99designs launches fixed price spin-off Swiftly
Crowd sourcing design site 99designs is to launch a spin-off brand Swiftly which will offer the ability to have a simple design task carried out for a flat $15 fee on a one-hour turnaround.
Rather than the model used by 99designs and other sites in the crowd sourcing space such as Freelancer, the Swiftly model focuses on individual tasks, such as changing the colour on a logo or a job title change on a business card.
Professional designers are often opposed to the crowd sourcing mode, particularly when the winner is effectively decided via a contest, as they feel it devalues the profession.
According to Swiftly: “Swiftly’s team of designers have been hand picked from the 99designs team to form the launch team to ensure quality and around the clock availability.
“It’s solving that pain point of not having an inhouse design team or not having an inhouse design team that has the time to fix your business cards every time you get promoted.”
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“Professional designers are often opposed to the crowd sourcing mode, particularly when the winner is effectively decided via a contest, as they feel it devalues the profession.”
Professional designers are generally anti-spec work, i.e. working for free.
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What sort of wage per hour is that?
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“Swiftly” race to the bottom.
But seriously this has been done before although a $15 price tag marks a new low. Of course nono of the crowd sourcing outfits puts a price on the hidden costs such as a half baked specification delivering a crap result and the costs of taking down material that was lifted from another site.
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This is everything that is wrong with the world today.
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It’s these kind of sites that are killing designers. GOOD designers are undervalued enough as it is.
professional designers shouldn’t be working for free – even junior ones. it gives prospective clients the idea they can get something for nothing and they’ll continue to think that way.
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I love businesses like this that devalue a profession just so they can build a strong ‘sell price’ and exit fee.
New startup idea folks… 99plumbers! Brief in 10 plumbers who can all pop round to fix your toilet. Whoever does the best job in the quickest possible time gets paid. The rest will get nothing.
Sounds fantastic doesn’t it.
A collective sigh, a collective groan, and a collective get f*cked to both Swiftly and 99Designs.
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Did anyone stop to think that $15 is often more than a day’s wages in some countries? It’s a very big deal, and good pay, for a designer there for a couple of hours work. And they can be just as talented/creative/passionate.
So the issue is the relativity of wages, not that good designers aren’t getting rewarded.
And this situation is exactly what call centre operators, accountants, etc are facing in their industries.
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If they’re only charging $15/hr, what would their “hand picked” designers be remunerated, per hour?
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Wow. Fucking wow.
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Although the minimum wage in Australia is A$16.37 per hour sadly there are far too many countries around the world where the hourly rate is less than $0.50c – e.g Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, etc. and $15 for a few minutes changing a job tittle on a business card might make a difference to designers in some regions.. Obviously, I agree with some comments above re the risk for professional local designers but this clearly attempts to engage global resources where these figures would actually make a difference – my opinion anyway.. !
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Clients don’t provide clear directions 90% of the time. I’m interested in the recourse when the designer provides the work then the client says ‘but I didn’t want that blue – something lighter…’
Headaches all round.
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It seems a little flawed. The type of ‘tasks’ that are mentioned, i.e. change the title on a business card, would take no more than a minute to do, in which case $15 is probably quite a lot. I would imagine a designer could do several of those tasks over the course of an hour, in which case they could make a decent living. I am not obviously aware of the operating model & if this is possible though.
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if you want a business card updated then just get your printer to do it when they print them.
if you value design then you will have a designer that will do this. if you have a good relationship with them and give them the big jobs when they come in then they will likely to little jobs for nothing as its not worth the admin costs to bill it.
this also depends on the instruction from the client being clear and interpreted by the designer correctly at their end. something which could easily go to shit.
there is probably a need for this but i doubt it gets the smily faced result every time.
ps – anyone who wants to ‘quickly change the colour on a logo’ is a clown and deserves a horrible looking ‘logo’!
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I would earn more flipping burgers. i hope 99 designs fail 99 ways.
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I think this is great – well done 99Designs.
I’d even pay $25 if I didn’t need to hear designers whining about how special they are and how much the design the have to work with is crap.
Suck it up I say to every designer rocking an Apple product made by the same cheap outsourced labour pool.
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Hey BigBoss.
Maybe you can spend that $25 on perfecting your golf-swing whilst you aren’t at work 3 days a week.
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@Biggboss you sir, are a douche.
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99designs has spotted a hole and is trying to capitalise on it. I can understand both sides to this, I see clients get frustrated with waiting on (and paying for) tiny changes that would take 15min. And as a designer, I’m against the idea of crowd sourcing design, many of the reasons why were listed above.
But, you really can’t blame 99Designs for trying make money. It’s what got us into this mess in the first place. Since anyone with a pirated version of photoshop can say they’re a designer, photographer, writer, whatever — I can’t think of another industry that has so many people undercutting each other.
Eventually we would get down to the lowest price possible. Next they’ll get us to work for something to put in our ‘books’.
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I’m starting a site. 99blowjobs.
@ BigBoss – feel free to sign up. $25!
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@Corey
“Next they’ll get us to work for something to put in our ‘books’”.
It’s already happening. It’s sometimes called “internship”
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@tim
Ha, yeah you’re right. A classy name for ‘work experience’ — poor bastards.
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99 ways to get rooted
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As a graphic designer this doesn’t bother me at all.
It creates an opportunity for people who are will to work for that rate.
if a client is going to use 99 designs then I don’t need them as a client.
if you don’t like 99 then don’t compete for work on their market
my work comes from word of mouth and my portfolio.
Dont whine & moan its a free market.
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