My First 99Designs Experience

How we were able to choose a very professional app logo from 108 designs in just 7 days.

99 Designs is an online platform on which you can have a very specific design created by artists from all over the world. To do this, you create a contest and after a certain period of time you choose a winner, who will receive the prize money. The prize money is determined by you, although you should stick to certain categories: Princing.

The concept

The concept is simple: you need a design and designers from all over the world can create designs for you. The criticism is of course that the money is much less than for a "real" designer and only one of them wins the prize money. However, the good thing is that you don't have to look for a local designer and then you are bound to him. Also, the artist don’t have to be professionals or own a large office. In their free time they can take part in competitions to create great designs and improve themselves. Often the first idea is decisive for designs and a lot of artists can submit their first idea with relatively little effort. With our designs, you have seen at first sight whether it "fits" or not.

Preparation

We had developed an app in which multilingual people can chat with each other in their mother tongue. Messages are always translated immediately for the recipient.

We have given a lot of thought to how we want to start the competition. Although we only needed a first app logo for our project, we discussed the descriptive text well. It should describe our idea as well as possible, but at the same time he should not restrict the designers too much. We described our idea and deliberately used only words that we wanted to see in the logo, but avoided others.

"We are building a simple multi language chat application with the main goal of connecting people. With the chat app we try to simplify communication by removing language barriers. The app itself is easy to use and minimalistic. Everyone is able to write and read in the language of their own choice."

That's all we wrote. Sentences like "On the whole world" otherwise make a globe appear in many logos. We let the designer pick the colors and the exact direction himself. Our competition was also "blind", so that other designers can't see the designs and so you get a very creative choice of designs.

Start of the competition

Registration, creation of the competition and payment was much easier than expected. Very clear and simple dialogues lead you quickly to your goal. In order to create the competition, a short description and some settings, such as the industry, are given. The competition had already started.

The competition

Shortly after the start we received the first designs and were right in the middle of it. Hourly or even minute by minute new designs came in and with it almost exclusively very nice descriptions and the questions whether the designer could improve something. Communicating with the designer is very easy, as each design has its own chat open to discuss details, colors or style. Almost all designers have quickly received and implemented the feedback. After 4 days you choose the finalists. That was the hardest task because we received so many good designs. Fortunately, you can create polls and easily share them with your friends. The finalists can then be contacted again to give specific feedback.

The Logo

After 7 days you can choose a winner. Very difficult in our designs because we liked many of them. But this logo fits best to our ideas:

"Hello... I've decided to do a simple chat bubble but that also has the shape of a megaphone. The message that I want to give is that thanks to your app, users can "be heard" by anyone because your app removes the language barriers."

With the description and the very friendly and easy communication Carlos Afonso (Carlos Afonso, link to his portfolio) finally convinced us. The logo is very simple and minimalistic and fits best to our idea.

Conclusion

We are absolutely thrilled and will use 99 designs immediately when we need a new design. To be honest, while I'm writing this, we already gave Carlos another assignment. The competition has been incredibly fun and, more importantly, has achieved a great result. 99 designs is an incredible platform to get a great design easily, quickly and reliably.

(If you are also enthusiastic about great designs, scroll through the already completed designs at 99Designs Discover and maybe get your own design)