DesignCrowd review by Inspector Jones

In a word, DesignCrowd is great. It’s a great way to get a small design project off-the-ground very quickly, attracting a large number of different designs.

DesignCrowd is a marketplace connecting designers with people who need design work done. It includes corporate identity design (like business cards, logos, or powerpoint templates), web design, and virtually any other type of print or graphic design you can think of - advertising, packaging, t-shirts, flyers, signs, or more.

Before you choose DesignCrowd, here are the key things you need to know.

First, understand how design competitions work. You submit a brief that describes your project, explaining what you want in a design. Designers from around the world will then submit various different designs (typically over 100), and you choose the best, work with designers to refine the designs… and then select a winner!

Second, you will get a mix of quality - designs that meet your quality expectations, and designs that don’t. Because many different designers submit their designs, it will take your time and effort (probably more than you expect) to sort through them and provide feedback.

Third, be careful of budget. With DesignCrowd you can set your own budget - larger to attract more designers, smaller to get better value. In my experience, middle-of-the-range budgets are best. A small budget won’t attract the best designers, and a large budget will do nothing to increase quality (you’ll only get a huge number of average-quality entries).

I highly recommend DesignCrowd or one of its major competitors - 99designs or crowdspring - for getting quick, good and varied designs to choose from. If you don’t have time to review 100+ designs, or if you are looking for the highest-quality design, I recommend you engage a freelance designer directly (which you can also do through DesignCrowd).