Back in the day, I had middling success with 99designs. Ended up with a long running relationship with a guy in Wales. And some decent work out of a guy in Toronto. Though I'm usually a big fan of "local networking" for work relationships, we just have not had good look with the people we can connect with through local connections. We tried hard.

We're a small team, working in Agtech, working on a data visualization app. We have plenty of concepts. We don't need more ideas. What we do need is people who are good at putting lipstick on things, and then giving nudges in how to improve usability, without needing to change everything just so their input feels unique and needed. We don't need a bunch of operation overhead. Just a gun for hire, that we can call up, sick on a mercenary task, and then wait til we call them again.

What are others using to procur that kind of relationship? Is 99D still an actually good choice? All of the "alternatives to 99 designs" look like they were written by AI or someone with an agenda.