Design as Commodity: An Experiment with 99 Designs

Be sure to listen to the corresponding episode of On the Grid about this contest. It contains more information and discussion with Matt and Dan.

Every designer has two parts: creator and editor. The former invents systems and the latter makes sense of them. The creator fills our sketchbooks and whiteboards and computer files; the editor puts the work in context and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses. Understanding these distinct modes was crucial in my personal development as a designer. When I was young I made the mistake of trying to both create and edit entirely in my head so that by the time I actually produced something for others to see it was already beautiful and well resolved. This was due to a potent cocktail of insecurity, which made hide my work, and arrogance, which made me believe I was capable of making great things without doing the legwork. I recognize now that even the most experienced designers must first freely create before editing and refining.

I believe creativity is neither a natural gift nor an acquired talent, but instead a willingness to work hard and generate a wide variety of ideas as ammunition for the editing process. Those who are young and hungry produce a lot of work, and those who are older apply their comparatively rare experience to edit and refine. Thusly the world is filled with primarily young designers and senior creative directors.

The creator and the editor influence each other. Experience makes creativity more efficient, dawdling less on empty, hackneyed, or derivative ideas. Creativity introduces new patterns and new opportunities to otherwise impotent experience. This ebb and flow is how we improve, either inside ourselves or with others.

As Friends of The Web grows and we’re fortunate enough to work with talented young designers I’ve found that my job more closely resembles that of a creative director. In some ways this is a smooth transition. My director voice already exists inside me and has been editing my own work for years. However, translating that voice into coherent communication to my teammates is a different skill entirely, one that is not as widely taught or valued. What’s more, this communication cannot be practiced alone like the other important skills of design. There is no low-stakes environment to learn and I can’t lock myself away and practice until I’ve met my standards of quality.

For over a year now I’ve wanted to conduct an experiment, and when presented with the challenge of creating new artwork for our podcast, On the Grid, I decided to put my money where my mouth is. If creativity is a matter of hard work and my experience as an editor is valuable to my team, can I create good work with 99designs?

99designs, a website where anyone can affordably buy design services through a contest model, is the flagship service for the commodification of design. My peers scoff at it and the idea that good design can be so affordable and accessible. The work on the site, and subsequently the designers behind it, are considered inferior and incomparable to “real” designers. This is a stroke of hypocrisy. The same designers who will criticize the work on 99designs frequently absolve themselves from their own shit work by blaming their “clients from hell”. Any for-hire design work is the result of the relationship between client and designer, and I wondered if the problem with 99designs was more often the former. When you consider the customer as a creative director, tasked with leading a team, identifying successful directions, and providing healthy feedback, most of the clients on 99designs are vastly under-qualified.

Many people’s primary issue with 99designs is not the quality of work it produces but the method by which that work is produced. Their contest model awards the modest prize for a project to the “winning” designer, selected by the client. The rest of the designers who contributed, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, go home empty handed†. This spec-work, asking designers to do work without guarantee of fair pay, is tantamount to original sin to some. However, I find that analysis biased and narrow-minded.

99designs, as far as I know, is one of the most equal opportunity platforms for designers in the world. There are a number of reasons it can be difficult or impossible for someone to find paying work as a designer. Some of these barriers, like lack of skill or experience, are understandable. Some of them, like language, age, geographic location, race, lack of formal education, or simply not knowing the right people, are unfortunate and unfair biases of an industry coined by western white men. While it is easy to dismiss 99designs as a service with a malicious payment model and unskilled designers, the reality seems to be that it’s one of the best ways for a subset of designers to get paid for their work‡. If it wasn’t, it probably wouldn’t have thrived for the past six years.

I was extremely uncomfortable handing out third and fourth rounds of feedback to hard working, eager-to-please designers that I knew may not be compensated for their efforts. However, that discomfort comes from confronting my own privilege, and recognizing that 99designs is one of the only opportunities for many designers to make a living. The much-maligned contest model is an important part of the success of the system. How else would I, or any other client on 99designs, come to pay an otherwise unproven designer, possibly one who doesn’t speak my language, for their work? How would I even find them? At the cost of spec-work, the contest levels the playing field and gives designers who may be the victims of a prejudiced system a chance. It’s easy to criticize the approach as someone with alternatives, but I’m not about to condemn the way someone else makes money from my position of privilege.

This logic, and my curiosity about a different part of the design world, allowed me to ignore my guilt for long enough to go through with the experiment. Here are the guidelines I set for myself:

• Use a Real Project — Part of the reason it took me so long to actually take on the experiment was the lack of an appropriate challenge. With a fake project it would be impossible to evaluate success and with something too simple I would probably have my own idea which I would be inclined to unwittingly favor. The artwork for the show is a very real challenge, and after trying dozens of different options with Matt and Dan, I felt truly stuck and open to anything.
• Respect the Designers — I decided I would give each and every designer that submitted to my contest the same thoughtful feedback I would give a designer in our studio. It’s the least I can do if they’re going to invest the time to work on my project.
• No Intervening — Even though I knew it would be tempting, I resolved not to step in actively as a designer. This meant no editing of any files directly and no creating sketches to demonstrate what I want. I would communicate with my words only.

Creating the project, I realized 99designs was more complicated than I thought. I had to choose from a wide array of categories, provide some basic information about the project, choose a “design package”, priced from $299 to $1,199, and decide if I wanted any additional marketing ad ons, such as publishing to the 99designs blog or Twitter feed for additional fees. It reeked of a form that had been highly tested and manicured to procure every cent from me, like the isle of a big-box store. I placed my project in the “other” category, because there wasn’t a category for podcast artwork, and chose the $299 package with no bells and whistles.

Next, I was presented with a fairly basic form that served as the project brief. I spent a lot of time on this step. If my assumptions about the type of customers 99designs appeals to were correct, this was my first opportunity to distinguish myself. Working in consulting, I’ve noticed that people who haven’t practiced design themselves tend to describe their needs in terms of possible solutions, not problems. This tendency is severely limiting to the creative process, and excludes solutions that the client wouldn’t have thought of. First I wrote a fairly thorough description of the show:

On the Grid is a weekly podcast about design. The hosts are:

Matt McInerney — A graphic designer at Pentagram, an established and prestigious graphic design firm in New York.

Andy Mangold — A designer and co-founder of Friends of The Web, a small web and mobile consultancy in Baltimore, MD.

Dan Auer — A designer and sometimes developer who has worked for a variety of startups and tech companies in the Bay Area.

Our show aims to discuss design, the web, branding, and technology (among other subjects) in an intelligent, thoughtful way. We strive to be critical, but not unjustifiably negative, and to avoid conversations about shallow, trendy, or time-sensitive subjects. Ideally, each of our shows is evergreen, providing just as much value to the audience if they listen the day the show is released or years later. The show is also meant to be entertaining, and contains a fair bit of jokes and swearing.

The audience for the show is largely young design/web professionals, such as designers, software engineers, and freelance designers/developers. Quite a few students and design educators also listen regularly. We’ve also found, by means of a listener survey, that the show appeals to some people whose jobs are not in design or technology fields. These people are often just interested in design at large, systems thinking, and a critical approach to technology. We would love to appeal to more people from fields that are not traditionally considered design-centric.

I’ve learned that a big part of bring a good editor is setting the stage for the project. I wanted to use the project brief to explain as clearly as I could what we were looking for, and to stop some of the most misguided designs before they were created. I laid out our primary goals for the artwork and also enumerated some things we really wanted to avoid in the “notes” section:

We are looking to replace our current podcast artwork. This artwork is a lot like an album cover, a square image that is used to identify our show on iTunes, in podcasting apps and services, and across the web.

Our primary concerns are:

Recognizability — The artwork should be unique enough that people can recognize it at a glance, even amongst a sea of other podcast artwork. It should not be easily confused with another podcast.

Reflection of Our Values — The artwork should reflect the unique tone and nature of our show (see description). Ideally it would communicate that it’s not just going to be another podcast with Photoshop tips and whining about some new logo. The hosts are three designers with different points of view. Notoriously, a discussion often ends with an unsatisfying “subject X is complicated and there is no right or wrong way to approach it”. The artwork should reflect this conflict lack of dogmatism.

Sustainability — The artwork should not lean heavily on current design trends. We’d like it to last for a long time, and not look out-of-date in a year or two.

Things we’d like to AVOID:

NO cliched design imagery, such as mouse cursors, pantone chips, pencils, etc. Basically, nothing from the Google image results for ‘graphic
design’: https://www.google.com/search?q=graphic+design&safe=off&espv=2&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=7ibRU_-IBpHfsATS7IHAAw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1700&bih=1012

NO cliched podcast/radio imagery, such as microphones, headphones, etc.

NO unnecessary ornamentation. There should be a good explanation for why every element on the artwork exists.

NO visual puns about grids or being on them.

Think about the context in which the artwork will appear. It will be in iTunes category pages and search results, where it will be quite small. It will be on the page for our specific show (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-grid/id547928774?mt=2). It will be on SoundCloud where it will be repeated many times on the page (https://soundcloud.com/onthegriddesign). It will also be on our Sub-Reddit (https://soundcloud.com/onthegriddesign). We may use it on social media as an icon, or on our own website as well.

My goal was to leave the designers relatively unrestricted while still providing plenty of material to inspire them. I did not dictate any preferred colors or imagery and I did not provide examples of other work that I thought was successful. These are probably the easiest ways for most people to communicate what they want, but they are too limiting. It was clear to me from how I had to shoehorn my idea of a project brief into their form that I was not the target audience and I was not using the tool as intended.

I hit submit and clicked around my newly minted project to see what it would look like from the designer’s perspective. I had the option of guaranteeing the prize money, which I elected to do. I found myself genuinely excited to see what the throngs of designers on 99designs would come up with.

In no time I was faced with a conflict: two of our designers at Friends of The Web, who had both submitted work to 99designs when they were younger, told me I had made a big mistake. Apparently the “other” category — which I maintain is the rightful category for the project — is woefully underattended. After discussing my options with them, I moved the project to one of the most popular categories, branding, figuring that a high volume of submissions was more important for the project than correct categorization.

As the first submissions trickled in, it seemed that providing a link to the existing show artwork was affecting the designers considerably. Many of the initial designs were extremely similar to our current artwork, with only slight alteration. I suspect this is because designers on 99designs are accustomed to being given very clear instructions on what the customer wants, and my lack of specifics had caught them off guard. I addressed this, and a trend of “quirky” capitalization, in a public post visible to all the designers:

Thank you all for your contributions to the project thus far! It’s exciting to watch them roll in. I have a few comments on the general trends:

I appreciate the use of just typography and the simple black and white palette that many of the designs are using. I wonder if this is inspired by our existing artwork. I think it works in a couple of ways, avoiding potentially problematic imagery and allowing the listener to form their own associations with the show. However, I’d like to encourage everyone to be a bit more adventurous. I’d love to see some full color options with different kinds of imagery to see what works and what doesn’t. At the very least, if you’d like to stick to straight typography, please try to make the type represent some of the values of the show.

I’m seeing a few goofy capitalizations in these designs. Unless there is a very good reason to deviate from it, I think we should stick with all caps “ON THE GRID” or the appropriate title case “On the Grid”. These quirky options read as childish and unsophisticated to me and it’s not helping to communicate anything about the show.

Please feel free to push the boundaries and try something really out there! I’ll be choosing the most unique designs and the most responsive designers as finalists!

The post seemed to be effective and new submissions clearly reflected the feedback I had given. Some people even went back and modified their previous submissions based on my comments. This was an encouraging sign: if they were receptive to feedback I had a chance to play a meaningful role.

As the project picked up steam, another worrying trend developed. Many of the submissions were essentially just logos, with no regard for the square format and the opportunity for complexity afforded by the medium. Perhaps I was feeling the damage of putting the contest in a not-quite-right category. I posted another message to the group:

I’m noticing most of the submissions are in the form of a logo in empty space. Please keep in mind that this is a contest for the cover artwork for a podcast. It can be full color, more complex than a typical logo, and MUST BE A SQUARE IMAGE. Please show how your design would fit into the a square. This is essential!

This helped a bit, but underscored my biggest concern about the whole project. I was operating under the assumption that I would be able to use 99designs to outsource the considerable work of generating lots of unique options for the project so that I could provide thoughtful direction to the most promising options to improve and refine them. My fear was that working hard on numerous options and being attentive to feedback wasn’t the best way to be successful as a designer on 99designs. Maybe reading the project brief consumes valuable time and doesn’t increase your chances of winning most contests. Maybe the best strategy is to spend five minutes working on submissions for twelve contests as opposed to an hour working on a submission for a single one. My guess is that the clients are unpredictable anyway. As best I can tell, some designers do take the shotgun approach, but many also demonstrated clearly that they had read and considered all the information presented to them.

Contests have a “qualifying” round, at the end of which clients can choose a selection of designers they’d like to work with in the finals. I sorted through all of the submissions and chose to work with four designers who demonstrated the greatest responsiveness to feedback and seemed most keyed in to the goals of the project. I provided them with more direction and they continued to revise their designs and submit new ideas.

A selection of options from the finals.

After pushing as hard as I felt comfortable, I settled on a winner. A simple, black and white typographic treatment that is fairly similar to our current artwork. I felt that the differently sized “N” gave the artwork just enough interest and alluded to our diversity of opinion and the casual tone of the show. It also reminded me vaguely of Paula Scher’s work for the New York Public Theater and of lead type carefully packed into a press bed. Overall, I was fairly happy with the finished product. Had I made it with my own hands I think I would be proud of it.

The winning design.

All said and done, I got 137 entries from 29 designers. I spent around 12 hours writing the project brief and providing feedback for all of the designs. Here are my biggest takeaways from the project:

• I don’t think the idea of crowdsourcing initial ideas for a project is flawed, but 99designs is not a suitable environment for good design. The project briefs are structured for rigid projects and it seems designers are rewarded for working quickly and predictably, not for taking the time to explore a problem and come up with interesting ideas. The goal was to get breadth of ideas, but instead I got many iterations on a very small set of ideas, probably because that is the behavior rewarded by the system.
• Many of the designs submitted fit the stereotype of 99designs: poorly executed and completely off the mark both formally and conceptually. However, this should not detract from the many submissions that did not fit the stereotype. If we’re treating this as a creative process the preliminary options should be held to no higher standard than doodles in a sketchbook. What was missing was a sense of teamwork and collaboration. Ideas that don’t work are at their best when they’re informing ones that do.
• The designers on 99designs are full of potential, but they are largely stymied by poor structure, unimaginative clients, a competitive tone amongst their peers, and tight deadlines. I believe under the right circumstances they would be capable of excellent work. My biggest critique is that overall they were too eager to please and responsive to feedback, and often didn’t present anything with their own voice or perspective present.
• The most obvious weak points of the submissions were typography and color. Both were a stumbling blocks for almost all of the designers, which further cements their place in my mind as fundamental pillars of design.
• Many designers would create simple submissions and then modify them in strange, arbitrary ways, ruining them completely. I think many of them lacked confidence in their designs, and felt as though they had to “do more” to a simple design for their work to be evident.
• The ethical implications of the contest model are not cut-and-dry for me. Perhaps there are more equitable ways to give people who don’t fit the typical mold of “graphic designer” a chance to make a living doing something they love, but the real impact of a system like 99designs can’t be ignored when discussing its morality.
• I believe running the contest was a good learning experience for me, and good practice in directing people unlike myself. Due to the time involved, the quality of the winning design, and the guilt I felt for only paying out one of the designers, I won’t be doing it again.
• I still believe that creativity is a matter of hard work.

We won’t be using the winning design as our actual podcast artwork; it’s just not quite as good as we hoped it might be. However, in our discussions, both Matt and Dan agreed that a number of the options from the contest could have passed for designs that we ourselves had made. Perhaps we’re not so different after all.

Be sure to listen to the corresponding episode of On the Grid about this contest. It contains more information and discussion with Matt and Dan.

† 99designs does have a 1-to-1 project system, and there are circumstances under which the prize for a contest can be split between multiple designers, but these appear to be mostly exceptions.

‡ Although the site was founded by western white men.