DesignCrowd is a marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design contests. The Sydney, Australia-based company has been around since 2008 and has facilitated more than 350,000 design creations during that time.
In fact, they boast over 750,000 designers on their platform ready to tackle your project. Some of their top designers have earned more than $1,000,000, and you can even invite them to submit their concepts for your contest.
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About DesignCrowd
DesignCrowd plays to the idea that for creative work like graphic design, it’s better to get a broad range of ideas and concepts, instead of working exclusively with one designer.
Their platform facilitates these types of “crowdsourced” contests, with you as the client gathering a ton of options and picking your favorite.
The company offers their marketplace for a wide variety of design services, including logos, web sites, advertising graphics, flyers, print ads, t-shirts, business cards, and more.
A typical DesignCrowd contest gets a little more than 100 entries. I imagine you’ll find something suitable for your brand out of 100 choices!
Special Offer: Use promo code AFF150OFF for up to $150 off your design project!
DesignCrowd Review
I tested DesignCrowd in 2016 for a book cover project and share my experience in this video:
In 2019, I went back to DesignCrowd for a t-shirt design and really liked the results. I got over 150 design submissions on this one.
Here’s the winning design:
How it Works
Your first step in getting started with DesignCrowd is to create a design brief. It’s a fancy way of asking you to describe your project and any vision you have for it, so designers have some sort of starting point.
At this stage, you can also decide which price tier you’d like to offer to the winning designer. Naturally the higher your offer, the more designs you’re likely to attract.
Almost immediately, designers will start submitting their ideas and concepts. You can solicit feedback from friends, customers, or colleagues, and even request revisions from the designers before you decide on the winner.
Once you have your selection, you get all the necessary files, legal protections and rights to that design, and funds get released to the winning designer.
Plans and Pricing
Like other crowdsourcing sites, DesignCrowd has some pricing flexibility depending on your budget.
Logo design packages start at $109 and go all the way up to over $700. The drawback to the $109 price-point is that you’ll only get 1 designer, which kind of defeats the “crowdsourcing” purpose.
But at the $319 price point, you can expect multiple submissions from several designers, giving you a nice variety to choose from and still spend less than at competing sites.
Special Offer: Use promo code AFF150OFF for up to $150 off your design project!
At the top-end, I can see some overwhelm setting in from trying to choose from 150+ designs, so would probably opt for something in the middle. DesignCrowd indicates their $499 package promising 100+ designs is their most popular offering, though if my budget is tight I’d go for the 50+ tier and save the $180.
There are add-ons to make your contest private or feature it to get more submissions.
If at the end of the contest you don’t like any of the designs, DesignCrowd will refund your project under their 100% money back guarantee.
(Of course, you’ll get more submissions if you make your project guaranteed and waive your right to a refund.)
DIY Logo Services
DesignCrowd has spun off an AI-logo design service called BrandCrowd, in which you can use thousands of templates to build your own logo.
Punch in your company name, an industry or keyword, and begin to sort through the options:
From there, you can logo style, font style, and color preferences until you arrive on the perfect logo for your business.
Like other Do-It-Yourself logo services, you’ll pay for the use of the high resolution files. On BrandCrowd, the fee is $25-45 (not sure if the $25 shown is a limited time promo):
There’s also a monthly subscription option, which includes a bunch of extra stuff, of which the “unlimited edits” is probably the most valuable. I can see that being helpful if you need to make a change in the future.
But otherwise, it seems kind of unnecessary to pay monthly for what if most likely a 1-off project.
DesignCrowd Alternatives
There are several companies that offer similar graphic design outsourcing. The best-known of the crowdsourcing options is 99designs. One interesting point of differentiation is DesignCrowd’s “Participation Payment” program, which rewards designers for submitting their work to your contest even if they don’t win.
If you have a need for ongoing design work, Design Pickle might be worth checking out.
| Fiverr | Penji | 99designs | Design Pickle | Looka | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | |||||
| Established | 2010 | 2016 | 2008 | 2015 | 2016 |
| Minimum Cost | $5 | $399 per month | $299 | $399 per month | $20 |
| Type of Service | A la carte design | Unlimited Graphic Design | Crowdsourced design | Unlimited design | AI logo design |
| Best for | Fast, cheap designs | On-going design needs | Higher profile work | Ongoing design needs | Affordable DIY |
| Notes | 15-day money back guarantee. | 100% money-back guarantee | 14-day money back trial; 30% off first month w/ code VA30 | Don't pay until you love your logo | |
| Learn more | Learn More | Learn More | Learn More | Learn More | Learn More |
Your Turn
Have you worked with DesignCrowd? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their hiring decision.
They steal money from designers – all the time!
They send job invitations for a fee of $ 20 regardless of the outcome of the competition, but in fact you will never get that money. You’re not even sure when you work on 1-on-1 project, and then you won’t get paid if the client doesn’t approve, even though they’ve been using your design for a year. The platform has many drawbacks. Terrible service!
Yes i signed up a few months ago and did some designs for a company. How ever i submitted the designs and was told that it have to go through a screening, which i had no problems with. But after a couple hrs i got an email saying my designs are too generic and was not approved. So being the person i am i decided to do another design and the get disapproved again. Seems to me Designcrowd quality is some what confusing. I have seen designs on there site looks generic and got approved. Never the less i left that site. I do not think i would ever signed up on sites like that again.
I used to be a designer on there for over a decade and have NEVER been paid before! Goodness flipping gracious! And I’ve heard how designers only get 10% of what they’re said that designs are paid!
RATHER USE Fiverr
I had a terrible experience with them. The designer did not submit in the required amount of time, and when I contacted them to try to get it fixed, they gave a vague response and tried to get me to pay them more money to upgrade to a bigger package.
I would not recommend them at all – they don’t seem to have any way of monitoring the designers, or holding them to timelines.
And, of course, there is no way to have your money refunded completely when they do not hold up their end of the contract
Unprofessional:
Company is not aware of certain details a project will ask for and will filter through drawings before reaching client. Not professional as it is supposed to be platform for freelancers to communicate with clients not Design Crowd. Most designs selected are to great either if you take a look at some of their “top” designers.
Terrible company. I paid for a logo and business card design. I got one not good logo design and nothing else. No business card design at all. I requested a refund and was told no refund would be offered. I’m really surprised and very disappointed. Huge waste of time and money.
WARNING WARNING totally scams do not deal with them.
After they took $462.80 I didn’t get anything done now I’m fighting them to get my money back.
No luck so far. They even scam PayPal they provide them with a Feak document says they provide me the service when they didn’t
What a waste of time and money I been waiting for 3 months for them to provide me a website design
Finally they show me a demo they won’t let me use it until I pay them more. When I refused pay them more what we deal they took the whole money and stop responding.
Then I find out that they are not a web designer company they use people from outside the US
Pay them nothing for a bad job that doesn’t even function.
I used DesignCrowd for a recent book cover design project. I picked a middle of the road pricing option (around $250 — by FAR the most I’d ever spent on a book cover), and ended up getting 35-40 design submissions from 13 different designers.
Some of submissions, honestly, were horrible. But a few were pretty good, and one I LOVED. I was able to go back and forth with the designer to make tweaks and adjustments to the colors and the images used.
DesignCrowd even has a voting feature where you can survey prospective readers/customers to see which one they like the best. (I got some surprising results on that, but was annoyed that the site required voters to register.)
All in all, I’m really happy with the end result. One thing I probably would do differently is this. Designcrowd has a money back guarantee, but gives you the option to waive it in order to attract more designs. Once I had the foundation of the design I really liked, I probably should have killed my money-back guarantee option to show other designers I was serious.
The other thing I learned in the process is really that communication is king. The odds of getting something perfect the first time without any back and forth I think are pretty low, so be prepared to invest some time in providing feedback to your designers.
Was it money well spent? I think so. I’ve already more than broken even on it, and the book is only a month old. People judge books by their cover, and I think it turned out great.
It is a SCAM!
Just wanted to let you know, that we are extremely dissatisfied with using the service.
Despite the money back guarantee, they kept the money, even trough the proposed designs – all coming from same source – were NOT satisfactory.
The recieved work is a rip off, has issues with copyright infringements. Basically – pictures stolen from the Internet!
We paid extra for html code, and recieved a bag of garbage.
My advice – avoid this scam.
I purchased (i.e. prepaid) a bundle at about $500 US. Big mistake. Mediocre quality. When I request refund per their policy they got very shifty and started sending every excuse in their clearly very large inventory. WOrse, they provided and charged me for additional services that were in the bundle but never approved. Very poor experience, quality of design roughly in line with a high-school project. Please learn from my mistake. Gave 2 stars for communication b/c at least they responded.
Please do not use design crowd. They are all well and good until you realise the way they treat the designers that are working hard trying to make some kind of money knowing that with however many designers competing against them for the same prize they are unlikely to get it. I submitted a design for one project that, admittedly, was not my best piece of work, but it was not awful. I had stuck to the brief that the customer had given and provided them with a design that had still taken me quite some time to produce. Well, the designcrowd staff decided to reject it from the site before even letting the customer see it. There was no explanation as to why, so I contacted their customer service to politely ask why, expecting to get a polite response from someone who may have had at least a single hours worth of training on how is appropriate to behave when you work in customer service and how isn’t! Sadly I was wrong, as the email I got back was a rambling torrent of overkill from a service consultant called Carmela about how shit they thought my design was, and continuing on to how in their view (and I quote) it “lacks Elements of Design, such as Form, Space, Value, Line, Shape, etc. [Your] design also lacks Principles of Design, such as Contrast, Emphasis, Balance, Proportion, Harmony, and Rhythm” which (and I do not say this at all to support my work, I purely want to point out their inappropriate behaviour) was simply not true. The customer had provided a logo which I had texture slightly and then centred in the image. They had also provided a title, but no request as to how it was done, so I added that myself and worked it around the extents of the logo, then finally placed it all on a textured cloudy background. The client asked for a minimal clean design. I stuck to the brief. Appalled and insulted by their reply I wrote back to them to inform them as such. I informed them that I believed it was inappropriate for them to delete designers’ hard work before showing it to customers just because they don’t like the look of it. I then apologised in case my reply had come off rude, but reminded them I was actually quite insulted by how they had responded before. I therefore told them that I wanted no more to do with them and could they terminate my account as I don’t want to work in this way, I have far to much other stuff going on to be part of that. The reply I got back again was from Carmela, which I didn’t anticipate as I thought considering my email was a complaint about her behaviour, another member of staff would have handled it. Carmela very rudely replied once again that if I “can’t handle any criticism then I should look elsewhere! Thank you!” Frankly, appalled is the only way I can describe how I’m feeling. I’ve taught myself design work in a desperate attempt to try and find ways to help with finding my degree. I don’t enjoy making designs from terribly short briefs knowing that with 30 odd designers also working on the same brief I’m unlikely to get paid for my work anyway! This was not a hugely important matter. All designcrowd had to do was either not eliminate my design, or provide me with a decent reason as soon as they did, about why they did, without me having to chase them up to get one. And all this Carmela woman had to do was follow very basic customer service training. Neither of those things happened