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General
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DesignCrowd is a graphic design marketplace that gives creative people opportunities.
Businesses can post Open Brief Design Contests or
Request Quotes for logo design, business card design, advertising artwork
and website design. Our web-based marketplace lets graphic designers (including
studios, professional designers, work-from-home designers, student graphic designers
and freelance designers) respond to these briefs, post quotes to win work and earn
money. Once a job is completed, the business pays the designer and DesignCrowd
charges the designer a fee which is deducted automatically from that payment.
There are two ways to sell designs on DesignCrowd:
- Enter Open Brief Deisgn Contests; or
- Submit quotes to Request Quotes projects
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DesignCrowd charges designers a flat 10% fee of all payments they receive via DesignCrowd.
This fee is applied to any money you earn via DesignCrowd.
View DesignCrowd
Fees for more information.
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Open Brief Design Contest
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An open brief is a design project where the customers post a brief describing their
needs and any designer is invited to submit their design. Often multiple designers
will respond to this brief. Note that this type of brief is different to a
Request Quote brief.
- Find an open brief
- Create your design and submit it via the website
- Get paid
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The customer selects the winning design.
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Yes. You are able to submit more than one design for the same brief.
However you are only eligible for one participation payment per brief. It is possible
for a designer to be allocated more than one place payment for a particular brief
if he/she has submitted more than one design. Submitting more than one design,
mathematically, will increase your chances of winning.
To submit a second design to a brief you need to visit the briefs page, select your
brief and then select the "Submit your logo" or "Submit your design" button again.
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A participation payment is the minimum guaranteed amount paid to designers who submit for
a particular design open brief job. An open brief job will have a limited
number of minimum participation payments or may have no minimum participation payments at all.
These minimum participation payments can be reserved.
Minimum payments are only paid to designers once it has been determined that their
submission meets DesignCrowd's Minimum Design Standards.
There is a maximum of one participation payment per designer. To protect businesses
against poor quality submissions, DesignCrowd reserves the right not to pay the base
payment to a particular designer.
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No. A participation payment is a minimum. It is a safety net payment to make
sure you get some payment for your effort (if you do not want to bid-for-free).
If you receive a place payment (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc) as listed in the brief then
you cannot receive a participation payment for that brief in addition to that payment.
Place payments are always higher than the minimum payment.
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Before you submit a design for a brief, we will display on the brief page how many
other designers have submitted already and whether or not this is under the base
payment cap. You can reserve a participation payment by selecting
 Reserve
a Payment option in the tools box on a brief.
After you submit we will tell you what number your submission was and whether you
are eligible for a participation payment. However, after this we still need to check
that your design meets our Minimum Design Standards.
We will notify by email to let you know if you will receive a participation payment after
the brief closing date.
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This is the maximum number of designers who will receive a participation payment for a given
brief. If you submit a design after this you will not receive a participation payment.
However, you are still eligible to win the place payments if you upload your submission
before the brief closing date.
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Request Quotes Brief
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A request for quotes is a project where businesses post a brief to get quotes (an
offer to complete the project for a particular fee) from various designers.
The business assesses these quotes and chooses one designer to complete the work.
Upon successfully completing the project, the designer receives all the money.
Submitting a quote costs nothing and if you win, you know how much you will get
paid before you start designing. Here's how our service works for designers:
- Find a Request for Quotes project
- Submit a quote
- If you are selected, create your design and submit it on DesignCrowd
- Revise your work (if required)
- Get paid through PayPal
- Receive feedback
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You only start designing when you have been notified by DesignCrowd that you have
been awarded the work.
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It may win - but not necessarily. It is up to the customer to select the winning
designer.
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It is up to the customer. Your portfolio, bid, pitch and conditions are shown
to the customer and may all affect the outcome. The number of quotes you are
competing with may also affect whether or not you win. Customers may have different
needs. A customer looking to save money may select a cheaper or the cheapest
quote. A customer looking to find a designer they can use again and again
may be looking for the highest quality designer, with the best portfolio and communication
skills.
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This brief is aimed at helping the customer find one designer. Some customers
are not looking for multiple creative designs to choose from and they request quotes
first.
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Payment
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The amount you get paid depends on:
- How well your design performs. This will dictate whether or not you are selected
for a place payment.
- If your design meets our Minimum Design Standards.
- Whether your submission is eligible for a participation payment.
The size of your participation payment depends on:
- The participation payment amount for that brief. This is different for each brief and
is specified in the brief details.
- How quickly you respond. You must respond quick enough so you are within the
participation payment cap. For example, if a brief has a participation payment cap of 40 then
only the first 40 submissions that comply with the
Minimum Design Standards only will receive a participation payment.
You will be notified how much you will be paid for a specific submission after the
brief closing date.
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We will pay you via PayPal. You will need a PayPal account which you can get
for free at www.paypal.com.
To get paid you must submit designs to briefs that offer payment. Your designs
must meet our Minimum Design Standards.
To receive a participation payment there must be participation payments still available for that brief
(see What is the participation payment cap?).
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The payment currency is US dollars (USD). You will be able to convert this
to your local currency in PayPal. However, PayPal may charge you a fee for this.
You can also select to be paid in Australian dollars (AUD). We will convert
the USD amount to Australian dollars before transferring. This will save money
for Australian designers as it will prevent them incurring PayPal's conversion fee of 2.5%.
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Other Questions
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It depends on the brief. For a Review and Improve Research brief,
DesignCrowd may use your work, if selected, within surveys, research or articles (which
may be shared with the company) or published with third parties.
For regular briefs your designs will be shown to the client. If selected and
purchased, the ownership of your design is transfered to DesignCrowd and then to the
client.
Your designs are also shown to other designers within the community to receive ratings
from them. By default, all designs submitted to a design contest are kept
hidden from other designers until the design contest deadline finishes. Once a deadline
for a contest passes all designs for that contest are displayed publicly and designers
can vote on other designers' work. Designers can control the designs displayed in
their portoflios by either showing all the designs they've submitted or only the
designs they've submitted that received a place payment.
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An 'unofficial' brief is one that has not been approved or sanctioned by the company
which is featured in the brief.
These briefs are win-win: graphic designers get an opportunity to be creative, practice
their skills and earn money; and the company featured may receive some new creative
thinking and some publicity.
The responses to these briefs may be used in DesignCrowd research projects, or they
may be marketed to the company after the brief has closed.
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Yes. The payment amounts for 'unofficial' briefs are legitimate. These
payments come directly from DesignCrowd - not the company featured in the brief.
Payments for logos or graphic designs submitted to these briefs are treated in the
same way as payments for normal briefs.
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The purpose of a Review and Improve Research brief is:
- To give DesignCrowd access to designs (often logos) it can use in research; and
- To give people opportunities to be creative (our mission)
DesignCrowd likes to do research. We want to understand what makes a great design,
a great logo and a great brand and we want to share this with designers and businesses.
We will use designs created in Review and Improve Research briefs within
surveys, articles and studies.
Review and Improve Research briefs are paid for by DesignCrowd. They
are not endorsed or pre-approved by the target company. The responses to the
briefs and results from the research may be shared with the target company.
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DesignCrowd keeps your address private and will not sell it to third parties.
Your country, state and city can be used in your profile - but you can keep this
profile private if you want.
DesignCrowd requires your address to ensure accountability. Designers who respond
to briefs on DesignCrowd have a responsibility to abide by our
Minimum Design Standards and our User Agreement.
It is important that DesignCrowd has a way of contacting designers and knowing where
they are based if the Minimum Design Standards or User Agreement are breached.
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The rankings are calculated weekly and are based on:
- Your creativity - determined by client and peer ratings of your designs
- Your success - the percentage rate that you receive a place payment for briefs you
enter and your total earnings
- Customer feedback - client testimonials and ratings of your communication, creativity
and ability to meet the brief's requirements
- Customer service - whether or not you complete modifications, your speed to complete
briefs, your speed of response to queries
The exact formula for the rankings is not published.
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