99designs refutes claim crowd-sourcing is contributing to tough conditions for freelancers
Crowd-sourcing design site 99designs has refuted claims by The Loops’ Pip Jamieson that crowd-sourcing websites are contributing to tougher conditions for creative freelancers, saying the site solves many freelancing “pain points”.
On the back of survey results revealing freelancer designers face trouble landing permanent roles from contract work, Jamieson said sites like 99designs and Freelancer.com were making conditions tougher for contractors, adding: “These types of platforms exploit creatives, devalue their work and create an environment that encourages fast turn-around at the expense of the quality of the work.”
But 99designs PR coordinator Emma Maidment hit back, telling Mumbrella “We help designers find work, we have paid out more than $US2million a month to designers who can pick and chose from thousands of open projects. All the work on 99Designs is pre-paid so the designers are guaranteed they will get paid.
“All the work on 99Designs is pre-paid so the designers are guaranteed they will get paid.”
That not true though really is it. The person who’s work gets chosen gets paid, everyone else who has done work that didnt get chosen gets sweet FA.
id also argue the ‘really great quality work’ claim to be honest. however, pay peanuts – get monkeys as they say. if someone wants to crowd-source their design needs then i honestly dont think they know the difference anyway.
Couple of things about what the nice lady from 99designs said:
“All the work on 99Designs is pre-paid so the designers are guaranteed they will get paid.”
Simply not true. Firstly, ONLY the winning designer gets paid. The rest of the participants – sometimes in the hundreds – don’t. Also, 99designs offers a money-back guarantee (IIRC up to 60 days after the contest is closed) unless the contest is “guaranteed” by the contest holder. Many do request refunds AFTER contests have run their course and loads of designers have already participated and created/submitted work. For her to say that designers are “guaranteed they well get paid” is to be charitable, disingenuous.
“99designs is a platform based on merit. It doesn’t matter what your resume is, where you’ve worked before, it’s based on the quality of the design you submit. It levels the playing field for everyone involved.”
Also not true. 99designs knows that there ARE inherently good designers and have recently instituted a ratings systems where designers are graded and awarded standing on the site. 99designs’ so-called Platinum designers – selected arbitrarily by staff – are the only ones who can enter Platinum contests as one example. Naturally, 99designs charges a premium for that feature.
“During our contest model we find a lot of designers will meet a client through there and the client will really like how they work, and so we have built our one-to-one projects tool which allows designers to engage in project work with a customer”
It used to be that 99designs defended the low rate of pay on their site by claiming designers used their site as a “funnel” to find follow-up work. Now, they’ve pivoted on that, and are using this one-on-one project tool to skim off a percentage from the designers’ own follow-up freelance work. This used to take place off the 99designs website and without their involvement with all the revenue going to the designer.
Just thought you’d be interested in some information on 99designs that didn’t come from their PR co-ordinator.
Think about what the likes of Shutterstock, iStockphoto, and Getty’s fliickr involvement have done for photographers’ income. 99 designs “helps” in the commoditisation of creative work and creatives in an analogous way. Who’s to blame? The agregator or the agregated? It makes no differnce. It’s just the way we’ve let the world go. So now a few names will get paid well while the vast majority (the, er, 99%) will work for less and, after a while, less still. Frictionless markets are an attractive idea if you are an economist … but if you actualy make stuff or create things …
As a designer, you would have to be mad, desperate or rich to participate in these. Attractive for 99design’s customers and their bottom line but that’s about it.
The quoted revenue/submissions equals just over $2 per design submission to think of it as an average, even though only there is only one designer awarded the money.
Who makes money doing work for free?
Crowd sourcing diminishes the inherent value of the work being created. Freelancers are forced to devalue their work to compete on a ever sliding scale just to make ends meet; taking on more and more work just to pay their bills.
The 99 designs method takes it that step further by reducing freelancers to a competition while e-lance and the like at least put freelancers in direct contact with specific freelancers albeit at a dramatically reduced rate.
In the end you ultimately get what you pay for. This model can’t last forever, it is unsustainable.
So….$63M paid for 28M designs. $2.25 per design that lands on their site?? Is that what they are saying? And this isn’t devaluing the trade?
This is like the time I saw the Freelancer.com guy talking about how he was doing wonderful things for people in 3rd world countries by giving them work. I’m pretty sure Nike used the same line about their kids doing sweat shop sneakers in the 90’s and look how that turned out.
What happens when you encourage bidding work is nobody gets decent work. Not the freelancer who is bent under the limbo pole, not the client who gets something that (frankly) looks like every other bloody logo on 99designs or piece of work on freelancer.
There is nothing sustainable in creating an environment where people have to bid for small dollar jobs. Not only that but considering a lot of them are startups, they are also missing a huge opportunity to actually create a great first bunch of people to talk about their product through using people who are working on it for the RIGHT reasons, as opposed to enough money to buy a Mars Bar.
Go cheap, expect to look cheap.
So…if I go out and buy a hammer, can I call myself a builder???
Of course not, but that’s exactly what 99Designs is encouraging – unqualified Mac-monkeys with a Shutterstock account who have no formal training, qualifications or understanding of basic design principals buying a copy of Adobe CS (illegally downloading it more likely!) and an iMac, then all of sudden they are a ‘Graphic Designer’
No ones really mentioned the fact that it’s actually ‘pinning’ designers against each other! I’m only new to this industry, but what really turned me on about it was that designers were always willing to help one another out, collaborate and create amazing projects together! To think that these companies encourage people to sit alone in a dark room, coming up with half arsed logos and wishing failure upon other designers in order to get paid makes me sick.
As a graphic designer for over 20 years and running my own design company for 9 years, i find it unbelievable that this type of spec work can actually exist!!!
You cannot justify having 100 people work for free and 1 person getting paid in the end. Quite simply i am amazed that sites like these are legal and have supporters… and what is worse… have participating designers.
THE PROBLEM IS:
This “DESIGN COMPETITION” line of bullsh*t is making people think that it is OK to work for free… they need to know that IT IS ACTUALLY NOT A COMPETITION… it is in fact a multi-million dollar company brain-washing wanna-be designers into thinking that they are getting ahead and making a great start in their design career… but in fact 99DESIGNS just got you to work for them for absolutely NOTHING!!! They just got you to benefit their company and make them richer and they didn’t pay you one cent!!!
There is a reason that 99DESIGNS turns around more than two million dollars a month… and that is UNPAID LABOUR!!!
Businesses simply cannot survive when competing with companies that crowd source. You cannot make a professional living from the hope that you will win money in a “competition”. If “competitions” are the future of graphic design then that is certainly no longer a professional industry that i would suggest any one interested in a design career to enter.
I predict that one day all graphic design will be done in India or China (or poorer countries), where most of the ‘crowd’ in crowd-sourcing is based and that they will eventually produce the worlds best design.
Do not kid yourselves that a typical winning design that comes from 99designs is inferior to what the average professional designer in say Australia would produce. The vast majority of the people on the site are beginners, it’s true, BUT they are learning fast, are highly motivated, there is an awful LOT of them and enough of them are VERY talented. Also don’t forget, often the best work is produced under time pressure and that completing with someone makes people rise to the challenge in a way that a comfortable professional sitting alone in his studio might not. They also usually have the benefit of viewing the ideas generated by 40 or 50 other competing designers (and the clients reaction to them) during the competition.. what an amazingly rich source of information and inspiration.. a designer working in isolation, ultimately, won’t be able to compete. Finally, don’t forget that to a worker in India or China a $300 ‘prize’ is enough to survive off for 3 months (and to their next win).
I abhor the exploitation of designers like this, in the same way I have always abhorred free pitching… most designers have done it at some stage in their career.. this is just on a much bigger scale and competing with poorer countries. What is actually happening before our eyes is that graphic design is being killed off in ‘expensive’ countries and is blossoming in ‘cheap’ countries.
Come on people, draw the right parallels.
Agencies spend a crap load of time doing ‘pitches’ for new business – this is work that is unpaid! These crowd sourcing contests are a great mechanism for designers to develop relationships with potential clients. They submit work, show their chops and then build a relationship. It’s obviously at the designers risk – but it’s not a new concept… the potential gains in the longer term are high. That’s why it works. The difference is that by facilitating this process online, a lot more designers can join the ‘pitching’ process.. but because designers aren’t always excellent sales people, this is a great way for them to meet clients through showing their work, not their lip service.
So many of the designers that enter these contests end up building a bucket load of ongoing 1 on 1 design projects with their customers…
This is the same model that has been going on forever. It’s just at a different scale (lower end) and online… what I think the issue is that there are some great designers arising that are willing to work for less… widespread access to the tools needed so there are simply more designers around – especially in cheaper economies. This isn’t devaluing design.. this is called globalisation.
Adapt… or die.
bottom line is, the work you’ll get form 99 Designs et al will be
a. crap
b. ripped off
c. ripped off and crap
on the plus side, you’ll get loads of choice and it wont cost you as much!
bottom line is…
a. ~$250 for a logo is a little cheaper than a $10,000 agency fee
b. you can’t expect a lamborghini for the cost of a Toyota – no one is pretending that these sites have the best design work going round.
c. it’s making design accessible where it previously wasnt.
All the people who used to make horse saddles and then sat in a corner and cried when the car was invented … are now broke. Does anyone give a shit?
Adapt or die.
Hi All.one thing i can say in here: all the negative oared and pretending to be a professional designers get an account in 99 designs find a contest post it in here with a link( a non blind ofcourse) participate ( as i know you all are great and all in there are monkeys!!!
and let us see what great design you will be producing after reading your briefing at the end of a week and if anyone of you will even get to the final rounds.
Lets Go 🙂