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Check out http://99designs.com http://99designs.com and http://www.crowdspring.com http://www.crowdspring.com to outsource your design. Some people have natura

Check out http://99designs.com http://99designs.com and http://www.crowdspring.com http://www.crowdspring.com to outsource your design. Some people have natural talent with design. If you find you aren't one of these people, just get someone else to do it. I've had great experience with crowdspring and it is very good value for money. The best part about these two sites is, you get to choose the best design and give the designers feedback for further iterations.

josefresco 18y ago
Sites like these are like Elance for programmers. They devalue good design and force designers to work for very low rates and compete with each other thereby cannibalizing the industry.
- sanswork 18y ago
  They don't force anyone to work for low rates. They give designers/developers without the ability to develop business relationships or standard business a way to find clients. I see a lot of jobs on the programmer sites that end up going for less than $5 an hour. It doesn't mean I'm not charging a lot more than that per hour anymore. I can because I've developed relationships with people who will pay more.
  - Kinimat 18y ago
    These kinds of sites are ruining all creative industries. It's working for spec on the off-chance your designs might get chosen. THe odds are stacked against you and the competition devalues your work. It's the type of thing that is historically rampant with IP theft, abuse, underhanded tactics etc. Designers should not be working on spec; ever, especially college educated designers. It's tempting to get these projects under your belt for the experience and the portfolio but once you go down that path, it can be hard to raise your rates up to a liveable wage when everyone else is working for free or cheap.
    - sanswork 18y ago
      They aren't ruining creative industries at all. If you're good and can market yourself you can always find people to pay the rates you want. If you are missing one of those things you wouldn't be getting the rates you want anyhow. Your work is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. If you can't find people to pay what you want then you are overvaluing your abilities.
      - Raphael 18y ago
        The point is that people rely on a living wage, and too much competition reduces it to an unreasonably low rate for people in more expensive areas.
        briansmith 18y ago
        Expensive cities and design jobs are both luxury goods. Some day I hope to start up a bunch of huge computer labs throughout SE Asia and Africa so that kids can come in and do custom programming and graphic design, undercutting all of us Westerners. I'd rather have disadvantaged teenagers drawing little icons for $5 a hour than working as hookers to get $10 a night--even if it means that designers in the US won't be able to afford to live in downtown S.F., drinking $6 cups of coffee, and buying $5K of gadgets every year.
thorax 18y ago
We had a very positive experience with 99designs. We offered $200 awards to the top 2 entries for logo design and got 140 or so submissions/revisions from 36 different designers. We had a very difficult time narrowing it down from the top 10 or so because the quality was so great and the designers were quite responsive. We'll definitely be doing more there. There's a lot of talented people doing this work for fun and/or on the side to build up their portfolio. Not sure how long this will last for these low prices, but I definitely recommend taking advantage of it while it lasts. We paid for logo work at about the same price from an online company and got something passable, but had worries the whole time that we wouldn't get anything good at all. In the end the 99designer winner even sent us the raw Adobe illustrator files, etc. The pro firms I saw were only sending the SVG for artwork, but the raw source is even more useful if we need to transform things down the line (and helps confirm it's an original work). Not sure what the quality will be for website design, but the logo design side seemed to "crowdsource" amazingly well. YMMV.
wmeredith 18y ago
Here is a great article on 99designs at Graphic Push. http://www.graphicpush.com/99designs-bullshit-20 http://www.graphicpush.com/99designs-bullshit-20

josefresco 18y ago

Sites like these are like Elance for programmers. They devalue good design and force designers to work for very low rates and compete with each other thereby cannibalizing the industry.

sanswork 18y ago
They don't force anyone to work for low rates. They give designers/developers without the ability to develop business relationships or standard business a way to find clients. I see a lot of jobs on the programmer sites that end up going for less than $5 an hour. It doesn't mean I'm not charging a lot more than that per hour anymore. I can because I've developed relationships with people who will pay more.
- Kinimat 18y ago
  These kinds of sites are ruining all creative industries. It's working for spec on the off-chance your designs might get chosen. THe odds are stacked against you and the competition devalues your work. It's the type of thing that is historically rampant with IP theft, abuse, underhanded tactics etc. Designers should not be working on spec; ever, especially college educated designers. It's tempting to get these projects under your belt for the experience and the portfolio but once you go down that path, it can be hard to raise your rates up to a liveable wage when everyone else is working for free or cheap.
  - sanswork 18y ago
    They aren't ruining creative industries at all. If you're good and can market yourself you can always find people to pay the rates you want. If you are missing one of those things you wouldn't be getting the rates you want anyhow. Your work is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. If you can't find people to pay what you want then you are overvaluing your abilities.
    - Raphael 18y ago
      The point is that people rely on a living wage, and too much competition reduces it to an unreasonably low rate for people in more expensive areas.
      - briansmith 18y ago
        Expensive cities and design jobs are both luxury goods. Some day I hope to start up a bunch of huge computer labs throughout SE Asia and Africa so that kids can come in and do custom programming and graphic design, undercutting all of us Westerners. I'd rather have disadvantaged teenagers drawing little icons for $5 a hour than working as hookers to get $10 a night--even if it means that designers in the US won't be able to afford to live in downtown S.F., drinking $6 cups of coffee, and buying $5K of gadgets every year.

thorax 18y ago

We had a very positive experience with 99designs. We offered $200 awards to the top 2 entries for logo design and got 140 or so submissions/revisions from 36 different designers. We had a very difficult time narrowing it down from the top 10 or so because the quality was so great and the designers were quite responsive. We'll definitely be doing more there. There's a lot of talented people doing this work for fun and/or on the side to build up their portfolio. Not sure how long this will last for these low prices, but I definitely recommend taking advantage of it while it lasts. We paid for logo work at about the same price from an online company and got something passable, but had worries the whole time that we wouldn't get anything good at all. In the end the 99designer winner even sent us the raw Adobe illustrator files, etc. The pro firms I saw were only sending the SVG for artwork, but the raw source is even more useful if we need to transform things down the line (and helps confirm it's an original work). Not sure what the quality will be for website design, but the logo design side seemed to "crowdsource" amazingly well. YMMV.

wmeredith 18y ago

Here is a great article on 99designs at Graphic Push. http://www.graphicpush.com/99designs-bullshit-20 http://www.graphicpush.com/99designs-bullshit-20