On 99designs

The irony of 99designs is that its customers are actually paying to use their own design intuition! All they benefit from is the contestant’s Illustrator (or Photoshop or MS Paint) abilities.

If they actually valued design, they would pay a designer to deliver to them a solution he believed was correct, rather than choose from an assortment of shapes and colours based on their own ideas about design.

The result, of course, of a typical 99designs competition is complete crap. Not designed, but rather one of the pieces of shit thrown at a wall that stuck. And that’s all the economics of the competition can support; what real designer can actually take time to create an effective design solution when the potential prize is less than a couple hour’s work on a far-less-risky contracting job?

But I don’t advise people against using 99designs as long as they know what they’re buying. They’re buying their pick off the rails in T.K. Maxx. They’re buying their choice of sandwich filling in Centra. They’re buying LASIK@home. They’re buying a half-hour off a cheap hooker. They are not buying design.