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Ask HN: Where does one find a remarkable designer co-founder?

10 points by BadassFractal ↗ HN
My partner and I have worked together for while now, both in grad school and on our startup projects. We have a reasonable amount of industry experience and get along very well. We're both rather technical, each focusing on different parts of the stack, both decent at hustling and customer development (although we've only done the latter for a limited amount of time, so we're still learning a lot as we go)

We are somewhat lacking from the design standpoint: our web / graphic / interaction design is at best "meh". The best solution out there will unfortunately often fall flat if presented inadequately. At this stage we believe in keeping the team to at most 3 people, and that we would be at the strongest with an additional designer-founder.

We would love to find a 3rd founder (SF area, although remote could work) who would take full ownership of the aesthetics of any project we undertake. He/she would own everything, from the logo of the product, to the optimal screenflow, to the pitch deck, to the MVP video. Nobody already knows everything, we certainly learn a lot as we go, but it'd still have to be someone extremely competent and flexible.

Where do we go about finding this unicorn? I feel like the problem is that as techies we're stuck in the universe of developers, with very little intermingling with the art people. It's similar to when business people complain about never finding available developers to work with (I, for example, know tons, but that's because most of my network is made of developers).

Are there online hangouts for that kind of folks? Meetups? Anywhere else where we could locate someone like that?

Thanks a lot!

9 comments

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acoyfellow
If I was in the SF area I would be contacting you. This description is very enticing for someone like me, and I know I'm no unicorn. Good luck finding a person in in your area! Keep putting your feelers out, just like this post.. Look for a unique individual work you love, (who is also in your area) on sites like Dribbble.com and Behance.net.

Reach out to that individual and kiss their ass, maybe you'll find someone "remarkable" enough for you ;)

systemtrigger
I think you might be discounting the potential for finding that co-founder here on Ask HN. Consider adding an email address to your profile.
niico
As a UI designer, let me speak for most of the designers out there. Designers =! Tech people. Probably they will know some html, css and hopefully js with a little understanding of php. (Man, that's a keeper!) BUT, in order to actually "pick up" a talented designer you need to "paint" your idea in a different way that you are already telling it. What I mean by that. We, designers don't have our logical part of our brain developed as well as you have, so what I'm saying by this is you need to figure out a more "emotional"/creative way to sell your idea to the designers. For instance you can tell them "how this ugly ass looking app made millions or had so many people using it".
BadassFractal
Great advice, thanks!

On the skillset note, having never worked very closely with real web designers, what should be my expectations? Is it realistic to be looking for someone who's both artistically capable and is great at the technologies you mentioned?

We can generally take care of anything on the front-end that's code related, but we basically don't have a good sense of aesthetics, color, style and so on. If you can draw something, we can most likely stitch it together on the site/app/whatever.

niico
I believ "Not all designers are created equal". For instance, I have a very deep understanding of SEO, some dont. Some may code much better than I do, some are better at illustrations, some are better at web and some are better at iOS designing.

Simply check their portfolio and see if you "match" his or her style. If you are into minimalism you dont want to work with a designer that really likes to put tons of fancy effects on their design.

einai
I guess it depends on the individual. I'm a designer but I have a graduate degree in physics and I also do PHP. Some do coding and some totally stay away from it.