Design Interviews

Great read! Todd is a real hard working man that does a great job with BSA. We use it really havily at Pixmac and it's helping hand that we needed.

Our site is also planned to use the services of buysellads I learned a lot from this article. Thanks...:)

Great interview, Chris! It's like I can actually hear Mike talking. Heh. Thanks for all the compliments, too, and for being such a supporter : ) Rayanne Langdon -- Queen of Hearts, FreshBooks.com

As a mobile developer, I'm impressed with FreshBooks approach to providing an open API and encouraging a ecosystem around their service. You asked, "What kind of cool things have developers done with the Freshbooks API?". Adding to Mike's response regarding miniBooks, my company has recently released a BlackBerry application called "ReportAway! for FreshBooks" which BlackBerry users to capture time, expenses, and invoice from their device. For more details please see www.reportaway.com or download a free trial at BlackBerry App World. Randy

Great interview. Just tried out istockphoto and loving it. Thanks for the tip. Ted

Dreams do come true... once every blue moon create & enjoy, Mirella Klas

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Hey Chris - thanks for the post! Your readers should also check out crowdSPRING - the most trusted design marketplace. Unlike 99designs, crowdSPRING protects users intellectual property and does not allow buyers to abandon their projects or "windowshop." Please come take a look and see how we differ: http://bit.ly/whycS Mike Samson co-Founder http://www.crowdspring.com/

Ironically, the most "trusted marketplace" referred to above is down right now, so "checking it out" could prove difficult. I'd suggest you stick with the original and the market leader by a long way with 100% up-time, http://99designs.com If you want to know more about how the Crowdspring guys roll, watch this video. Fast forward to the 4 minute mark. Trust me, it's funny. http://www.vimeo.com/3783589

Great touch Mark, unfortunately 99designs has totally lost the control over the designers and the submitted designs. Everyone is doing what crosses their minds, there is no staff presence , report handling is inexistent, everyone can do what they want without getting caught or banned. Aside of that, there is no moderation board and nothing could be compared to "the other venue". What CrowdSPRING did, since the beginning was to handle design theft and piracy, in such a manner that you will need another two or three years to reach their level. Especially with the new improved interface. And i am speaking here as a designer that is active on both websites. Your designer handling sucks actually there is no such handling system. While 99designs gets bigger actually it feeds up with stock art and an uncontrollable crowd. From 50000 designers I can say that 50% are clones and this is probably another weak marketing from 99designs. Believe me, CrowdSPRING is on the wave. You are far behind from any point of view. I can show you a very big list of ripped off designs and corporate logos that will bend you so hard that you won’t be able to ever get straight again. So, cut it off Mark, it’s not the word of Mouth you are preaching there but rather the designers that kept you alive. Now they are killing 99designs, step by step, submission by submission. The faster you will get back on track with moderation, controlling submissions and handling reports, the better this fake 50.000 crowd will get. And always remember this date: 15 June 2010, this will be the time when this kind of market will get a kick in the arse. Something Brite will give the opportunity to any world’s Brand to have a beautiful identity.

Thanks for your feedback artknowledge. You're partly right, our community has grown so quickly that it can get out of control at times. We're a victim of our own success. Having said that we are working on it, and we're starting to see results already. The designer numbers we quote on the site currently (54,000) are actual users who have signed up to 99designs and uploaded at least one design. Our actual member numbers are way higher than that, well past the 150,000 mark. We also have sophisticated duplicate account algorithms - we deal with those very quickly. So in summary, our designer numbers are the real deal, they are not clones or marketing BS. I look forward to June 15. Having competition, especially aggressive competition like we get from our friends above who comment and tweet everywhere 99designs is mentioned helps provide us with a constant reminder to go even harder. It's great, we love it. Thanks again, we appreciate all feedback!

Very nice Interview with lot of information about 99design founder. Thanks Fraz http://www.hiittech.com/

Chris seems to be in a great step nowadays. He seems to be in every blog, every interview, and every tutorial. He's a non-stop figure and I think that's great for him.

I'm a fan of Chris Spooner, is the model of the person who gives without limits and help people, I wish him every success.

WoW :) Awesome article, I am really fan of Chris Spooner and regular visitor of SpoonGraphics,Thanks for sharing this nice post.

colis and his team are a bunch of rockstars. excellent job...!

Nice recap Jon. Keep up the strong ideas and long lasting relationships.