DesignCrowd

I'm an architect, professional 3D, and 2D designer with more than 10 years of experience. I'm registered on many platforms, such as Upwork, 99Designs, Fiverr, etc. I have a lot of happy clients and winning contests.
One day I was found this little DesignCrowd platform. I decided to look closer at it and try to make some work there. I finished registration and started the contest The Produce Truck's logo.
I saved several variants in GPEG format (2000x2000 pxls) like everybody is making at 99Designs. Big white borders with a small logo in the middle. This is making for a better understanding of the logo. Cause when you are saving the logo on the whole image you can't understand how it looks.
So I saved 4 variants of the logo and uploaded 4 images on the DesignCrowd.
But firstly there was a notification that they should check the quality of my works before the client will see it. It will take several days, but the contest should finish earlier. I was ANGRY, cause I've spent my time for nothing. Instead of the client seeing my work, it should be evaluated by some kind of incompetent staff.
But this was not enough. You know what?
This stupid staff sent me messages that my work has low quality. And because I've uploaded one by one 4 work in one time, I've got 4 messages like this. They even didn't understand that. That I've already uploaded all my works before I've got their answer. I couldn't change anything even if I wanted to do that.
And after that, I've got the message that my "DesignCrowd account will be closed and cannot be re-opened at this time."
Even when I was trying to explain the situation to the support they didn't want to understand me. They wish me well with my design journey outside of the DesignCrowd marketplace.
Can you imagine how stupid they are? They have a little platform that wants to compete with much bigger platforms. The highly professional designers want to work there. But just because of one little misunderstanding this incompetent staff making a decision that a highly professional designer can't do this, FOREVER!

Recently I joined Designcrowd thinking it to be just as good freelance site as any other. But the verification team is the worst here. I uploaded a design for a contest on this site. I spent many hours designing a logo for the company studying what it does and how the other companies logos are in the similar field and I came up with a new logo which no other company used before. There is no way to give a description like what the concept behind the design and how does it suits the company when you upload the design for the contest. Then the quality team just rejects in a couple of hours stating it doesn't meet the designcrowd standards and your entry will be declined and account removed. How could someone sitting somewhere will know the concept of how I made the logo with out description. Its just waste of time here and finally who the hell are they to close my account. I think Designcrowd doesn't deserve me. If possible I could give no star to it.

My experience is much like everyone else. You can't get verified. I spoke with the useless designer help on the phone asking precisely how to get verified and what I failed on each time. One design was too simple, another too complex. Then they tried "the font is copyrighted", strange as I took it from their website as a totally free font! They recycle your ideas! Do NOT send them designs! Simply use their site as a database for work and solicit it from them. Remember, you're banned and not a member of Designcrowd. Knock yourselves out and steal their clients. If you are a buyer of designs, you're supporting a platform that totally rips of true designers.

I've tried using this website a few times giving it the benefit of the doubt the first time and upgrading plan the second time. Their rates are high considering the uncertainty of receiving the desired vision of your finished product.

There are other websites such as Fiverr that I would recommend over designcrowd. Better value and prices.

The designers who did work on a simple error page design... was so bad!. It looked like he used paint in windows or something. A tool used to scrap everything together. Obvious that the 'designer' was some amateur with actually no design skills at AII. So if you are a professional looking to get work done by a professional stay away from this platform. They have good SEO & SEA so rate pretty high on google search don't fall for it, like I did!

They do not accept you as a designer. I don't know the purpose but they reject whatever you do. It is waste of time for a designer. Freelancer is even better than this site. You enter lots of competitions and they never acept your work. And they even don't specify you any reason. Always the same bla bla "Poor design quality and execution". I really wonder who decides the designs quality. If you want to see poor quality designs look at most of the designs which win the competitions. They have lots of creatively poor designers than you and don't accept you for the reason being a poor creative designer. Unbelievable...

The team that evaluates the quality of the designs is desperately incompetent. Instead of letting the client decide on the qualities of the design, these "specialists" allow themselves to reject designs that they do not think have qualities.
The strangest thing is that they do not give any explanation why they do this. And the site does not give feedback to these "specialists".
My prediction is that sooner or later customers will understand the scams and will stop wasting their money.

I joined designcrowd as a designer and I've had all my designs rejected by the Quality Team. Poor design or execution or some nonsense like that. All I know is that these people steal designs, tell you it got rejected and tell you to design a new one, steal that one too and give the clients the sloppiest ones while keeping the logos to be recycled later. Why do you think they explicitly state that no watermarks are allowed? Absolutely scam of a website. Stay away for your sanity.

Designs get rejected too easily for not hitting very specific and poorly defined criteria. I would highly recommend to stay away from this site.

If you are a designer, be aware, you will have to beat "art" bot, which will make verification of your account extremely difficult. Clients cant even see your designs if your account isn't verified, so it easily becomes a huge waste of time and effort. This site is also shady with artwork you submitted to design contest, (if your account is not verified yet) once you are declined they remove artwork from your profile all together. Question is, what happens with files you uploaded, how is designer protected from possible art stealing by the same platform? (Nor you have them on your profile, nor client ever got the chance to see it, or any other community member) Also, its funny that this site has the most generic logo of them all, but they will bot your work. Hilarious.

They claim on their promotional video on homepage that you will get around 100 design while I waited for 2 weeks and got 13 poor designs from 5 designers. They claim you will get your money back if you did not like any of the designs but actually when you show your wish to get refunded they show you a meaningless very long terms and conditions that say they will deduct 89$ as listing fees. Nothing mentioned on their homepage about that listing fees. Come on people, who reads such long $#*!ty terms and conditions. They are getting people's money in a sneaky dishonest way. Stay away from those people

In all honesty: this will just be a giant waste of time for you. The verification-phase of your account is pure hell and if a design is declined or accepted is arbitrary. I can even prove it.

I submitted two versions of the same logo - 1 with edged type and 1 with rounded type. Otherwise it was completely the same. One got accepted and the other one declined. See pictures included...

And even after that I had further problems. Design contests normally last 7 days. Some of my designs took 3 days to be reviewed. And only after I contacted the support team. So I had no time left to work on a revised version.

One of my design I was particullarly stoked about got declined as well. I contacted the support regarding this case as well and never got an answer except the automated one.

All in all: Stay away from designcrowd.

Hi, I used to design with DesignCrowd a few years back and also earned a little money in the process. I have recently had some extra time on my hands and decided to give it a another try. Upon submitting a design I was surprised to see that it was on hold because I apparently do not have a 2.5 star rating. This seemed odd because I knew that my rating was above 2.5 stars. So I went to look at my rating and discovered that it was gone, I was back to ZERO for whatever reason. So not only is my rating gone but my design has to be pre-approved before the customer even gets to see it. I'm not even sure what to say except that this is unfair to the designer and to the customer. I won't be submitting anymore designs, not to DesignCrowd anyway.