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Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

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Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#31

Post by rhizome »

gschill21 wrote: post #19

What might also work is this, from NYU when I was looking for a designer: Thank you for contacting the Computer Science Department of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. In order to have the position posted, please follow the instructions below… 1. Visit the Wasserman Center website at: www.nyu.edu/careerdevelopment/employers/emp_list_your.php http://www.nyu.edu/careerdevelopment/em…

So, you're saying...what? I want to guess that you posted an ad at NYU.

Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#33

Post by tptacek »

geekfactor wrote: post #28
edanm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since I read a comment by patio11 a few months ago, I've converted completely to buying ready-made themes for WordPress whenever I want to put up a "sales" site. Getting 3 themes at WooThemes will run you about $70. Those three themes each come in several color variations too. That means the next 3 times you decide to throw up a website, it should take almost no work (design-wise). WooThemes is really easy to us…

WordPress themes are not just for sales sites. The "Admin Templates" on Theme Forest [1] offer some great options for B2B applications. [1] http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-templat...

The "Admin" templates on Theme Forest are really kind of blowing my mind right now. Every front-end-challenged web app developer on HN should know about this.

Preemptively: so what if every app that uses these look the same? They'll all look similarly competent. Most native apps look more alike than different, too.

This is crazy awesome. Thanks for showing this to me.

PS: if you read the comments on the Adminaca theme --- which is LUDICROUSLY AMAZING --- you will find a guy complaining that the price got jacked up... from $12 to $20. If ever you needed a parable exhorting you not to design products for the kinds of people who use ThemeForest...

Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#34

Post by JangoSteve »

My designer is inexpensive enough that I now budget professional design in as one of the first steps in all my projects, whether hobby or otherwise. Then again, I'm pretty handy with front-end and CSS, so that allows me to save a lot of money; their final output is simply a PSD file and I take it from there. The design part is usually in the $500-$1000 range. Then it takes me maybe 10-20 hours to slice and implement for an entire site (not counting full IE6/IE7 tweaking, though it will be at least usable and decent).

Now, I'm sure $10k will net you a $10k design, but it should be an investment, not an expense. In other words, if a $10k design will not generate more than $10k in additional revenue, don't do it.

I met my designer by networking and asking others who they use and recommend. If you'd like to ping me, I can connect you with my designer.

Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#35

Post by justinph »

edanm wrote: post #21
patio11 wrote: post #2

I've used a few approaches: 1) BCC (old design): Grabbed an appropriate template from oswd.org. Chopped the heck out of it. Cost: free, but spent quite a bit of time. Quality: it didn't scare people? 2) BCC (new design): Found a very talented young lady in India on elance. Cost: a few hundred bucks. Quality: I won't win most-beautiful-site-ever awards, but the cost performance was outstanding. 3) Appointment Reminder…

Ever since I read a comment by patio11 a few months ago, I've converted completely to buying ready-made themes for WordPress whenever I want to put up a "sales" site. Getting 3 themes at WooThemes will run you about $70. Those three themes each come in several color variations too. That means the next 3 times you decide to throw up a website, it should take almost no work (design-wise). WooThemes is really easy to us…

I'm a designer and wordpress hacker. I tried WooThemes on a project recently, in an effort to save time and money for the client. They're great if you're willing to totally sacrifice to the design in the theme. But once you want to start customizing, they can become painful quickly.

Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#36

Post by oneplusone »

20-40 hours per page is ridiculously high. They must be incredibly slow and it makes my doubt their design skill.

To design a web app is incredibly easy because there is no marketing element to it--it is all about functionality. If you are bring on a designer to do work on a webapp his job should be to make it pretty, but also to make it usable. If all you are getting is better color selection then you are wasting your money.

Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#37

Post by edanm »

geekfactor wrote: post #28
edanm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since I read a comment by patio11 a few months ago, I've converted completely to buying ready-made themes for WordPress whenever I want to put up a "sales" site. Getting 3 themes at WooThemes will run you about $70. Those three themes each come in several color variations too. That means the next 3 times you decide to throw up a website, it should take almost no work (design-wise). WooThemes is really easy to us…

WordPress themes are not just for sales sites. The "Admin Templates" on Theme Forest [1] offer some great options for B2B applications. [1] http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-templat...

WOW!

If anyone hasn't seen these, seriously, check them out.

I've used Theme Forest themes before for sales sites, but never found great themes for a web app. These are definitely going to the top of my list for the next time I need to build something.

Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#38

Post by ot »

patio11 wrote: post #13
limedaring wrote: post #5

20 to 40 hours per page? That absolutely baffles me. I used to freelance design, was charging $100+ per hour, but that's based on the fact that a 1 page website would be around $1000 (10 or so hours to nail down a wireframe/design/build the CSS framework) then 4 or so hours per page after, depending on how intense they are. I'm not a super duper awesome designer though, but 20-40 hours per page seems absolutely ridic…

You can chew an arbitrarily large amount of time at a large corporation if your decision making process requires more than one signature. A high end bespoke firm builds this into all estimates. *That's great Lime, but does it really connect with the marketing message? Maybe if you added a bit more "pop" to it. Also, wouldn't it be better if it were teal?"

> *That's great Lime, but does it really connect with the marketing message? Maybe if you added a bit more "pop" to it. Also, wouldn't it be better if it were teal?"

For an explanation of "pop", see:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

Re: Ask HN: you want HOW much for the design?

#39

Post by matt1 »

So, I'm working on a web design tool called jMockups and one of the routes I'm considering taking is focusing on the ability to export your designs to HTML/CSS. You could then visually design your site from scratch or start with a template that we provide. Either way, when you're done you click Export and it produces all your HTML and CSS.

Since this is very much on-topic, how do you all feel about the idea? Would you use a WYSIWYG web design tool? And if not, why not?

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