Do you use 99designs and other webdesign contest sites?

It would be the same with any design company tho wouldnt it?
you have no way to guarantee a firm you hire is not using stolen content or fonts that they have not paid for

True, but when working with trusted company or freelancer you know what are the chances. And when working with contest you may easily get ripped off submission and you would not know.

you are safe with contests at 99d them designers there are so competitive they blow whistles at slightest sight of irregularity

I've used 99 designs a few times... Ended up hiring someone off of 99 designs, a filipino kid, who has been working for me for years...

I think 99d is really nice to get new ideas from around the world. The downside is that you have to work with several guys to make their rough ideas smother. So we had good contests where we(!) put a lot of effort into it (like instant feedback & ideas) and not so cool ones which might have been our fault cause those had no priority.

I would also guarantee the prize since i heard that a lot of good designers won´t join if you don´t do.

Funny thing is that for the price of one contest you can hire filipino kid to churn designs for you for the whole month.

I've used a number of sites like this over the years for various logos. These days, I use 99D exclusively because I ALWAYS get the results I'm looking for. There have been a couple of times where things were not progressing as quickly as I would have liked but 99D was more than happy to give extensions and other free upgrades.

I've run contests with the minimum price and had a lot more aggravation with the low end designers but when I run contests in the $800.00 range, the shitty guys quickly back out once they see the other designs they are up against.

mineistaken just mentioned that you can hire a 3rd world country designer to churn new concepts for a month but you're still limited to a single person's vision so that process could go on indefinitely....Besides, I don't have a month to wait around. IMHO, it's MUCH better to have a decent budget and go with 99D.

The only one i have used was logotournament and happy every time i have used them. Sometimes I have to have a professional designer clean it up a bit or advance the idea..