-notch designs and all the files I can ever need. 99designs used it's own technology sophistication to handle everything in a very automatic fashion, yet allowed me to discuss options privately with specific designers or give advice to all designers in the competition. I actually had a lot of fun with the process.