99designs

My company, Centripetal Software, is a new software startup. I quit my job at Microsoft on Oct. 15, 2009 to work on it full time. One thing that I wanted to get done was to begin to have a more professional presence on the web and elsewhere. I figured this started with ditching the home made logo I had created myself and go get a professionally designed logo. I began looking around online and with people that I knew who did this sort of thing and quickly determined that I couldn't afford to have it done professionally. About this same time I was reading through Bob Walsh's book "The Web Startup Success Guide" and came across a company profile he has in the book for 99 Designs. This web startup was exactly what I needed. This is basically crowd sourcing your design work.

The process for getting a logo created starts out by creating a Design Contest. In order to do this I wrote up my Design Brief which included a brief introduction to my company, a bit about my target audience, and then described what I wanted in a logo including some pointers to other logos that I sort of liked and why I liked them. Once I submitted this information the important part for a boot strapped startup came next. I got to choose how much I was going to pay for the whole thing. I chose to give a $295 prize to the winner of the contest. This is basically a guaranteed payment to a designed who creates the logo that I select. 99 Designs charges a small fee on top of that so my entire bill came to $364, much less than the thousands I had been quoted elsewhere.

Within a couple days of the contest starting up, different desingers began to submit designs. I was able to comment on each and every design telling what I liked and didn't like and changes I would like to see in the designs. Most designers were quick to turn around new designs and post them for me to see. The contest lasted for 10 days and by the end of the contest I had received 141 entries, many of them were variations on the same design, but I'd estimate I received about 30 unique designs from 15 different designers. I ended up choosing the logo you see on this site and have posted it here as well. I was very happy with the entire process and what I received as well as the cost. In the end I received my winning design in a Photoshop file and the designer even included some icons using my logo that I had expressed interest in. My logo now graces my business cards, my website, and is all over the development version of my product (which will be released in the next couple weeks).

99 Designs does Logos, icons, web site layouts, twitter and blog themes and pretty much anything design related. I'll certainly use them again when I need some additional work done.

The Pros:

• The Cost! $364 complete


• The Options, with that many options I was sure to find something I liked.


• Easy Process, 99 Designs makes it easy to get design work done for someone who is not design savvy.

The Cons:

• Information Overload - I almost had too many designs to choose from and had a hard time picking in the end. It also took a significant chunk of time to comment on each design.