Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

Well first off, CSS and design are related by they are not the same thing. You could be the best CSS guru out there, and still not know how to design.

Don't believe what 37 Signals say, if you skip the Photoshop step in the design process then you will end up with crappy looking designs, and most likely, badly functioning ones as well.

If you do hire a designer you should know that there are really two different classes of design when it comes to the web.

First off, there is the normal web designer guys. If you are looking for quality 99 Designs is not the place to go, but it is where a lot of people end up anyways. Go there is you want them to just rip somebody else's design off or use a cookie-cutter template with a few modifications because that is all you are paying them to do and they do not care much for quality. It is a volume business.

A great website designer will run you around $50-75 per hour. D don't expect to get a great website for less than $5,000 if it is a small one and $15,000 if it is medium sized. Good design takes a lot of time and iteration.

The second class of designers are interface designers. While web designers care about the marketing of a product, interface designers care about the functionality of the product and how to make it easy to use. Just because you are good at one doesn't mean you will be good at the other.

Interface designers are rare and go for $100+ an hour if they are really good. The most I have charged for a job doing interface design is $225, but it averages at around $100.

I tried and realized quickly that its not just about knowing css, javascript and html and all; you have to have the designer touch. So I quit web site design and hired a kick ass designer to do it for me.

I want to second the point about not skipping the photoshop/fireworks/illustrator/etc. step like 37 signals does. The reason they are able to do it is that they have already established a fixed set of agreed upon design patterns that appear in their apps.

If you skip directly to css and html, it's very difficult to think like a designer because you feel all the constraints of css and html. You'll think things like "oh, yes, I'll put a 5px border here and make it have 5px margin from the element above because it's easy" instead of "wow, this block would be interesting if it overlaid the top block".

In photoshop, it's easy to experiment visually by moving around blocks. In CSS and HTML, it's a pain. (Although, tools like firebug and web inspector have made certain things easier, not all of it is).

Sure, if you don't know Photoshop very well then you could code it faster. Except you will end up with sloppier code and a weaker design.

It is the equivalent of building a house without blueprints. You can do it, but if you take the time to plan things out before you break ground you will end up with a stronger product.

Now, if you already have a design style locked down and code you can just puzzle together then sure, go ahead and skip Photoshop. I do that as well. But, as soon as I need to design a new UI element I am back in Photoshop making dozens of variations.

I have designed all of my websites, but I'm not trying to make money on any of them. I have been happy with the way some of them have ended up, disappointed with others.

I currently rely heavily on CSS for the layout of my websites, but truth be told, I'm only doing it as a learning exercise. I also actually enjoy figuring out how to get my websites to look identical in as many browsers as possible.