Tye Haslip began doing graphic design in high school and after developing a skill and passion for it, he began to research Graphic Design careers and schooling beyond high school. This led him to South Central College in Mankato, Minnesota. He was enthusiastic heading into college knowing that he had a good idea of what he wanted to do with his life as far as a profession. By the time he had graduated in May of 2010, the economy was down and finding a Graphic Designer job was difficult for someone who was right out of college, lacking corporate or agency experience. He worked at jobs ranging between a Machine Operator building circuit boards; to a Senior Production Specialist at a surgical and medical device company. While these jobs paid his bills, he always continued to do graphic designing as a freelancer for people he knew and competing in global graphic design contests. After having success in these contests, Tye began to think of a larger picture, and after-hours of planning and designing he came up with his own design contest hosting website. In 2013, DezconDesign was developed, tested, and contests successfully ran. Along with the contests, he offered in-house design done exclusively by him.
“The clients I’ve had an opportunity to work with range from the fast growing Ohio pizza restaurant chain PizzaFire, to app developers in Florida, Wine-rack and cellar designers in California, and motorcycle club associations in Nigeria just to name a few. I continue to try to expand my business, while keeping top quality work available for all my return clients and future clients“ Tye says.
How does Dezcon Design concepts work?
Dezcon consists of two parts of my startup include Online Graphic Design Contest Hosting & In-House Graphic Design. The online contests are a very efficient and unique way to receive a high volume of diverse, yet quality-focused designs for one particular project. Tye hand-picks each designer that he invites to contests at Dezcon, ensuring a great turn-out, but any designer may create a profile to enter contests as long as the rules are followed. Individuals or businesses may converse with all designers and ultimately pick a winning design from the vast amount of entries contributed into their contest. This allows customers to receive far more options than traditional graphic design processes, providing customers as system that gives more value to their hard-earned money.
The In-House side of Dezcon is a more personable, one-on-one customer to designer interaction. When a customer has decided to Choose Tye to design for them a logo or website, etc., he takes it up seriously and offer the highest quality of work at the quickest possible turn-around. “Customer service is very important and is the focus of my work, whether it be designing a complete brand for another startup, or helping a customer set up their online contest.” He adds.
Tye became familiar with the process of design contest websites as he was competing on several design websites.
“The biggest hurdle I faced was at the planning stage of my startup. The very basis to anything is an idea. At that point you have your idea, but that is it. You can’t pick up a business plan on paper or a mock-up website or a tangible model of a product. A startup is a daunting task but I knew if I took one step at a time that I could find myself at a point where this website could be used and used successfully. During the first few contests I was glad I had gotten over that first big hurdle and I was able to see my service work. “ he says.
Dezcon is aimed to solve the issue of customers wanting more than a few options for such important projects such as their company’s logo or landing page. The internet provides such a valuable source of interaction that allows a customer to see custom designs from artists all around the world. All of these great designs by all of these incredible designers can collaborate in one spot to make a customer’s contest experience second to none. Whether it be the customer’s new logo, the winning designer’s pride and earnings, or the new portfolio piece another designer gets to add to their collection; this can be a win-win situation for all involved.
Dezcon’s competitors are found in around 5-10 online design contest sites. As this company grows, the online presence will also be able to grow and Tye aims to make Dezcon a great place for graphic design.
As business ramps up, they plan to increase visibility online. Current research shows online searches for online design contests or logo contests as a large number, and he hopes to be part of the top ranking results in the future.
The target audience of Dezcon would be businesses, startups, re-branding leaders, or any individual looking for a great design for their home business, promotional projects, or event designs. The beauty of the website is any location in the world may attract potential customers or designers.
Dezcon contests require a little supervision while collection a hosting fee for each contest. With proper online presence, a high volume of these contests will bring in vast sums of hosting fee’s, once compiled. Also available on the website is a Logo Store featuring logos available for sale and customization. Contest categories include Logo, Business Card, Logo+Business Card, Apparel Design, Vehicle Wraps, Promotional Media, Webpage Graphics, and “Other” for miscellaneous contests not fitting in any other category.