Press releases

Oakland – July 20, 2016 – 99designs, the world’s largest online graphic design marketplace, announced today that its community of graphic designers has now earned more than $150 million USD through its platform. With more than $3.5 million USD available each month to its global design community via 90 design categories (including emerging categories such as Mobile App Design and Book Cover Design), 99designs has built the number one freelance design community through its commitment to helping designers around the world find access to work and expanding their access to applied learning.

"Design is shaping future careers and the next generation of business across the globe and we are pleased to be playing a part in this phenomenon. Our unique combination of education and competition has accelerated the careers of designers all over the world," said Patrick Llewellyn, CEO and President of 99designs. "Education and ongoing access to work is central to what we do at 99designs and key to helping us achieve our vision of owning design online."

Over the past eight years 99designs has expanded its commitment to educating the world’s designers and continues to devote significant resources that help designers grow their skills. The design community is an integral part of the 99designs story and one out of every four employees of 99designs works in a role that engages directly with them, including a team dedicated to curating, educating and nurturing its members. Educational resources are available to all designers via several avenues including the blog, forum and community based educational programs.  

Other initiatives include an Advocates Program, comprised of members of the community, that is dedicated to mentoring other designers through peer portfolio reviews and by hosting webinars, and the Top 9 program, which celebrates top designers on 99designs each month and inspires them to challenge and push themselves. Recently, 99designs launched its inaugural 99awards where top designers from the past year were recognized by their favorite customers, 99designs employees, and by other designers on the platform.

99designs continues to give back to its community and starting today, designers registered on 99designs will also receive a 30-day trial of Lynda, from Linkedin, where they will have access to over 1,000 design courses including inspirational documentaries from professionals at the top of their game, real world conceptual design skills and in depth coverage of every major professional design tool. All designers are encouraged to participate in a one-week curriculum curated by the design experts at 99designs to learn new design techniques and challenge their skills. Designers can learn more about this offer at this page.

About 99designs

99designs is the world’s largest on-demand design marketplace, connecting a global community of freelance designers with businesses of all sizes to complete their design needs. Created by designers for designers, 99designs began with a group of designers who were competing together to create the best designs. In 2008, that friendly competition grew into a unique design marketplace that has now become the world leader in online graphic design. 99designs is changing the lives of designers around the world by providing them with an opportunity to access customers globally, to earn income, and to build their portfolios. 99designs has paid out more than $150M to designers around the world to date at a rate of $3.5 million per month. Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., 99designs has operations in Australia, Germany, Japan, and Brazil.

99designs announced today it has been recognised as the 2015 Victorian Exporter of the Year at an awards ceremony hosted by Her Excellency the Honourable Linda Dessau AM, Governor of Victoria. Bestowed upon Victoria’s most successful and innovative exporters, the award honors 99designs’ growth from a startup in the fertile region of Victoria, Australia into a global company that now has four offices across four continents.

“Melbourne, Victoria is a great place to build a team and take on the world. We are able to attract talent from all over Australia and the world to Melbourne, as it’s a great place to work and live,” said Patrick Llewellyn, President and CEO of 99designs. “We love being a part of its thriving tech ecosystem, and this recognition from the Governor of Victoria is a nice acknowledgement of all the hard work of our teams not only here, but around the world.”

Long known as a hub of innovation within the online space, Melbourne was the birthplace for many great early brands in the online space, including Realestate.com.au and Seek.com.au, in the early days and later CultureAmp, Flippa and RedBubble. Today, global players such as Etsy, Eventbrite, Stripe and Xero are choosing Melbourne as a home base for the Australian market. Melbourne has also begun to see the growth in startup incubators and local VCs like Inspire9 and local VCs like SquarePeg Capital helping to fuel early stage startups.

Founded in Melbourne by Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz in 2008, 99designs pioneered the idea of a design contest, where multiple designers compete to deliver the perfect design, rather than being limited to the creativity of a single designer.

After gaining traction in the US and raising a $35M Series A in 2011 from Accel Partners (backers of Facebook and Dropbox), 99designs expanded internationally and now has local sites offering our service in 21 countries, 8 languages and 16 currencies. In March 2015, the company raised a Series B round from Japan-based, Recruit Strategic Investors to spearhead our entry into the Japanese market.

Since 2008, 99designs has helped more than 420,000 businesses access quality design at affordable prices and paid out US$125 million to its community of 1,000,000 talented designers in 192 countries.

In the past year, 99designs has doubled new customer growth rates in the US (~55% of sales) and tripled new customer growth rates in priority markets such as the UK and Germany. 99designs has been a global company from its inception, and its international focus is reflected in the fact that 93 percent of sales are derived outside of Australia, and 60 percent of customers are from the US.

About 99designs 99designs, the world’s largest logo design and graphic design marketplace, has helped more than 350,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price and paid out more than $125 million to designers across the world. 99designs pioneered crowd-sourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work one-on-one with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small design projects done within an hour through Tasks. With more than one million designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., 99designs has operations in Australia, Germany and Brazil.

“Survivorman’s Mother Earth” tour logo selected from more than 200 submissions on 99designs, world’s largest graphic design marketplace

OAKLAND – October 8, 2015 – Les Stroud, the award-winning producer, creator and star of the hit Discovery Channel TV series, “Survivorman,” as well as a popular musician, announced today he has selected a new logo for his upcoming album tour, “Survivorman’s Mother Earth,” sourced through graphic design marketplace 99designs.

“We were seeking a dynamic logo that could incorporate both my music and the environment into the existing ‘Survivorman’ brand,” said Les Stroud, star of ‘Survivorman.’ “The final design from 99designs does a fantastic job of reflecting the spirit of the brand and the outdoor, environmental theme this album and upcoming tour celebrates.”

The winning design was created by Sergei Timoshin from Russia, and was chosen by Stroud from over 200 entries submitted by professional designers and “Survivorman” fans from across four continents on the 99designs platform. Stroud narrowed the selection down to several top favorite designs to make the final selection. The new logo will debut in social media channels and online properties, and throughout collateral and marketing materials promoting the upcoming “Mother Earth” tour.

99designs is the world’s largest graphic design marketplace where logos, websites and more can be created on-demand. Headquartered out of Oakland, Calif., 99designs helps business owners of all sizes build their brands by connecting them with great graphic designers throughout the world.

“At 99designs, we’re passionate about helping people create and grow their brand and their careers. Les has built a great personal brand with the ‘Survivorman’ franchise and is a terrific example of someone chasing his dream and building on his passion. We’re excited to help him further build his brand by exposing him to our talented community of designers and their great ideas and concepts. Congratulations to Sergei on coming up with the winning concept and to taking another step towards building up his portfolio and establishing his design career,” said 99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn.

About Survivorman

Canadian Screen Award winning producer, creator and star of the hit TV series, “Survivorman” (OLN Canada, The Science Channel US, Discovery Channel International, City TV (Rogers) Canada, Blue Ant Media (Canada), Les Stroud is the only producer in the history of television to produce an internationally broadcast series entirely written, videotaped and hosted alone. With Les known as the original genre creator of ‘Survival TV’, “Survivorman” is one of the highest rated shows in the history of OLN Canada, the Science Channel US and Discovery Channel US and remains the highest rated repeat show on the Discovery Channel. “Survivorman” is licensed for broadcast worldwide, with ratings in the US hitting two million on individual episodes.

Revered worldwide for his iconic harmonica playing, Les’ songwriting style runs an eclectic gambit, from art-folk-roots rock to contemporary art rock. He has written all the theme songs for his TV series and scored several independent films. He has won numerous regional music festivals, recorded five CDs (one in collaboration with the Canadian hit makers the Northern Pikes). His most recent CD, Barn Sessions III – Off The Grid, follows talented musicians working together to create an album and documentary entirely live ‘off the floor’. He is currently recording his sixth album.

Stroud will be kicking off his touring season by heading to Muskoka in October to record another live Barn Sessions album. This collaboration will feature a number of other well-known musicians including Elmer Ferrer, Oh Susanna, Peter Cliche, Anthony Braunagel, Kelly Adams and Jeff Bird. The live “off the floor” recording will lead directly into a multi-city tour starting at the Algonquin Theatre in Huntsville, Ontario on Friday October 9th 2015.

About 99designs

99designs, the world’s largest logo design and graphic design marketplace, has helped more than 350,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price and paid out more than $110 million to designers across the world. 99designs pioneered crowd-sourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to find a graphic designer for a one on one project, purchase logo design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small design projects done within an hour through Tasks. With more than one million designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., 99designs has operations in Australia, Germany and Brazil.

Jessica Alba’s Honest Co. Tops in Logo Design, Reese Witherspoon’s Draper James Rated Best Website

SAN FRANCISCO – June 30, 2015 – Between Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Blake Lively’s Preserve and Jessica Alba’s Honest Co., the race to become the next Martha Stewart – i.e., a mega-watt celebrity lifestyle brand – has never been more fierce. What’s more, recently actress Reese Witherspoon threw her hat in the ring with a new apparel and online lifestyle brand called Draper James.

All of these gorgeous Hollywood A-listers bring star power and arguably cool products to the table with these business ventures. But we at 99designs wondered, who has the strongest brand based purely on the design quality of logo and website alone? We polled our global community of 99designs designers for a professional assessment and it looks like Jessica and Reese may have an edge over Gwyneth and Blake – at least in the design department. Here are the results of our poll:

Best Logo: Honest Co. (Jessica Alba)

Worst Logo: Draper James (Reese Witherspoon)

Best Website: Draper James

Worst Website: Preserve

99designs’ designers applauded the Honest Co. logo for its simplicity and color, with comments ranging from “nice color, symmetry of elements … it’s simple and effective,” to “It’s bright, fun, but at the same time the weight and styling gives it a sense of dependability and strength, which reflects the values of the brand.”

On the other hand, lowest ranked logo Draper James was dinged for being “too busy” using “an ugly font” and for what one designer called bad typography that “looks too amateurish” and a “hard to decipher icon.” As one designer noted, “[the logo is] ‘old school,’ and not in a good way.”

When it comes to websites, however, designers gave Draper James high marks for its “modern” and “elegant,” “fresh and wholesome” and “clean, colorful and user-friendly” design.

“Celebrity lifestyle companies – especially those attached to such huge Hollywood stars as these – already have a head start when it comes to brand recognition and awareness,” said 99designs Chief Marketing Officer Pamela Webber. “But that doesn’t mean they all have equally strong brand identity and design, at least according to our experts. It’s fun to see what our community has to say and we hope to weigh in on other household name startups like this in the future.”

About 99designs
99designs, the world’s largest logo design and graphic design marketplace, has helped more than 350,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price and paid out more than $110 million to designers across the world. 99designs pioneered crowd-sourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work one-on-one with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small design projects done within an hour through Tasks. With more than one million designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. Headquartered in San Francisco, 99designs has operations in Australia, Germany and Brazil.

Media contact:
Aimee Grove
+1 (415) 706-1906
press@99designs.com

Women-run SMBs twice as likely as men to invest in a logo

SAN FRANCISCO – May 27, 2015 – You never get a second chance to make a first impression; however, a recent survey of US small businesses conducted by 99designs, the world’s largest marketplace for graphic design, found that small businesses spend less time on branding initiatives such as getting a logo than other marketing and sales activities when starting out. At the same time, six in 10 SMBs say a company’s brand and website has influenced their own purchase decisions, and more than three-quarters of respondents agreed that “a professional-looking website will help attract better customers.”

These are just a few of the more interesting and sometimes contradictory findings in the 99designs' SMB Branding Perceptions Survey of 719 SMB owners and managers across the U.S. earlier this month. A few other highlights from the research, which aimed to uncover thoughts about the importance of branding and marketing materials to SMBs, include:

• Women invest more time and money into getting a logo and company brand than men when they start a business, and more women than men believe a professional-looking website is a priority.
• More than half of those polled admit they have “possibly” or “definitely” lost business because of a poorly designed website.
• Real estate and transportation/delivery SMBs are most likely to say a company’s look and feel is not important.
• The older the respondents, the less importance they placed on the look and feel of their business.

Despite differences among the sexes and industries, most respondents did believe in the power of branding – especially a professional-looking website – to drive and sustain business.

• More than three-quarters of respondents (76%) agreed that a professional-looking site “will help me attract a better customer.”
• Two-thirds of respondents (63%) strongly agree with the statement, “how positively my customers perceive my brand is important to me.”
• “Being memorable” ranked second – at 54% of respondents – only to “Providing the best customer service” as a top priority in sustaining a long-term, viable business.

“Over the past seven years, 99designs has helped hundreds of thousands of small businesses around the world launch and grow their brands, so we are obviously huge believers in the power of great design and professional-looking marketing materials to propel sales and attract customers,” said 99designs Chief Marketing Officer Pamela Webber. “Given our fast growth, it’s interesting to see some people still placing less priority on initial branding activities and to learn how perceptions vary according to age, gender and industry.”

For more information about the survey methodology or a copy of the full executive summary of the results of the 99designs SMB Branding Perceptions Survey, please click here or email press@99designs.com.

About 99designs
99designs, the world’s largest logo design and graphic design marketplace, has helped more than 350,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price and paid out more than $110 million to designers across the world. 99designs pioneered crowd-sourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work one-on-one with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small design projects done within an hour through Tasks. With more than one million designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. Headquartered in San Francisco, 99designs has operations in Australia, Germany and Brazil.

Media Contact:
Aimee Grove
+1 (415) 706-1906
press@99designs.com

Purpose of survey

99designs set out to determine the importance small business owners and managers place on quality branding for their companies. Furthermore, whether they believe their brand identity (logo, materials, etc.) and the quality, or even existence, of a website impacts their sales, long-term income viability, sales and new business efforts.

If they did believe branding and a professional looking website was important, they may have not yet created or improved these elements – we wanted to know why. Finally, we wanted to see what factors SMBs felt were most important in a brand identity and website, and to measure differences according to respondents age, gender, geographic region, and type of business.

For full survey results, please click here for the PDF.

The global leader in logo design also adds Accel venture partner Rob Solomon to 99designs board of directors

SAN FRANCISCO – April 15, 2015 – 99designs, the world’s largest marketplace for graphic design, today announced it has received $10 million in a strategic Series B round of funding led by Recruit Strategic Partners, the Silicon Valley based venture capital arm of Japan’s Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. Accel – the lead investor for 99designs’ Series A in 2011 has also reinvested and added partner Rob Solomon to the board.

According to 99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn, the Recruit investment represents a strategic move to support the company’s further international expansion, particularly in Japan and other parts of Asia where Recruit is a dominant force in information services and marketplace matching services. In addition to helping accelerate worldwide growth, partnering with Recruit also opens the door to a wider corporate customer base for design services.

“We knew that we would need the right partner to enter Japan and expand our footprint in the broader Asia market,” explained Llewellyn. “Recruit believes crowdsourcing and marketplaces are an important part of the future of work and in empowering people to follow their dreams and find opportunity. This is something we have been doing successfully for designers and small businesses around the world since 2008, so the fit with our business is perfect.”

Recruit Strategic Partners (“RSP”) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Recruit, a Japan-based holding company that started as one of the first employment marketplaces and has evolved into the world’s largest matching platform across verticals including human resources, travel, real estate, bridal and dining.

“Investing in 99designs fits in with Recruit’s goal of becoming the number-one company in global matching across multiple sectors,” said Recruit Strategic Partners’ President & Managing Director Akihiko Okamoto. “They have helped more than 350,000 businesses launch and grow and paid out more than $110 million to designers around the world. With this investment, we can help them promote their global design platform throughout Asia and beyond.”

Accel’s participation in this round reflects the firm’s strong belief in 99designs’ strategic growth decisions. The addition of Accel venture partner Rob Solomon to the board of directors is also part of the company’s ongoing efforts to build a strong global consumer Internet brand. Most recently prior to Accel, Solomon served as President and COO at Groupon, where he led operations through the company’s hyper-growth phase and helped it scale into one of the fastest-growing companies ever.

“Since Accel Partners’ initial investment in 99designs four years ago, I’ve watched the company expand into new markets and evolve from a pioneer in contest-based logo design into a thriving marketplace for designers and SMBs to connect,” said Solomon. “As a board member, I’m excited to help them reach the next phase in their growth.”

About Recruit Holdings

Founded in 1960, Recruit Holdings is a leading information services and human resources company in Japan. Through a wide range of services, Recruit is delivering new discoveries and opportunities to users with information in such fields as employment, education, housing, marriage, travel, restaurants, beauty, cars, hobbies, and lifestyles. Recruit has more than 30,000 employees and operates in Asia and North America.

Recruit Strategic Partners, a wholly owned subsidiary of Recruit in Japan, is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm investing in innovative companies from all around the U.S. It offers industry knowledge and expertise to our entrepreneurs and is an integral part of Recruit's global investment business. Recruit Strategic Partners co-invests with leading venture capital firms in the U.S..

About Accel Partners

Founded in 1983 and based in Palo Alto, California, Accel has a long history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel has helped entrepreneurs build more than 300 successful technology companies, many of which have defined their categories, including AdMob, AirWatch, Atlassian, Braintree, Campaign Monitor, Cloudera, Couchbase, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Fusion-IO, Groupon, Hootsuite, Kayak, Lookout, MoPub, Nimble Storage, Opower, OzForex, QlikTech, Qualtrics, Real Networks, Riverbed, Rovio, SeatGeek, Spotify, Squarespace, SuperCell, Trulia and VSCO.

About 99designs

99designs, the world’s largest logo design and graphic design marketplace, has helped more than 350,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price and paid out more than $110 million to designers across the world. 99designs pioneered crowd-sourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work 1-to-1 with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small design projects done within an hour through Tasks. With more than 950,000 designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. Headquartered in San Francisco, 99designs has operations in Australia, Germany and Brazil.

Design services marketplace is latest and largest tech company to move across the bay

San Francisco, CA (March 25, to_timestamp(2015)) - 99designs, the largest global marketplace for graphic design, today announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from San Francisco to Oakland in spring 2015. Based in San Francisco for the past five years, 99designs will relocate to the historic Breuner’s building at 2201 Broadway in the burgeoning Uptown District of Oakland in order to accommodate the company’s accelerating growth.

99designs’ 14,000 square-foot office will be completely custom-renovated on the top floor of the building that was once Breuner’s flagship furniture store. Already home to other tech startups, the historic art-deco building features a penthouse roof deck, an ideal outdoor space for meetings. The move is expected to be completed in May 2015.

“The decision to move to Oakland was inspired by several factors, including our desire to be part of the city’s flourishing art, design and tech community. We think Oakland is a perfect location for us to access all the talent that resides in the broader East Bay area as we continue to recruit a broad range of talent to grow out our team,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “We love the Uptown neighborhood in particular because of its proximity to public transportation and the variety of food, fitness and entertainment experiences. We think our employees will quickly become part of the fabric of the neighborhood.”

"Oakland's local economy and its businesses have long benefitted from encouraging innovation, creativity and growth of companies in a variety of areas. Most recently this has included the design and technology sectors," said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. "We're excited that 99designs is attracted to Oakland and recognizes the unique advantages of doing business here. I'm sure they will enhance our business environment - building community and the bottom line."

99designs has signed a five-year lease for 14,161 square-feet at 2201 Broadway with an option to assume the entire floor as space becomes available, giving it up to 26,000 square-feet of space on a single floor. The building is owned and managed by Metrovation. 99designs was represented by Jon Dishotsky of Custom Spaces and Mike Keely of CBRE and Metrovation was represented by Trent Holsman of Colliers International. Chris Curtis of Metrovation said, “We are very excited to be working with 99designs to create a truly unique tech space on the top floor of our historic building for their new headquarters. We are very pleased to welcome them to our building and to Oakland’s Uptown.”

Deborah Boyer, president, Lake Merritt/Uptown District Association said, "I’m delighted to welcome 99designs and its employees to the Uptown District, one of the best live/work/play neighborhoods in the Bay Area. The vibrancy of our eclectic Uptown community is continually enhanced by creative companies like 99designs drawn to locate here."

About 99designs

99designs, the world’s largest logo and graphic design marketplace, has helped over 380,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price. 99designs pioneered crowd-sourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work 1-on-1 with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small design projects done within an hour through Tasks. With more than 990,000 designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. 99designs is backed by Accel Partners.

New offering helps businesses launch and grow

San Francisco – March 17, 2015 – 99designs, the largest global marketplace for graphic design, and Jimdo, one of the leading website builders, today announced a strategic partnership to provide small business owners with logo design, website creation and hosting seamlessly on the 99designs website. By bringing the services together it will be easier, faster and more affordable for clients across the globe to launch their businesses and begin offering products and services quickly.

"We think great brands start with a great logo and 99designs has successfully created hundreds of thousands of logos for businesses and entrepreneurs globally," said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. "As we’ve grown and evolved, so have our customers’ needs. Now, with the addition of Jimdo, businesses can extend the essence of the brand captured in their logo to their hosted website."

The deep integration between 99designs and Jimdo makes it even easier for entrepreneurs around the world to launch a business without having to spend time locating, interviewing and hiring designers and developers for logo and website creation. Instead, an owner can focus energy and time on other important business initiatives. 99designs delivers a professionally designed logo and ready-to-use, mobile-friendly, easy-to-edit Jimdo website for as little as $499. A custom logo design and matching website is live in as quickly as fourteen days. The package includes hosting for a year.

"This package also allows businesses to manage and edit their website even after the logo design contest is over, without requiring any special skills," said Jimdo co- founder Christian Springub."

"Businesses need a strong brand and a strong website presence to succeed and this new partnership will provide that quickly, easily and affordably. Jimdo and 99designs were both founded to help small businesses create and grow, and this logo and website package is only the beginning."

How it works in four easy steps

1. Customers visit 99designs and launch a Logo+Website contest.
2. Customers complete a creative brief by answering a few questions about their business and preferred design style.
3. Design concepts stream in at which time the customer can collaborate and provide feedback to refine their favorite.
4. The customer selects a final logo design and the designer delivers a hosted Jimdo website that is easy to edit without requiring any technical skill.

What’s included for $499.

• Logo Design
• Hosted website styled by designer to match the logo
• Custom domain name
• One year of free hosting

About 99designs

99designs, the world’s largest graphic design marketplace, has helped over 350,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price. 99designs pioneered crowd- sourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work 1-on-1 with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small design projects done within an hour through Tasks. With more than 950,000 designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. 99designs is backed by Accel Partners.

About Jimdo

Jimdo is the easiest way to create a website on a computer, smartphone, or tablet. With a simple intuitive interface, Jimdo enables anyone to create a customized online presence with a blog and online store. Founded in Germany in 2007 by Christian Springub, Fridtjof Detzner, and Matthias Henze, the company set a new standard in website creation. Profitable since 2009 without venture capital, Jimdo has a passionate team of 200 people in Hamburg, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Jimdo is available in 9 languages and has helped people build over 12 million websites. For more on Jimdo visit: http://www.jimdo.com

San Francisco – September 24, 2014 – 99designs, the world’s largest marketplace for graphic design, today announced that it has reached a new milestone — the company has paid out $80 million to its community of graphic designers and is on track to hit $160 million by the end of 2015.

Fueling this activity is the company’s aggressive global and product line expansion. 99designs now offers design services in nine languages and connects clients and designers from 196 countries. Boasting a commanding lead as the largest design community in the world, the platform supports 850,000 designers and expects to reach one million early next year.

“During the last two years we’ve been thrilled to see our investment in international markets pay off with some terrific growth,” said Patrick Llewellyn, CEO of 99designs. “These numbers strengthen our desire to continue delivering the best solutions for businesses of all sizes and unmatched opportunities for designers.”

Llewellyn notes that Germany is a great example of a market that has performed well since localization - with over 80% average annual growth since localizing two years ago. “And we’re equally happy to note that our ‘1-to-1 Projects‘ product, an extension of our service making it easy for businesses to work directly with their favorite designers, has seen 148% average annual growth over that same timeframe.”

99designs continues to see substantial growth in the types of businesses it services, including agencies and enterprises, and has extended its reach to professionals in the real estate, medical, and technology verticals. And, its design community is showing its breadth of skill by excelling in fast growing categories, such as website, mobile app, and t-shirt design.

“99designs has been right there with us from the beginning, from designing our very first logo which was featured when we pitched our business on ABC’s Shark Tank, to recently redesigning our entire company website,” said Stephan Aarstol, Founder of Tower Paddle Boards. “We’ve already seen a big boost in conversion rates on our website. As our business keeps growing, we are confident in 99designs to meet any of our design needs, big and small.”

99designs has also grown its internal workforce through several strategic executive hires in 2014, including Chief Marketing Officer Pamela Webber, who heads up the global marketing team and David Kaplan, who joins as Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary. The company now employs more than 100 people in its offices in San Francisco, Melbourne, Berlin and Rio de Janeiro.

About 99designs
99designs, the world’s largest graphic design marketplace, has helped over 444,306 businesses access quality design at an affordable price. 99designs pioneered crowdsourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work 1-on-1 with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small tasks done within an hour through Swiftly. With more than 310,000 designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. 99designs is backed by Accel Partners.

San Francisco – August 4, 2014 – Eventbrite, the global self-service ticketing platform and events marketplace, and 99designs, the world’s largest marketplace for graphic design, today announced an integration that seamlessly connects event organizers to graphic designers, so they can source professional and unique banner designs for their event pages.

Through 99designs’ service Swiftly, Eventbrite event organizers can get small design jobs done quickly and effortlessly. Once an event organizer has created an event page on Eventbrite, they can visit swiftly.com/eventbrite, provide a description of the banner design they want, and a designer will be assigned to create the design within one hour, for $19. The new event page artwork can then be automatically uploaded to their event page.

“Eye-catching graphic design can attract people to your event page, but it can be hard to know where to turn for artistic help,” said Head of Platform Partnerships at Eventbrite, Dylan Serota. “Through our integration with 99designs, Eventbrite event organizers can tap into the well of talented Swiftly designers to help them create a striking event page.”

By partnering, Eventbrite and 99designs have simplified the marketing process for event organizers by eliminating the need to search for a designer, provide design specs, download the file created, and then upload it to the event page. Everything is handled behind the scenes; event organizers only need to submit their requests and then select the design they like.

“We are thrilled to extend our services and share our talented designer community with Eventbrite event organizers. Enabling organizers to get custom-designed event banners through our Swiftly service is the perfect solution for people seeking to stand out from the crowd and make their event a success,” said Patrick Llewellyn, President and CEO of 99designs.

The service is available today. For more information, visit the Eventbrite app page or swiftly.com/eventbrite.

About 99designs
99designs, the world’s largest graphic design marketplace, has helped over 444,306 businesses access quality design at an affordable price. 99designs pioneered crowdsourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work 1-on-1 with individual designers, purchase design templates from the ready-made logo store, or get small tasks done within an hour through Swiftly. With more than 310,000 designers from 192 countries around the world, 99designs’ suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. 99designs is backed by Accel Partners.

About Eventbrite
Eventbrite enables people all over the world to plan, promote, and sell out any event, and has sold over 200 million tickets and registrations worldwide. In 2013 alone, the company processed $1 billion in gross ticket sales for attendees in 190 countries. The online event ticketing service makes it easy for everyone to discover events, and to share the events they are attending with the people they know. In this way, Eventbrite brings communities together by encouraging people to connect through live experiences. Eventbrite's investors include Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, T. Rowe Price, DAG Ventures, and Tenaya Capital. Learn more at http://www.eventbrite.com.

SAN FRANCISCO and SÃO PAULO – August 27, 2013 – 99designs, the largest online graphic design marketplace in the world, today announced it has acquired LogoChef, one of Brazil’s leading design marketplaces. 99designs has also launched a Portuguese version of its site at 99designs.com.br, and will now offer Portuguese-language support and local currency capability to customers and designers throughout the country.

“On the back of our successful launch last week of Swiftly, which significantly broadens our design product offering, we’re excited to be taking the next step in our globalization strategy with the acquisition of LogoChef,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “With small businesses and startups driving 99 percent of Brazil’s economy, we have an extraordinary opportunity to connect a new group of our core customers with designers there and around the world.” Llewellyn is in São Paulo this week to deliver a keynote address at The Next Web Conference Latin America.

LogoChef is 99designs’ second acquisition; in August 2012, 99designs acquired Berlin-based European design marketplace 12Designer. The acquisition and new site are part of 99designs’ expansion strategy in Latin America, which kicked off in March 2013 with the launch of Spanish-language versions of 99designs in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Chile. LogoChef co-founder Dan Strougo has been named 99designs’ Country Manager for Brazil, and will oversee the company’s efforts from its Rio de Janeiro office.

“We couldn’t be happier to welcome Dan and the LogoChef community to 99designs. Dan’s experience in our industry, gleaned not only through building a successful marketplace but also as a long-time graphic designer himself, makes him a perfect fit for growing our Brazilian business,” added Llewellyn. “We’re very pleased with the strong momentum we’ve seen in Europe since acquiring 12Designer last year and localizing in five local languages. We have high expectations that with Dan at the helm in Brazil we’ll also see rapid adoption of our services there.”

“I’ve always admired 99designs and held it as a benchmark for LogoChef,” said Strougo. “Joining forces offers LogoChef designers and customers a wide range of new benefits and opportunities. Customers now have access to 99designs’ extensive global designer community, including a strong group of designers here in Brazil, and designers have the opportunity to work with tens of thousands of additional potential clients.”

In conjunction with the introduction of 99designs.com.br, 99designs has partnered with Startup Circuit Brazil to provide special promotions for its members. Startup Circuit organizes dozens of networking events annually in cities across Brazil to bring together entrepreneurs, startups, investors and accelerators.

99designs has hosted more than 235,000 graphic design contests for startups, small businesses and other organizations worldwide since its founding in 2008. In the same period, the company has paid out more than $60 million to its global community of more than 245,000 graphic designers. Earlier this month 99designs launched Swiftly, a first-of-its-kind, flat-fee service for small design tasks.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 240,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working via 1-to-1 Projects with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. 99designs also runs Swiftly, a new site and service that helps customers get small design tasks done quickly and effortlessly. 99designs was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):

Lauren Gard, 99designs
1-510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (Australia):

Emma Maidment, 99designs
03 9417 5661
emma.maidment@99designs.com

Media contact (Brazil):

Polyana Ferrari, NR-7 Communications
(55 11) 2389-5807
polyana@nr-7comunicacao.com.br

SAN FRANCISCO – August 13, 2013 – Online graphic design marketplace 99designs, which has paid out more than $60 million to its global design community since 2008, today announced the launch of Swiftly.com, a first-of-its-kind service for small design tasks. Swiftly enables customers to get existing graphic design files altered by professional graphic designers within hours.

“Swiftly is part of 99designs' broader plan to change the paradigm for how businesses worldwide get graphic design work done and how designers earn money,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “99designs contests have connected more than 230,000 customers with our extensive community of skilled designers. Now, with Swiftly, we’re introducing an entirely different model for businesses to get smaller design tasks done quickly and effortlessly. Swiftly’s launch underscores our determination to provide a full spectrum of graphic design solutions for customers and more opportunities for designers.”

Typical uses of Swiftly include altering logos, business cards, banner ads, marketing templates and icons; retouching, cropping and resizing photos; and vectorizing images. The process is fast and easy: customers simply upload design files, indicate the modifications required, and pay a flat $15 fee. A member of the Swiftly designer community claims the “task,” completes it, and delivers it to the customer within a few hours. After the customer reviews and approves the task, Swiftly facilitates handover of the design files to the customer and issues payment to the designer.

Swiftly designers are a curated group from 99designs’ community of more than 240,000 graphic designers in 192 countries. 99designs staff hand-selected these designers based on their design skill and hours of availability to ensure rapid turnaround 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“Swiftly grew out of our awareness that many people don’t know where to turn for a quick graphic design project, either because they don’t employ in-house designers or their designers are tied up with more substantial projects,” said 99designs Chief Technology Officer Lachlan Donald, who led the team that developed Swiftly. “It’s exciting to have the opportunity to develop a totally new service that fulfills a real need for customers and gives freelance designers another way to make money. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

About Swiftly
Swiftly is a new site and service from 99designs that helps customers get small design tasks done quickly and effortlessly. Customers simply upload a design file they need altered to Swiftly.com, pay a $15 fee, and get their completed project back in 24 hours or less. Each project is completed by an experienced member of Swiftly's design community.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 240,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working via 1-to-1 Projects with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. 99designs also runs Swiftly, the new design task service that helps customers get small design tasks done quickly and effortlessly. 99designs was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (US/Worldwide):

Lauren Gard, 99designs
1-510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

SAN FRANCISCO – June 4, 2013 – 99designs, the world’s largest graphic design marketplace, today announced it is accelerating its expansion in Asia with the launch of a new site for the Singapore market, an extensive tour of its large and active designer communities in Indonesia and the Philippines, and the hiring of regional design consultants to better serve the needs of customers throughout Asia.

“Word-of-mouth adoption of 99designs’ design contest model in Asia has been amazing since we launched 99designs five years ago, and we are now ready to more formally invest in accelerating our growth there,” said Patrick Llewellynn, president and CEO of 99designs. “Our customer bases in regional startup hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong have grown at a remarkable pace, and some of our largest and most successful design communities are in Indonesia and the Philippines.”

Launch of 99designs.com.sg
Jason Sew Hoy, Chief Operating Officer and Asia-Pacific General Manager of 99designs, is in Singapore this week to celebrate the launch of 99designs.com.sg with local customers and designers, as well as to speak at CrowdsourcingWeek, Echelon and Startup Grind Singapore. The new site enables Singapore customers to purchase design work on 99designs using local currency and access support through a local phone number. Singapore is one of 99designs’ top markets, with one of its highest sales per capita. 99designs.com.sg is 99designs’ second country site in Asia; last year the company launched a successful local-currency site for the Hong Kong market at 99designs.hk.

Design Community Tour
99designs Community Director Jason Aiken and a team of designer community liaisons have begun a two-week tour of Indonesia and the Philippines, where they will host numerous design events reaching thousands of designers, including a full-day National Conference for Indonesian designers in Yogyakarta on June 7.

Indonesia and the Philippines are among 99designs’ top designer markets, with thousands of designers in those regions earning a living by winning design contests on 99designs and carrying out follow-on work for clients they meet on the site. 99designs has paid out more than $10 million USD to graphic designers in Indonesia and the Philippines alone since its launch in 2008 – more than any other design marketplace has paid out to their entire global design community. In total, 99designs has paid out $54 million USD to its designer community of more than 444,306 designers from 192 countries.

“The request for 99designs to visit Indonesia and the Philippines came directly from our designers, dozens of whom have worked with us to plan a full calendar of events,” said Aiken. “Our designers in these countries are incredibly proactive, and have already organized many meetups on their own to form social and professional networks. We couldn’t be more excited and delighted to meet them in person to provide support and education.”

Hiring of Regional Staff
To help support its rapid growth in the region, 99designs has hired a staff of three design consultants based in The Philippines. These support staff will help ensure 24/7 customer support for the Asia-Pacific markets and will be available to help customers write design briefs and facilitate their contests.

“We’re working closely with our new staff in the Philippines and will continually evaluate the need for additional staff in other countries,” said Sew Hoy. “We’ve learned a lot about how best to approach internationalization over the past year in the course of launching nine new sites across Europe and Latin America, and we’re looking forward to applying those learnings as we focus on building our presence throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 220,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working 1-on-1 with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact:
Lauren Gard (US/Worldwide)
1-510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Emma Maidment (Asia Pacific)
T: +613 9417 5661
emma.maidment@99designs.com

99designs, the largest online graphic design marketplace in the world, today introduced a Dutch version of its site at 99designs.nl and will now offer Dutch-language support and local currency capability to customers and designers.

“99designs has loved the Netherlands since our first Dutch customer launched a design contest the week we opened for business five years ago. Today, the Netherlands is among 99designs’ top ten markets thanks to the many startups and small businesses across the region who use our design marketplace to brand their companies,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn, who announced the launch of 99designs.nl today during a talk at The Next Web’s Conference Europe 2013 in Amsterdam. “As the Dutch startup scene accelerates, we’re looking forward to helping even more entrepreneurs there source great graphic design work by connecting them with the talented designers in our community.”

In conjunction with the launch, 99designs announced a partnership with Rockstart Accelerator, the Netherlands’ leading startup incubator, to provide customized design upgrades to the hundreds of innovative companies in their network. Founded in 2011, Rockstart Accelerator provides seed investment, six months of office space, mentors, and coaching by entrepreneurs-in residence to help promising startups launch and succeed.

“99designs is already a trusted design resource for Dutch startups needing affordable logos and other collateral, and launching a localized version of the site will help even more entrepreneurs make their dreams a reality,” said Rockstart Founder Oscar Kneppers. “Through our partnership with 99designs, Rockstart participants now have a key tool for building their brands quickly and efficiently. Boom!”

To celebrate the launch and the April 30th inauguration of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander to the Dutch throne, 99designs is inviting graphic designers in the Netherlands and around the world to enter 99designs’ "Design a Business Card Fit for the King” community contest. The winning designer will receive a €500 cash prize and be featured in 99designs’ blog and across its social media channels.

99designs has hosted more than 200,000 graphic design contests for startups, small businesses and other organizations worldwide since its founding in 2008. In the same period, the company has paid out €40 million to its global community of more than 220,000 graphic designers.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 220,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working 1-on-1 with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

99designs, the largest online graphic design marketplace in the world, today launched localized Spanish-language versions of its service in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. The company has appointed a Regional Manager for Latin America to manage the new sites, and will now offer Spanish-language support and local currency capability to customers and designers.

“The establishment of new government initiatives to fuel business innovation and a significant increase in venture capital investments in Latin America over the past several years has set the stage for tremendous expansion in the region’s startup and small business sectors,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “We’re excited to help Latin America’s entrepreneurs source quality, affordable graphic design by connecting them with thousands of talented designers from their own countries and around the world.”

99designs has named Angela Peña its Regional Manager for Latin America. Peña will be responsible for overseeing 99designs’ expansion throughout the region, including managing 99designs’ Latin American design community, leading marketing efforts, and building strategic local partnerships with startups, design groups and other organizations. Peña previously worked as Country Manager for Latin America and Spain at Talenthouse, an online marketplace connecting artists across a range of disciplines with celebrities and major brands.

“Having worked for several years with an amazing and diverse range of graphic designers in Latin America, I am eager to connect those designers with 99designs’ large and fast-growing pool of global clientele,” said Peña. “Our new Spanish-language sites will help designers and clients in Latin American work more efficiently on 99designs and develop longer-term collaborative working relationships with each other.”

In conjunction with the launch of its Latin American sites, 99designs also debuted a localized version of its site in Spain and a site for Spanish speakers in the United States. 99designs’ Spanish-language expansion comes fast on the heels of the marketplace’s introduction of localized versions of its service in Germany, France and Italy in the preceding six months.

To celebrate the launch of its Spanish-language sites and the strength of its Spanish-speaking designers, 99designs is sponsoring a “99designs Habla Español” t-shirt design contest. Designers are invited to create original t-shirts designs incorporating the phrase “99designs Habla Español” and will award up to five winners, each of whom will receive $500 and be featured across 99designs blog and social media channels.

99designs has hosted 200,000 graphic design contests for startups, small businesses and other organizations worldwide since its founding in 2008. In the same period, the company has paid out $50 million to its community of more than 210,000 graphic designers.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 210,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working 1-on-1 with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard, 99designs
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

99designs, the world’s largest online graphic design marketplace, today announced the launch of Pro Tools, a new suite of services designed specifically to meet the needs of marketing agencies, web development agencies, and other businesses that frequently use freelance designers to source custom graphic design.

“We’ve been really excited by the adoption of 99designs’ marketplace model by agencies and larger companies. In the course of working with tens of thousands of these customers, it became increasingly apparent that we needed to develop tools specifically tailored to meet their demands,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “We look forward to working closely with our Pro Tools customers in coming months to further expand and refine the offering.”

The Pro Tools suite provides 99designs’ agency and other high-usage business customers with more streamlined talent sourcing and management; enhanced collaboration and feedback; and augmented privacy and security. Specific features of the Pro Tools suite include:

• Invite-Only Contests streamline talent sourcing and management by enabling contest holders to choose and invite which designers may participate in their contests.
• White-Label Presentations helps 99designs’ customers share design options and solicit feedback with clients and internal teams privately, efficiently and effectively.
• Private Contests keep design drafts not ready for public viewing hidden from the search engines and the general public. Only members of the 99designs community can see the contests and must agree to an NDA to view the details.
• Blind Contests let customers who want even more privacy for their contest hide design entries from view by other designers in the contest.
• Custom NDAs enable customers with unique privacy requirements not covered in 99designs’ standard NDA to upload their own custom NDA that designers must agree to before they can view the contest.

99designs developed the Pro Tools suite based on interviews with hundreds of 99designs’ agency and other high-usage business customers that regularly source custom graphic design from 99designs. Approximately 13 percent of 99designs’ current customers are agencies working across a variety of disciplines ranging from marketing and public relations to web design and development.

“We were an early adopter of 99designs and have been successfully using the service for years to develop custom creative for a diverse set of clients,” said Zack Bujazia, Incredible Creative Officer at Incredible Marketing, a B2B marketing agency with offices in the United States and Australia. “The new Pro Tools suite will help us work more efficiently by simplifying feedback loops with our clients and empowering us to easily work with our favorite talent in the 99designs’ community.”

Customers can purchase the Pro Tools suite for $199 when they launch any contest on 99designs. For the next month, 99designs is offering Pro Tools for an introductory rate of $99.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 200,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working 1-on-1 with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard, 99designs
(Worldwide)
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

99designs, the largest online graphic design marketplace in the world, today launched a localized Italian-language version of its site at 99designs.it. The company has appointed a Country Manager to manage the new Italian site and will now offer Italian-language support to customers and designers in the region.

“With Italy’s startup scene really taking off in recent months, it seemed the ideal time to give Italian entrepreneurs a native-language version of 99designs to help brand their companies and get to market quickly,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “As one of the most design-centric countries in the world, Italy has been an important part of 99designs’ European success to date. We already have a strong customer and designer base there and look forward to significant growth in 2013 and beyond.”

99designs has named Giulia Depentor its Italian Country Manager. Depentor joined 99designs in August 2012 with its acquisition of Berlin-based 12designer, where she managed the company’s Italian-language services. In her new role Depentor will be responsible for overseeing 99designs’ expansion in Italy, from leading marketing and community management efforts to building strategic local partnerships with startups and other organizations.

The launch of 99designs.it marks 99designs’ third new foreign-language offering in less than five months and the continuation of the company’s broad European expansion plans. In September 99designs launched 99designs.de for German speaking customers and designers, and in November introduced 99designs.fr for the French market.

“The rapid adoption of 99designs in Germany and France following our introduction of localized sites in these countries is a clear indication that offering regionally tailored platforms and support is critical,” said Eva Missling, 99designs’ General Manager of Europe and founder of 12designer. “Giulia’s passion, experience, and knowledge of the local language, culture and startup community make her the ideal candidate to lead our expansion efforts in Italy.”

To celebrate the launch of 99designs.it, 99designs and Italian entrepreneur platform Startupbusiness are inviting startups based in Italy to participate in 99designs Loves Italian Startups!. Nine startups will be selected to receive a free design contest (valued at up to 479 €), and will be featured on 99designs.it and Startupbusiness.it. Complete details and the application form can be found at 99designs.com/customer-blog/99designs-launches-italian-site-at-99designs-it/.

Since its founding in 2008, 99designs has hosted more than 185,000 graphic design contests for startups, small businesses and other organizations around the world. In the same period, the company has paid out more than $45 million to its community of 200,000 graphic designers from around the world. European customers currently account for more than 15 percent of design contests on 99designs.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 200,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working 1-on-1 with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard, 99designs
(Worldwide)
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (Italy):
Laura Codispoti, Theoria
+39 02 202215
laurac@theoria.it

99designs, the largest online graphic design marketplace in the world, today announced it has launched a localized French-language version of its site at 99designs.fr. In addition, the company has hired a Country Manager for France in Paris and will now offer French-language support to its customers in the region. The moves signify important next steps in 99design’s European growth initiatives following its August acquisition of multilingual European creative design marketplace 12designer and September launch of 99designs.de, the company’s first non-English language site.

“As one of the cornerstone economies of the European Union, France is already an important market for 99designs. One of our key strategic goals this year has been to introduce a French-language site, on-the-ground local leadership and support for the French market,” said 99designs President and CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “We’re very excited this is now a reality. Under the capable leadership of our new country manager in Paris, Siham Belouadheh, we are well positioned to learn, adapt and aggressively grow our services in France.”

Belouadheh joins 99designs with experience in public relations, business development and marketing management; most recently she led marketing and business development activities for Kaplan in France and Belgium. As country manager for France, she will oversee 99design’s French expansion from Paris and be tasked with growing awareness and adoption of the design marketplace among French designers, business owners, and local technology entrepreneurs and startup communities.

“France is a critical part of our early European success. We’re pleased to welcome Siham to the team and expect that her leadership and our new service offerings will accelerate our expansion there and in other French-speaking regions of Europe,” said Eva Missling, 99designs’ General Manager of Europe and founder of 12designer, with whom Belouadheh will work closely. “The launch of 99designs.fr will allow French customers to run contests more efficiently and effectively, and will encourage more skilled French graphic designers to participate on our platform.”

99designs has hosted more than 175,000 graphic design contests for small businesses, startups and other organizations around the world since its founding in 2008. In the same period, the company has paid out more than $43 million to its community of 190,000 graphic designers from around the world. European customers currently account for more than 15 percent of design contests on 99designs.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 190,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working 1-on-1 with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade logo store. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (France): Jean-François Kitten, Licence K
+33(0)1 45 03 21 77 (office)
+33(0)6 11 29 30 28 (mobile)
jf@licencek.com

99designs, the largest online graphic design marketplace in the world, today announced it has acquired Berlin-based, Grupo Intercom financed company 12designer, the leading creative design marketplace in Germany and the second largest in Europe after 99designs. The acquisition is 99designs’ first and signals the company’s ongoing focus on international expansion via localization following its $35 million Series A investment led by Accel Partners last year.

Germany is 99design’s number one non-English language market, its fifth largest overall and one of its fastest growing. Despite minimal marketing in Germany and other European countries, European small businesses and startups have accounted for approximately 15 percent of the 155,000 graphic design contests held on 99designs’ English-language site to date. The 12designer acquisition will allow 99designs to better meet the needs of European customers by providing support in their own languages and time zones.

“We’re very excited to welcome 12designer Founder and CEO Eva Missling and her talented team into the 99designs family. We believe their deep regional marketplace expertise and multi-lingual capabilities will prove instrumental in accelerating our delivery of truly localized world-class design services to European businesses and designers,” said 99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “This acquisition enables us to build significantly on our existing momentum and resources in Europe and gives us an ideally situated base in Berlin. As the tech startup and design hub of Europe, there is no better place from which to implement our aggressive regional growth plans.”

In conjunction with the announcement, 99designs has named Missling the company’s new General Manager of Europe. She will be tasked with optimizing localization of 99designs services for European markets, accelerating growth in Germany and across Europe, and building a 99designs team in Berlin. She will also continue to oversee 12designer, which boasts a community of more than 20,000 designers interacting with customers in German, French, Spanish, Italian and English. 12designer will continue to operate as a stand-alone site in the near term.

“The 12designer team is eager to join 99designs and further our shared vision of connecting businesses seeking affordable, high-quality design services with skilled designers,” said Missling. “The combination of 99designs’ global reach and resources, 12designers’ regional experience, and the enormous multilingual talent pool here in Berlin will be a win for Europe’s small business owners and designers alike.”

Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed.

About 99designs
99designs is the world's largest online graphic design marketplace, connecting businesses looking for design work with more than 175,000 graphic designers from 192 countries around the world. Businesses can source graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to the community, working 1-on-1 with individual designers, or purchasing design templates from 99designs' readymade store. The company was co- founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit www.99designs.com.

About 12designer
12designer, the largest German marketplace for crowdsourced creative design services, enables businesses to source custom logo design, print design, website design, slogans, naming services, and other creative work from a community of more than 20,000 professional creatives throughout Europe. Berlin-based 12designer was founded by Eva Missling together with Grupo Intercom and offers services in German, Spanish, French, Italian and English.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (Australia):
Caroline Shawyer
+61 (0) 401 496 334
caroline@prgroup.com.au

We hear a lot from business and technology pundits that design is becoming an increasingly important factor in the success of companies, but does that sentiment trickle down to the people actually running small businesses and deciding how much emphasis to place on design work? To find out, 99designs polled 1,500 small business owners, start-ups, entrepreneurs and design decision-makers on graphic design and its importance to their business.

The results sent a clear message: small businesses really do care about design, and expect it to become increasingly important to their success in the years ahead.

Here are the key findings, which you can see illustrated in our infographic:

• Small businesses consider design important to their success: 80% of small business owners consider the design of their logos, websites, marketing materials and other branding tools either “very important” or “important” to the success of their companies. Just 3% indicated design is “not important.”
• Design will only become more important to business success in coming years: 67% expect graphic design to play an increasingly significant role in business success over the next five years.
• Small businesses plan to spend more on graphic design in the coming year: 78% of survey respondents anticipate their companies will spend the same or more on graphic design work in 2012. Only 21% plan to spend less.
• Affordability continues to be a factor for small businesses: 65% of small business owners said they would pay up to $500 for a new custom logo; 20% indicated they would pay as much as $1,000; and 15% indicated they would spend more than $1,000. With these numbers in mind, it’s not surprising to learn that the majority of small businesses are still taking a DIY approach: More than 50% source design work in-house or do it themselves, while 21% use freelancers, and 18% run crowdsourced design contests on sites like 99designs. Only 7% work with design agencies.
• Blue is the color small business owners most associate with success: Fifty-seven percent of respondents associate the color blue with success; the second most cited color is green (35%) followed by white (32%), black (29%) and red (21%). Purple was the color male respondents least often associate with success, while women were least likely to select orange.
• Apple topped the lists for best logo and best website, while Wal-Mart topped the worst lists for both categories: Asked to name the companies with the best and worst logos and websites, those identified most often were (in order of frequency):
  • Best logos: Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, Google and FedEx
  • Worst logos: Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Pepsi, IBM and Google
  • Best websites: Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Nike
  • Worst websites: Wal-Mart, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace and Microsoft

About 99designs
The 99designs Business Design Survey was conducted online from March 2012 to May 2012. The 1,500 respondents were evenly split between 99designs customers and non-customers holding design decision-making roles within their companies who were polled through market research firm Ask your Target Market.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

99designs the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, is challenging its own community of more than 150,000 graphic designers to revamp its homepage. The 99designs Homepage Redesign Contest kicks off today and will accept entries through May 14.

Submissions will be judged by 99designs staff and a panel of industry experts including Joe Gebbia, co-founder and CPO of Airbnb; Arem Duplessis, Design Director for The New York Times Magazines; Eric Ries, author of the bestselling book “The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” and the blog “Startup Lessons Learned”; and Mark Harbottle, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded 99designs, Flippa and SitePoint, among other companies, and has played an instrumental role in shaping the products at all of them. (Additional information about the judges can be found here.)

99designs will choose up to three winning homepage designs, and will award a $1,000 cash prize to each winning designer. Following the contest, 99designs will test the homepage designs using its internal testing methodologies, and will incorporate winning elements into the next version of its homepage.

“We’ve always believed in ‘eating our own dog food,’ starting with the 99designs logo design contest we held in our early days,” said 99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “No one knows us better than the thousands of graphic designers who spend hours every day interacting with customers in our marketplace, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with for 99designs.”

Designers who wish to participate in the 99designs Homepage Redesign Contest can register for free and review contest details on the contest page.

About 99designs
99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, enables businesses to source custom logo design, web design, t-shirt design, print design and other graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design contests to a global community of more than 150,000 designers in 192 countries. In addition to its design contests, 99designs provides a 1-to-1 invoicing system that enables designers and customers to work together efficiently, and offers a ready-made logo store stocked with more than 20,000 high-quality logos available for customization and sale right off the shelf. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit www.99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (Australia):
Caroline Shawyer
+61 (0) 401 496 334
caroline@prgroup.com.au

99designs the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, together with Sharkwater Productions, today launched a logo design contest as part of a global branding campaign for award-winning filmmaker and eco-activist Rob Stewart’s new film, (R)Evolution.

Graphic designers worldwide are invited to review the contest details here and to submit logo designs through Friday, March 30th. The winning designer will win a $1,000 USD award and the logo will be seen around the world, including at (R)Evolution screenings at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012 and the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012. The public is encouraged to visit the contest at 99designs throughout the week to see the design entries as they are submitted, and to vote in a poll that will feature the finalists.

(R)Evolution is Stewart’s eagerly anticipated second film. His 2007 documentary Sharkwater won 35 international awards, was viewed by 124 million people, and spawned a global movement to end shark finning that led to a change in government policies around the globe. In (R)Evolution, Stewart journeys through 15 countries to explore the dangers threatening not just sharks, but all life in the oceans, the climate, and, ultimately, the survival of humanity.

The film is a call to action, and just the first step in Stewart’s global mission to empower young people between the ages of 15 to 30 to come together for a common cause. The (R)Evolution campaign, which will feature the winning logo throughout, is a new kind of environmental campaign for a new generation. Led by the environmental organization United Conservationists, it will educate, engage and empower youth to lead the movement through viral media across platforms and open-source resources including an online community, multimedia educational materials, a mobile application, an “Eco-Heroes” program and more.

“99designs is committed to helping social causes and not-for-profit organizations worldwide, and we’re excited to be assisting with this logo design contest,” said 99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “It’s a natural fit with our global community of designers, who represent nearly 200 countries and encompass every political, socioeconomic and cultural background imaginable.”

“Today’s revolution is crowdsourced, for it provides people the power to come together to collaborate, share their talents and mobilize around ideas. This is what ignites social change,” Stewart remarked. “For the coming (R)Evolution film and campaign, we aim to do just that – collaborate to build a movement. Whether it is crowdsourcing a logo design with 99designs or open-sourcing educational materials to youth, we want to invite people all over the world to be a part of this environmental revolution. This is a revolution for everyone.”

About 99designs
99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, enables businesses to source custom logo design, web design, t-shirt design, print design and other graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design projects to a global community of more than 150,000 designers in 192 countries. In addition to its design contests, 99designs provides a 1-to-1 invoicing system that enables designers and customers to work together efficiently, and offers a ready-made logo store stocked with more than 13,000 high-quality logos available for customization and sale right off the shelf. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit www.99designs.com.

About Sharkwater Productions
Sharkwater Productions is dedicated to creating media that educates and empowers the public to take action in protecting the ecosystems that we depend on for survival. The award-winning 2007 film Sharkwater inspired a global movement; (R)Evolution, a feature film and campaign to premiere in 2012, aims to kick-start an environmental revolution.

About United Conservationists
United Conservationists (UC) is a revolution for the next generation. UC believes that by educating and empowering youth through media to protect the ecosystems we all depend upon, we have the power to start a planetary revolution. UC is dedicated to creating the infrastructure for this movement, with a focus on educating the public through viral media across platforms, creating open-source campaigns that harness mass engagement and uniting a global conservation movement like no other organization has done before.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (United Conservationists):
Julie Andersen
917-689-5927
Julie@unitedconservationists.org

99designs the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, celebrated its move into its new downtown San Francisco headquarters last night with a kick-off party attended by dozens of movers and shakers in the Silicon Valley startup scene.

99designs launched its U.S. presence in 2010 with just two employees in San Francisco. Today, 32 employees work out of the new space including CEO Patrick Llewellyn, the majority of the company’s executive team and many of the marketing, customer support and design community support team members.

“We designed the San Francisco office with room to grow our head count and to house visitors from our Australian team and the community at large,” said Llewellyn. “We’ve invested heavily in outfitting the space with state-of-the-art video conferencing technology in multiple locations – even our café area and kitchen – to enable for global all-hands meetings and constant connectivity between our teams.”

Located at 447 Battery Street at the border of the Financial District and historic Jackson Square, the 576 square metre (6,200 sq. ft.) full-floor office features expansive wood-beamed ceilings and exposed brick walls displaying poster-sized prints of winning logo designs created by 99designs’ designers. Another highlight: a mural of the San Francisco skyline painted by two 99designs community team members.

99designs’ Melbourne-based staff has grown as well, to 20, and the United Kingdom, where 99designs launched a localized website in February, is currently home to two team members.

About 99designs
99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, enables businesses to source custom logo design, web design, t-shirt design, print design and other graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design projects to a global community of more than 150,000 designers in 192 countries. In addition to its design contests, 99designs provides a 1-to-1 invoicing system that enables designers and customers to work together efficiently, and offers a ready-made logo store stocked with more than 13,000 high-quality logos available for customization and sale right off the shelf. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit www.99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, announced today it has launched into the UK at 99designs.co.uk and begun hiring staff locally as part of its strategic international growth plan. The company was founded in Melbourne in 2008 and began building out its San Francisco headquarters in 2010 - the UK will be the company’s launch pad for its European expansion.

“The UK has been a significant market for 99designs from the very beginning in terms of the design talent and customer base we’ve attracted there,” said CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “We’re looking forward to building a strong presence on the ground to help UK designers build their businesses, enable companies of all scope and size to source affordable high-quality graphic design work, and enhance and expand our services on all fronts.”

The UK is among 99designs’ fastest-growing major markets — the company has increased its monthly UK design contests 120% year over year, and expects accelerated growth as it ramps marketing and local outreach activities. 99designs has held more than 120,000 design contests on its site to date in categories ranging from logo, stationery and t-shirt design to website and mobile app design, and expects to surpass 200,000 design contests by year-end.

Some of 99designs’ top graphic designers reside in the UK, including Michael Kirby of Newcastle in the northeast of England. Kirby has made more than $30,000 in the last six months through a combination of designer payouts secured on 99designs plus ongoing client work sourced through the marketplace. 99designs has distributed more than $30 million to designers worldwide since its inception and projects it will pay out $25 million in 2012 alone.

“99designs offers the perfect solution for talented designers living in the north of England or less commercial areas to find work on a global stage without having to relocate, allowing them to grow and develop their business with little risk or overhead,” said Kirby, who was prompted to join 99designs after his design business took a hit in the recession. “I now have a huge amount of content and glowing testimonials from clients to populate the new business website I’m launching.”

UK businesses that have used 99designs for their graphic design needs include technology startups like Cambridge-based Hubflow, an enterprise mobile learning platform; brick and mortar retail outlets including London café and patisserie Le Petit Village; and charities such as KiDs of Bolton, founded by Bolton Wanderers captain Kevin Davies and his wife, Emma Davies.

About 99designs
99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, enables businesses to source custom logo design, web design, t-shirt design, print design and other graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design projects to a global community of more than 140,000 designers in 192 countries. In addition to its design contests, 99designs provides a 1-to-1 invoicing system that enables designers and customers to work together efficiently, and offers a ready-made logo store stocked with more than 13,000 high-quality logos available for customization and sale right off the shelf. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit www.99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (UK):
Marc Ambasna-Jones
+44 (0) 1225 481734
marc@marcompr.net

Media contact (Australia):
Caroline Shawyer
+61 (0) 401 496 334
caroline@prgroup.com.au

99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, today announced it has doubled the number of monthly design contests held on its site year over year, hired key staff and executives to meet growing demand, and expects significantly accelerated growth in 2012.

99designs continues to experience substantial growth across its graphic design categories, including logo, web, t-shirt and print design, as well as new categories such as mobile app design. The four-year-old company, which has held more than 115,000 design contests on its site to date, has doubled the run rate of new contests from a year ago and is on track to surpass 200,000 design contests by year end.

The amount of money 99designs distributes to its designers each month continues to surge—99designs expects to pay out approximately $1.5 million to its design community for contests held in January 2012, twice what designers earned for January contests last year. 99designs has paid out more than $29 million to designers to date and projects it will pay out $25 million to its designer community in 2012. Top designers on 99designs have reported earning more than $10,000 per month from a combination of designer payouts earned on 99designs plus ongoing client work sourced through the marketplace.

Doubling Staff and Executive Hires
To meet growing demand, 99designs has doubled its staff to more than 50 employees in less than a year and hired two key executives: Jeff Titterton as Chief Marketing Officer and Caroline Moon as Chief Financial Officer.

“2011 was a stand-out year for 99designs, from rapid growth in design contests and payouts to the successful launch of the first localized versions of our site in Australia and Canada,” said CEO Patrick Llewellyn. “In 2012 we’re focused on continuous improvement of our services as crowdsourced graphic design enters the mainstream. Caroline and Jeff not only have the experience we need at this next stage of growth, they are also passionate about design, which makes them a great fit for our team and community.”

Titterton comes to 99designs with strong brand management, marketing and international experience, including his most recent post as VP of Marketing at social dating company Zoosk, where he led the company’s aggressive global expansion. He has also served as VP of Marketing at IMVU and SVP of Consumer Marketing and Services at PlanetOut, Inc.

“What I love about 99designs is that it solves a major pain point felt by so many of my colleagues—sourcing professional graphic design quickly and affordably,” said Titterton. “I’m looking forward to the next phase of our evolution as we focus on expanding our customer base and refining our services to better meet the needs of both designers and customers.”

Moon brings financial and analytical leadership, with particular expertise in online marketplace strategy. She previously served as CFO of independent ad exchange AdBrite and prior to that worked in a series of marketplace strategy and analysis roles at online marketplace eBay and Credit Suisse First Boston.

“99designs has been profitable since its inception – and that isn’t something many CFOs at venture-backed startups can say,” said Moon. “The confidence our investors have in us and the powerful engagement of our customers and designers is a testament to the strength of the crowdsourced model we’ve created. I’m looking forward to helping the company navigate the road ahead as we shift into our next phase of growth.”

About 99designs
99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, enables businesses to source custom logo design, web design, t-shirt design, print design and other graphic design work quickly and affordably by launching design projects to a global community of more than 140,000 designers in 192 countries. In addition to its design contests, 99designs provides a 1-to-1 invoicing system that enables designers and customers to work together efficiently, and offers a ready-made logo store stocked with more than 13,000 high-quality logos available for customization and sale right off the shelf. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz (SitePoint, Flippa), and is backed by Accel Partners and angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

Media contact (Australia):
Caroline Shawyer
+61 (0) 401 496 334
caroline@prgroup.com.au

October 11, 2011 – Today, 99designs, 99,999th design contest by establishing a $99,999 fund for design students. Since 2008, 99designs has pioneered the crowdsourced graphic design market by helping designers and small businesses around the world work together and build lasting relationships.

"It has been an exhilarating ride to 99,999 contests," said Mark Harbottle, co-founder of 99designs. "What better way to celebrate than by offering additional support to design students across the globe as they acquire the skills they need to build their careers."

99designs will award 1,010 x $99 bonus payments to students on top of every contest prize won, until the $99,999 cash pool runs out.

Every month over $1.2 million dollars is paid out to designers in the 99designs community as a result of design work commissioned by small businesses from around the world. In just over three years 99designs has:

• Built a community of over 125,000 designers in over 192 countries
• Paid a total of $25 million to its designers
• Uploaded a new design to the site every 6 seconds
• Placed over 13,000 logos available for customization and sale in its logo store
• Launched 99,999 design contests to date

"In the past year alone we've more than doubled our contest volume and made it significantly easier and more valuable for small businesses and designers alike to use our service. We also secured investment from leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel Partners. This investment has enabled us to accelerate our growth and launch localized editions of our site in key markets," said Patrick Llewellyn, CEO of 99designs. "I want to thank our community of talented designers, the myriad of small businesses who use the service and our amazing team in Australia and San Francisco -- we couldn't have done it without you. Here's to the next 99,999 contests!"

99designs connects small businesses needing custom design work such as logos and websites to a global community of over 125,000 designers. Businesses benefit from engaging with multiple designers simultaneously making it easier to build the right relationship while designers are exposed to upwards of 1,200 new client opportunities at any given time and can showcase their work on a level playing field.

For more information about the Design Student Fund please see: http://99designs.com/designers

Contact:
Lauren Gard
510-246-1366
lauren.gard@99designs.com

99designs, the largest online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services, announced a $35 million first-round investment led by Accel Partners, with participation from angel investors Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck), and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace).

Andrew Braccia and Ryan Sweeney of Accel Partners will join 99design’s Board of Directors, along with Michael Dearing, 99designs co-founder Mark Harbottle, and company CEO Patrick Llewellyn.

99designs was founded in Melbourne, Australia in February 2008, when co-founders Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz – the entrepreneurs behind sitepoint.com, Flippa.com and Learnable.com – spun it out of the SitePointForums. 99designs, which employs 26 staff in Melbourne and San Francisco, was bootstrapped and is profitable, and has enjoyed 120 percent year-on-year growth.

• 99designs has over 100,000 designers in 192 countries.
• The company has paid out over $19 million to designers to date.
• 99designs has hosted 75,000 projects, resulting in a new design uploaded every six seconds.
• There are more than 10,000 logos available for customization and sale in their logo store.

The new capital will be invested in international expansion, platform development, community initiatives like design scholarships, and aggressive hiring in San Francisco and Melbourne.

99designs is Accel Partners’ third investment in Australia, including Atlassian Software and OzForex.

Accel Partner Andrew Braccia said: “Accel Partners has a history of investing in online businesses that cater to the ever changing needs of small business owners and independent professionals. 99designs has quickly become a global market leader in its category, providing an invaluable service to its customers and their global community of design professionals. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to assist in the company’s next phase of growth.”

Michael Dearing, whose private investments include Admob (Google), Heroku (Salesforce.com) and Mix Labs (Twitter) said: “99designs caught my attention when I realized that nearly every one of the early stage companies and entrepreneurs I work with was turning to them to get great design work done. The team has created a marketplace that is easy for companies to get onboard with, and is also a boon for designers who can go after any of the hundreds of jobs open at any one time.”

99designs Co-Founder Mark Harbottle said: “I’m thrilled that Accel see the same potential in 99designs that we do. This obviously presents a fantastic opportunity for the 99designs team, but I’m most excited about what we have in store for our loyal community of designers, and the hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world who use 99designs.com. I’m looking forward to the next chapter.”

99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn said: “This is an exciting time for the company as it pushes forward with expansion in several key areas. We now have the benefit of our talented and dedicated team, coupled with the best technology investors around. The board and shareholder advisors we have in place provide us with exceptional experience and insight to help guide our future growth.”

About 99designs

99designs is the #1 marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design services. Its ready-made logo store has over 10,000 high-quality logos available for customization and sale right off the shelf for $99, and its Design Contest Marketplace enables businesses to quickly and inexpensively source custom logo design, web design, business cards or any other graphic design work by launching design projects to a global community of over 100,000 designers. 99designs has hosted over 75,000 design contests to date, sees a new design uploaded every 6 seconds, and pays out approximately $1 million to its design community each month. To learn more about 99designs, including where the company is hiring, visit 99designs.com.

Media contact (Worldwide):
Rebecca Fuller
415-298-0416
rebecca@mightypr.com

Media contact (Australia):
Miranda Burford
+61 3 9090 8299

Thousands of High Quality Logos Can Be Purchased and Customized from 99

BUSINESS WIRE -— 99designs.com, the #1 marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design for small business, today announced a new ‘Ready-made’ logo store where thousands of professional logos can be browsed, purchased and customized starting at just 99. The ‘Ready-made’ logo store from 99designs.com provides small businesses immediate access to a catalogue of original and professional logos while also creating additional opportunities for designers to generate revenue. The Ready-made storefront is now accessible and accepting logo uploads with the first logos available for sale in March.

The logo store compliments the existing design contest marketplace at 99designs.com to create two options for sourcing professional logos at an affordable price. Small businesses looking for the fastest solution can pick a logo “off the shelf” at the Ready-made store and quickly have it customized to fit their needs. Meanwhile, clients who desire the highest level of customization can choose to have their logo created from scratch by crowdsourcing it to the community of designers at 99designs.com.

"While our popular design contest marketplace is ideal if you're looking for a fully customized logo, many small business owners simply want a fast, cost effective, ‘off the shelf’ option,” said Mark Harbottle, Co-founder of 99designs.com. “With thousands of professional logo designs ripe for the picking, our new logo store serves this purpose nicely. At the same time, our 60,000 active designers who upload a fresh design every 10 seconds to 99designs.com will welcome another potential source of income, and another channel to expose their talent to thousands of new customers."

99designs.com is currently working with its designers to prepare and categorize the Ready-made logos for sale. Designers interested in uploading logos for sale can do so by visiting http://99designs.com/readymade/submit/logo. The first logos will be available for purchase in March at http://99designs.com/readymade/logos.

About 99designs

99designs is the largest marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design, connecting passionate designers from around the globe with savvy clients who need design projects completed in a timely fashion without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design services. It has held over 28,000 design contests to date with over 2,600,000 unique designs submitted. For more information please visit: 99designs.com.

Contact:
Jason Aiken
99designs
jason@99designs.com

SMBs Source Designs Quicker, More Inexpensively and With Greater Choice

BUSINESS WIRE -— 99designs, the largest design contest marketplace, announced today the opening of its US headquarters. The company was created to enable SMBs and nonprofits to quickly and inexpensively crowdsource custom designed logos, business cards, websites and more; while at the same time creating a level playing field for designers to showcase their work and win new clients. The new office, located in San Francisco, is a result of 99designs’ rapid growth – the site is now reporting that a new design is uploaded every 30 seconds.

99designs brings the power of crowdsourcing to custom design. Using online design contests open to its design community of over 20,000 designers, 99designs greatly expands the number of creative minds working on a design project. Not only do clients benefit from the abundance of choice, but the design process itself is streamlined saving both time and money.

To begin this process, clients simply post design requirements and set a budget. Designers can immediately begin submitting their designs while clients guide the process by commenting on the submitted work. After the contest ends, usually in about a week, the client picks a winner and leaves with a finished design project.

“Crayons without Borders needed a logo so we could begin our fundraising efforts and 99designs was recommended to me through a friend. I honestly could not believe how many design options I got and how quick and painless the whole process was,” said Karen Kahn, founder of Crayons without Borders. “The community was the amazing aspect, because you essentially get your own focus group. I could read what the designers were saying about all of the designs and it helped inform my decision. Using 99designs was an incredible experience; I would use it again in a heartbeat.”

“Finding the right designer for your business the traditional way is often a long and complicated process leading to frustration and escalating expenses,” said Mark Harbottle, CEO and founder of 99designs. “What’s great about 99designs is that you can literally be presented with 99 different designs from dozens of different designers, which vastly increases your chances of finding the right designer for your business. Designers also benefit because they now have a place online where they can demonstrate their talent and build relationships with new clients. For designers, 99designs is the perfect marketing and lead generation tool.”

99designs connects clients needing design work to a thriving community of over 20,000 talented designers. In under a year, 99designs has held over 12,000 design projects. For more information please visit: 99designs.com.

About 99designs

99designs is an online design marketplace and community that connects passionate designers from around the globe with savvy clients who need design projects completed in a timely fashion without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design. It has held over 12,000 design contests to date with nearly 1,000,000 unique designs. For more information please visit: 99designs.com.

At this point in time there is over $90,000 USD in open prize money on 99designs. Around $13,000 USD of new cash is offered every day. This is not only a record for 99designs, we believe it’s a world record — we don’t know of any other site like 99designs.com anywhere that offers that kind of cashola to designers on a daily basis. That makes 99designs the #1 design contest marketplace on the Web.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, if you’re going to invest your time building a profile on a site like 99designs.com (either as a client or a designer) you want to make sure you’re getting maximum bang for your buck — more clients means more opportunities for designers to win new business, and more designers means more choice for our clients. Everyone wins!

We get a lot of email from clients and designers encouraging us to keep up the great work. We often circulate these messages amongst the team — it gives us a real kick. Here’s one we received earlier this week that really resonated with the team…

Hello,

I just wanted to write you and say “Thank You” for developing 99designs. It has been truly a life saver for me. I would say that most of the designers are young an upcoming, while I am old enough to be their mother. I started studying art and design in high school many years ago. Because of family commitments, I wasn't able to pursue my dreams of becoming a graphic artist. I still tinkered with web design whenever I got the chance between being a parent, full time professional, cooking, cleaning, children activities, etc., etc.

Now that my children are grown, my husband gone, and I’m disabled, I found my true passion again. I found SitePoint by chance and started entering contest. I started with logos, but found that wasn’t my forte. Then I started entering web design uncoded contest. It took awhile but I started winning contest. I even won 5 contests for the month of February. I was even getting invited to enter contest.

I couldn't believe how well this was working. Because of 99designs, several design firms noticed my work and I now have more offers than I can handle. In the last 4 months, I have made over $20,000 from designing websites outside of 99designs. I haven’t had time to enter but a couple of contest on 99designs because of the outside offers. I owe this all to SitePoint and 99designs.

Being disabled, I am unable to go out and chase down new clients. I depended on word of mouth and clients viewing my designs on 99designs. I understand a lot of designers feel that sites like 99designs undervalue their work and talent. I have to disagree. Sites like 99design give individuals with talents, whether young or old, able or disabled, schooled or unschooled, an opportunity to display their art and demonstrate their abilities. It isn't easy. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and patience.

Again, Thank you 99designs. Through your contest my dream is finally coming true. It may have took 25 years, but better late than never.

Kindest regards,
Sheree

It’s easy to get caught up in the technology and the business of making things bigger and better, and forget about the people who are actually using your site…

We try to stay as connected as we can to our users, we talk to you regularly via these blogs, private message and email, but we never expected that this site could have such a profound impact on one person’s life. It made our day!

One of the little known benefits of design contests is the ability for winning designers to pick up direct work from clients once a contest has been won. It makes sense when you think about it...

Run a logo contest to find yourself a designer, then rather than go through the whole design contest process again, simply ask the winning designer for a quote to do your business cards and stationery in a similar style.

Our top designers tell us that as many as 25% of all contests they win result in future work. Andrew Angus from switchmarketing.com who runs several design contests through 99designs.com said for him it's as high as 50%.

Andrew has documented his recent experience with a design contest in this video which shows the great result he achieved with a $220 prize offered on 99designs.com plus $1,000 of follow on work for the winning designer. Check it out!