"Isaac proposed a rebranding rather than a full-blown redesign. That meant focusing on fundamentals like a new logo, color scheme, and fonts"
The brief was for a website redesign and not a rebrand. Then it went south.
I regret my website redesign
511–520 of 789 posts
Re: I regret my website redesign
#512You know how, during a big programming project, you have to keep the devs from going "this codebase has a lot of technical debt, let's rebuild the whole thing using Rust and Kubernetes and Deno and move the hosting to Azure and switch databases and use microservices and..."? Designers are exactly the same way. Just as technical fiddling is fun and interesting, making new designs from scratch is just as fun and intere…
> Designers are exactly the same way. Just as technical fiddling is fun and interesting, making new designs from scratch is just as fun and interesting. And, just as fixing bugs is tedious and boring, tweaking designs is tedious and boring.
My god, that explains why modern designs and user interfaces suck so much. That, and the fact that many designers work off their gut feelings and personal subjective preferences, rather than systematic and evidence-based study.
Re: I regret my website redesign
#513I think I found them, might be heartbeat [link redacted]
You would be wrong. Enough clues were left.
Look at the retrospective blog posts - OP started work with design agency in October 2021. So look at September 2021 'freelancer/seeking freelancer' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28380660)
search throw using unusual words from blog post. read likely posts. stop for some air. click through website of likely candidate. hold breath. check CEOs name. not the same but...
Elementary my dear Watson. Ele-flipping-mentary.
CEO takes the time to post in freelancer thread. They can write a comment to give us their side and hopefully announce the full return of all monies to OP.
Because the popularity of this post is soaring like a plane or weather balloon.
Re: I regret my website redesign
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which absolutely makes me think this was a well thought out con designed to prey on those types of fears and maximize the value extracted from the mark. Those lottery phone scams out of Jamaica which target the elderly in the US are almost the exact same scam as what was described here. Promise something, get them to send money, don’t deliver, tell them you need more time/more money. Keep repeating until the mark wal…
Most of my career has been spent at agencies. I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement.
> I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement.
I wouldn't call it mismanagement. Many agencies thrive despite regularly delivering these types of experiences. It's a conscious choice they can easily rationalize because of the money.
This agency turned a one off $7k job into $46k by smooth talking and scope creeping an actual developer. I'm sure they're absolutely killing it doing the same to non-technical folks.
Re: I regret my website redesign
#515Thanks for sharing your story; as a developer/designer (more developer than designer; love C, no love for JavaScript), I hear stories such as yours practically everyday. What I really wanted to say is that I love your aviator gopher and the designer should have at least taken a shot at incorporating your gopher in the logo. I mocked-up a negative space [almost] one-colour logo with a close-up of a stylized gopher nos…
Thanks for reading! I'll take the blame for dropping the chipmunk. I wanted the logo to appeal more to businesses, and I felt like the chipmunk came across as too playful, so I told them not to bother preserving it. Your mock up looks pretty cool!
I love the airplane/shell prompt thing in the new logo, though. Having never seen TinyPilot before this, I had no attachment to the chipmunk, and I agree that the change moved from hobbyist to business vibes.
Re: I regret my website redesign
#516$46k for those changes holy fucking shit. I’ve charged less than this to design a whole 200m² house. I built a detailed 3d model, secured all the permissions and technical approvals, produced 30 A1 drawings, written a 200 page spec, coordinated engineering, tendered to contractors negotiated the tender, visited the site every two weeks for two years to check they were building it correctly and signed off on thier inv…
You're not an idiot, you're just comparing rates in two completely different industries for some reason.
Re: I regret my website redesign
#517$46k for those changes holy fucking shit. I’ve charged less than this to design a whole 200m² house. I built a detailed 3d model, secured all the permissions and technical approvals, produced 30 A1 drawings, written a 200 page spec, coordinated engineering, tendered to contractors negotiated the tender, visited the site every two weeks for two years to check they were building it correctly and signed off on thier inv…
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Re: I regret my website redesign
#518I don't want to rub salt in the wounds here, but that design is extremely mediocre. The primary mistake here imo was to think you needed professional web design in the first place. You didn't. Professional web design is best suited to companies with a strong brand or websites with complicated UX/UI that needs wireframing. You're just a small business selling KVMs D2C. That doesn't need anything fancy. There are some…
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Re: I regret my website redesign
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I out of touch? I think about 30-40k does not sound unreasonable for something like this. You have a redesign, with UX people improving your shopping and cart page + implementation + updating your maze of weird bootstrap theme to the new redesign.
It sounds reasonable for a good redesign, but this is just terrible. Generic all the way.
I would’ve thought that the product photo was a strength of the offering (proof of legitimacy given designed hardware is expensive and shows commitment). But the redesign hides it away and uses illustrations like every startup’s MVP site! Seems insane.
Re: I regret my website redesign
#520Digital Agency Owner Here... I have to say, this is difficult to read and it gives a bad name to other agencies. - I think the first "mistake" was not having it as a fixed price. We spend a lot of time up-front defining the scope and get sign off before committing to the work. After that, we roll it through the relevant departments. We take the risk on for bugs/issues (that are within scope) and do the project as a f…
I agree with most, especially that OP left the tap open. No risk for an agency and de facto unrestricted costs for OP.
With one exception of a blanket statement:
> - A good agency IS better than a freelancer
If there is a single freelancer:
- There is a single person responsible. If it gets diffused, it may easily end in an unending project, as no one is incentivized to finalize the project.
- The number of people working on the project is capped at one. You won't ever get charged for two people talking with each other.
- For a single freelancer, they may be some "sanity check" regarding the cost. For any well-known agency, it wouldn't raise one's eyebrows if you said [This Well Known Agency] charged you [any number] $. Logo design alone could have costed OP $50k.