9 practical steps to getting great outsourced design on 99designs

As I wrote last week, I decided to use the design exchange 99designs for our new logo for Future Exploration Network’s sister organization, Advanced Human Technologies. We received over 140 logo submissions, including many very high quality designs, going through a highly iterative process to get an excellent outcome.
Click here to see the submissions and winner (however quite a few designers have withdrawn their designs so they are no longer visible – the full field was a lot more impressive). The winner of the competition is below, created by designer kn. Note that this is not yet our official logo (that will be when our website is relaunched early next year) and may be tweaked further before it becomes our final logo.

Here are nine lessons we learned on how to get great results on 99designs:
1. Know what you are looking for
The questions asked when you post your contest, in terms of what you do and don’t want, are important to think through. To a certain extent that becomes clearer when you can respond to specific ideas, however the more you know beforehand, the easier it is. In particular for logo designs, you need to be clear on what identity and connotations are associated with your company.

2. Pay a fair price
Always offer more than the average fee. Unless you get good designers to be attracted to the competition, there’s no point. However you don’t have to compete to pay the highest fee. If you can make the project interesting and the competition process engaging, you will still get good designers involved.
3. Provide detailed feedback
We received more submissions than most, hopefully partly because it was an interesting contest, but more importantly because we gave feedback to all the submissions on why they did or didn’t work. Creative people don’t work well in a void, and we saw great response when we gave feedback. Thank people for their submissions and efforts, and be respectful.
4. Focus on the good designers
You can usually instantaneously from a submission whether a designer is competent. It is good to give feedback to all initially, even if it is just to point out to all what is wrong with it. However from the many designers competing, you can clearly see early on which have the capabilities to win. Give them detailed feedback and encouragement. Remember they have many competitions to choose from, and you want them to be putting energy into yours.
5. Use the star rating system and withdraw entries
At a certain point, with well over 100 entries having come in, it was difficult to provide individual comments on every entry. Earlier in the competition providing detailed feedback both encouraged designers, and gave them a better idea of what I was looking for. Later on, it was more important simply to indicate what I did and didn’t like. It takes a moment to give a star rating from 1 to 5, already giving very useful feedback to designers. If it’s clear that designs or designers will never get there, just withdraw them – that’s clear feedback.
6. Take advantage of designers riffing off each other
The first couple of days of the competition saw nothing worthwhile emerge, but as I gave both general comments on what was and wasn’t working, and specific feedback on each entry, better entries emerged. Increasingly my suggestions and ideas to designers were followed by other designers. Designers might not like this, but it is great for a client who can see multiple designers
7. Get multiple opinions as you consider submissions
It can get overwhelming once you’ve looked at over 100 logos, and it’s important to get multiple opinions. I’m not a designer, but I have a strong visual bent and know what I like. However I found it invaluable to get not just opinions but also suggestions from my wife Victoria Buckley (who is a jewellery designer with impeccable taste) and my team. What is being designed will be seen by many people, so you want many opinions.
8. Always select a winner
While it is possible on 99designs not to select a winner, don’t do it. I wanted to use 99designs for my logo design at least as much to find out how it worked as to get a logo. I thought that there was a fair chance that I wouldn’t get what I wanted, but I was definitely going to pay whoever provided the best submission. It’s not fair on the designers if you don’t select a winner, and you won’t get any submissions if you use the service again later.
9. Consider getting the winner to work on it more
At the end of the standard one-week competition process, I had a clear winner, but I thought that it was worth trying some further variations. I offered the winning designer some extra money to do some additional variations on the logo. In the end we went with the original winner, but it was worth exploring a few other possibilities.
From the first time I came across 99designs I thought that it provided an extremely interesting model. Now that I’ve tried it, I see that the promise of the model is already largely fulfilled.
If you hire a designer – whether it is someone local, or one you have selected from an online services exchange such as elance, Guru, or oDesk – you have to go through an iteration process to move towards what you really want. The advantage of 99designs is that you have many designers to iterate with – not just individually but also collectively. The chances are high that you’ll end up with a great result. This is a great addition to other models of delivering online services.
Two essential things need to be in place for this model to work: quality designers competing, and quality feedback to help them refine their suggestions. While 99designs already has many quality designers, hopefully this pool will increase further. One thing I love about this process is that the better the client, the better the result. If you are good at knowing what you want and giving good feedback, you’ll get great results.
Perhaps other start-ups will learn from and evolve this interesting model of getting the best out of talented people around the world.