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Ask HN: How can I find a designer to tweak my look for my unfunded startup?

11 points by blister ↗ HN
I've created a web site that functions nicely but before launch I want to improve the look and feel but lack the design chops to make this happen. I don't have much money. Are designers ever willing to work for design credit alone? The layout is pretty much finalized, I'm basically looking for colors and fonts and perhaps a nice logo.

Any thoughts?

33 comments

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tibbon
Students are often willing to do stuff- however the really good ones will already know what they are actually worth and charge for it.

Alternate compensation however might get them going. Fund a party or something for them instead of paying?

jhancock
I'm in the same boat. There are tons of design companies and some independents that can be found through a google search, but for me, I find it hard to know who to choose and almost noone publishes pricing.

I have some funds to pay, just not a huge wallet. So I prefer to find an independent designer/HTML/CSS guru so all my payment goes into one pocket. My contact is in my profile.

blister
Yep. And I don't think the work I need done really requires a huge design firm or even a dedicated designer. I really ONLY need a few color options and some advice on styling. I can do the CSS myself, I just lack the eye for the creative work in the first place.
pbhjpbhj
If you're literally just after a palette - about all you can expect from 30 minutes really (that was mentioned by someone else I think not the OP), barely enough time to view most sites in entirety and make basic considerations.

Well:

kuler - (from adobe) http://kuler.adobe.com/#themes/mostpopular?time=30, and colourlovers - http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/search?hsv=&sortTyp...

are both great for trying out different palettes and seeing what is popular. You can use a photo to base your palette on too - if you've a prominent image that epitomises your project or what-have-you.

I do some website design but I don't have a strong graphics background, I don't even own a pantone book anymore ... do you have a alpha/pre-realease we can see?

blister
Sure. http://biblekin.com

Disclaimers: Heavily in Alpha stages. Should be ready for full beta in about a month. The concept is a Christian social network with an extremely heavy emphasis on daily Bible reading.

pbhjpbhj
So it's a sort of mixture between accountable reading scheme for the whole bible in a year and a book club? Looks like a good start. If you can wait a couple of days I might be able to rough some design out for you.

Incidentally I normally use gospelcom and blueletterbible for bible study - the former because it has a lot of versions and the later because of the hebrew/greek concordances and Strongs reference material. As you're aiming for readability it might be good to offer some variation in versions ( NASB, CEV, The Message, see eg my post http://alicious.com/2009/18-bible-translations-range/ or google it).

blister
Yeah, I plan on having multiple bible translations available by launch. I prefer NASB so that's what I'm using in the demo, but it's pretty trivial for me to add other translations.
Concours
Ok, I main try to help you for usability testing, I'm not an expert on that, but I think I have some solid knowledge of Usability.I don't know how you plan to earn money from the service, (I guess from advertising or some kind of premium service), but I can take an Hour off for that against a donation to any NGO (unesco, red cross, soudan or whatever help in third world countries) whenever you want and how much you want, as it's something about God, I have no concern you won't do that by time. I'm in the same situation like you so,it's a pleasure to help. It will definitely take more than 30 mins , if you need improvement suggestions as well, for example, when somebody click on the title bar,to jump to the next day, it count it like a completion (you should compute the average time took to read a page and compare it to the time spent on the page before loggin it as progress), you may move the create account stuff (call to action) at the top (I still have to figure out where exactly, but you can check this: http://www.bibleserver.com/index.php), The layout is excellent, and I like the color, well I really won't spend that much time for any additional design and stuff like logo (peoples who read the bible don't really care about how well the site where they read it is designed, it's just distraction and the last thing you need on that kind of sites), well don't know if I said it already but, I love the layout. The next and previous option could be done better, can't help you about the Fonts. That's my 2 cents contribution, when I have more time, will take a look again. There's still room for improvement. I will probably been using the site, love it. Good luck.
anigbrowl
Will you make money? draw up a sharing agreement that gives the designer a small royalty or a bonus reflective of the time s/he has to wait. Or offer to trade some coding services.
jacquesm
Spend a few hundred and get it done.

Why should it matter that you are unfunded, it's your gain, it should be your risk right ?

'Much' is of course variable, what you could do is launch as it is, then when you make a bit of $ spend it on a better design.

blister
You're mostly right. It doesn't really matter, and I _CAN_ spend a few hundred. I guess I'm looking for advice on WHERE to spend that few hundred. Has anyone had any luck with 99designs.com? Are there alternatives?
jacquesm
I had a 'rush' job a little while ago and simply placed a call here on HN for a designer looking to make some money, it worked wonderful.
tptacek
I always have money and small projects for solid designers --- I mean, pretty much year round, budget getting progressively more stale --- and HN has never helped me find one. I'd love to know your secret.
jacquesm
Interesting! I just posted a 5 line item along the lines of "hey if one of you designers doesn't want to go to sleep tonight and make some money drop me an email". Four guys responded, the first one to respond got the job and did it half decent too.

No secret to it.

marcusbooster
"I've designed a site that looks nice but I want to improve how it functions. I don't have the coding chops to make this happen, are developers ever willing to work for credit alone?"

Sounds kinda silly, eh?

blister
Well, not really. I have invested a significant portion of time into building the site and am looking for someone with an eye for good design to spend about 30 minutes worth of work tightening up my color schemes. I'm not asking for the Sistine Chapel, I'm asking for a paint-by-numbers.
tptacek
30 minutes of a strong designer is ~$50-60. But they're not going to sell you $50-60 of time, because consulting time doesn't divide up into neat little 30 minute increments, and because clients inevitably mean "30 minutes plus several hours over the next three months supporting and answering questions about the work", and your promises to the contrary don't overcome their actual experience.

You want 99designs, where you can put a simple dollar amount on a simple project and get bids for it. The work is middling-low-quality, but better than what you'd do on your own.

Also, what does your investment in the site have to do with anything? Tough love here: nobody cares.

blister
Ok. I can accept that. Thanks for the advice. I was already leaning towards 99designs, but posted the original question to see if there were any alternatives or any other successes that others have had with other possibilities. Thanks again.
tptacek
Words of advice on 99designs:

* Don't expect HTML/CSS from them (you wouldn't want what you ended up with); just go with mockups and ask for color palettes and font/font size to go with them.

* Be very careful about any custom imagery/iconography you get. There are definitely plagiarists on the site; seen it happen to a friend.

blister
More sage advice. Thanks. This is really the first app I've ever built where I didn't have a design to work with from the beginning so I feel flustered on how to improve things. My design abilities are pretty much limited to making nice action alerts using Javascript and the color #ff9;

Thanks for the great responses.

sjs382
"It will only take about 30 minutes" seriously undervalues the work.
blister
You're right. This was an extreme exaggeration. But honestly I'm mostly just looking for advice and a few suggestions. I really am only looking for about 30 minutes of someones time. Didn't mean to imply that anyone's design work should only take 30 minutes.
ankeshk
Outsource it. Odesk.com or Elance.com. Can have a good unique design for about $250-500 or so.
hikari17
I'd advocate taking a longer-range view-- both of the design of your site and your relationship with a designer. If you're at all successful, there'll be lots more design work to do. So why not use this small initial project as way to get to know a high-quality designer whose work you'll be proud to see on your site?

Also, though it may seem like the "tweak" you want should represent only 30 minutes of effort, in reality, to produce quality work, the designer will need to spend at least 30 minutes (and probably more like an hour) just exploring what you're looking for with you before they can even get started with the actual design. And a good designer will want to develop several different options for you to choose from. Pretty soon you're looking at 2-3 hours minimum even for what you've described.

Bottom line... I started out the development of our webapp vastly underestimating both the value of and the time it takes to produce quality design. I encourage you to avoid doing the same.

khangtoh
Get a template, themeforest had the nicest themes out there for a reasonable price $20 - $40

if you can't even afford that, my suggestion is to launch as is, eye candy doesn't make up for features and functionality. Reddit is an example. I've seen other startups stuck in this redesign mode and IMO it's very distracting.

kaiserama
In general, the rule about getting what you pay for stands true. Of course there are always exceptions to this rule, but I'd say they're few and far between.

If I was in your position (which I have been) I would do the following. 99designs for a logo (great suggestion by tptacek), cssmania for design/concept direction, adobe kuler for color palette, then use CSSEdit for Mac and learn to lay out your design.

If, at the end of the day you really have no design skills you can always consider using something like templatemonster or just hire a company/designer that is good. It will cost you, but you can probably negotiate a lot of things. Just be honest and let them know your budget, but plan to have the design (psd likely) converted by psdtohtml or a like service (depending on what you're doing will cost ~$200-300 for a basic conversion) because in most cases it's cheaper to have a service do this rather than a designer.

If you're comfortable with it, I would post up the url and maybe there's someone here who'd be willing to work with you. You never know. Good luck and have a great weekend!

tphyahoo
I used odesk to find a designer, to get a look that was a bit more polished for patch-tag.

It still looks less polished than I want, but better than I could have done on my own.

30 minutes is a fantasy though, you are buying hours, maybe days, of someone's time.

nathanh
Whenever I need a quick color scheme, I use http://colorschemedesigner.com
cmoore4
This just very quickly jumped to the top of my list of 'favorite web applications.' I'd been using ColourLovers.com, but some of those schemes were simply too ... artistic? for me. Thanks for the link!
pkc
If you are like me - A person knows basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript but artistically challenged. For my site a bought a template from http://themeforest.net and tweaked it to meet my needs. It worked pretty well for me. Most of the templates costs you 10-15$. But you need to deposit 20$ to buy anything. (I hate this part). If you are willing spend around 20$ it might be a good option.