6 Easy Ways To Get The Most Out Of Your 99Designs Projects

If you’ve never heard of 99designs, it’s basically an out-tasking/outsourcing site with a difference. You post your design contest brief (project brief) and decide how much you are willing to pay, and your contest (project) is then opened to the many designers on the site to submit their ideas for your design. Each designer can submit their own concepts for the contest, so rather than having ONE person work on your project, you benefit from the ideas and skills of many different designers, but still only have to pay for one design. Once you have decided on your favourite design, you allocate payment to that designer and your final logo files are dispatched to you.

This is an awesome way to get a professional logo or graphic design at a very competitive price, and it spreads the risk you have when working with one designer.

After using the site a few times I have found there are ways you can maximize your results and the number of designs you receive for your project, so here are my top tips for getting the most from 99designs:

Setting Up Your Contest

- Write A Killer Project Title – make your project sound more interesting, or use a cryptic name which will attract more attention – the idea is to get eyes onto your project from designers – so you receive more proposals – more designers = more choice and a better end result.

- Be Specific In Your Brief – I know this is pretty much standard for any outsourcing project, but it’s important to be specific in your brief and let designers know exactly what you want. If appropriate, use examples or mention specific colours, font types or anything else which you think would be relevant to getting your design as close to how you imagined it.

- Guarantee To Award Your Contest Prize – projects with guaranteed payment always receive more bids in my experience. Due to the nature of the site many designers will only compete on projects where there is a guaranteed payment for the winner.

Once Your Contest Is Live…

- Invite Designers to your contest – Have a look through the contest marketplace and find projects with a similar prize amount to yours. Now look for any designs you like the look of, and see which designer was responsible for these designs (you can do this by clicking the “view designer profile” link when viewing a design.

Once you are on the designer profile page you can use the contact link to get in touch with the designer and send them a polite message about your project. Include a small brief about the project, the prize award amount and make sure you tell them you love their designs.

I’ve done this on every project I’ve run and have found I’ve got a far higher standard end result from my contest.

- Tweet Your Contest – This might not work for all businesses and individuals, but if you have a good twitter following it is worth tweeting about your 99designs contest as you may have some designers following you who might be interested in entering your contest – just another way to get more interest in your project.

- Provide regular feedback – 99designs allows you to give a star rating (out of 5) to each concept and also provide specific feedback comments to each designer, as well as overall feedback comments to all designers. I highly recommend keeping in touch with your project and providing regular feedback. This will encourage more activity from your designers, and give you a better end result.

Projects which are posted and then abandoned for 7 days will usually get little to no activity after the initial designs and 99designs also adds a “caution” note to projects which have little or no activity from the project owner – which serves as a red flag to any designers who were considering entering the contest.

My Favourite Designers List

If you follow the tips above for any project you post to 99designs you should get some great results. As an extra little bonus I wanted to include the names of some of my favourite designers from the site so you can check out their profiles and perhaps invite them to your next contest if you like their stuff…(i’ve also added what I think are these designers specialities next to their names)

Lucy mango – Logos / Stationary – http://99designs.com/users/93899
Ulahts – Logos – http://99designs.com/people/ulahts
Bamba0401 – Logos – http://99designs.com/users/218817
Mariusjivoin – Logos – http://99designs.com/people/mariusjivoin
ThePuppetMaster – Logos – http://99designs.com/users/38056
Dobleve – Logos – http://99designs.com/people/dobleve
Hoshimo – Logos / Stationary – http://99designs.com/people/hoshimo
Gmarc – Logos – http://99designs.com/users/206669
sibrwn – Logos – http://99designs.com/users/344599
SteveO – 3d Logos – http://99designs.com/users/246807
Tim Patty – Logos – http://99designs.com/people/timpatty
Axehead – Logos – http://99designs.com/people/axehead

Obviously this list isn’t exhaustive, there are many great designers on the site and everyone’s taste varies – just remember to check out this site next time you need a logo and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with the results.

Tags: 99designs, 99designs ideas, 99designs tips, outsource logo design