This is a great question and there is no easy answer.
I was also on the same page as to having a really amazing design for our app/start (Mugasha.com). I am not a designer myself, I am developer/UI/UX guy although, I have an appreciation for good design ethics. There are two ways to go about it, One is what 280North did and hire these mini-studios. They are great, focused and quite talented. Make sure its a mini one, big ones are not very focused. The second is the path I choose and found a designer in our local are through networking and events and made him a partner. This is tough, I am giving away a quarter of my company to a designer who I trust. I am also making him responsible and take ownership of the design and UI. Its a collaborative effort in the end but the best thing to do would be to hire someone who is good and who you can trust.
Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was going to ask you who did the icon for cappucino. It looks great. Thanks for sharing.
I agree, the Cappucino logo is hot. (Couldn't resist.) Seriously, though, the 280 North website looks great.
Actually, I'm going to dissent and say I'm not wild about the Cappuccino logo: it's too complex. Look at the small version:
http://cappuccino.org/images/cappuccino-small.png
It loses any sense of what it is, unless you already know. The larger version on the site is quite pretty, but I'm just not sure it works great as a logo. Logos should still be very clear and recognizable even when degraded a lot (size, lack of colors, etc...).
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a particular dislike for that icon set. Things that are shiny are too shiny and things that aren’t shiny look flat. It also has a bad case of Apple envy; but is nowhere near up to the OS X icons’ standard.
Agreed. There are better LGPL sets. We mostly use Nuvola by David Vignoni, though I've grown a little tired of its cartoonish looks, and David has since done better work (but none as complete as Nuvola...we paid for development of a couple dozen of the Nuvola set, so it's complete in ways that no other is for our purposes).
Do you know of any more sets like this?
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#34Myself. Photoshop is extremely easy to learn - mainly for regular web sites/graphics. Spend some time and read some tutorials. Get yourself very familiar with CSS. And begin scanning through CSS galleries to get inspiration. Sites like Vimeo are extremely easy to design. Don't waste your money.
The easier it looks, the harder it is. If clean aesthetic was that easy, there would be more Apple's and fewer poor attempts. But there's not.
That said, let's see some links to your work. :)
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#35I've been designing since I had to pack up my art supplies when I moved at 14. http://sicret.net has some of my work, though less of my recent stuff which is more based on typography and establishing a well-constructed grid.grid.
While I am working on my own startups, I'm also a university student and need to pay the bills through freelancing.
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#36Can you find someone from a local college or Craigslist to build Google? Prolly not. Same goes for Vimeo's design. It may seem really simple and easy in appearance, but that's the result of clever design, not chance. It's really hard to hire a talented creative director if you know nothing about design. You may want to consider working with a design studio for now, just to learn the ropes and gain a higher appreciati…
Must be why it doesn't load correctly in FireFox?
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#37You could run a design competition at 99designs.com.
You would then follow-up with the winner if you needed any extra work.
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#38Myself. Photoshop is extremely easy to learn - mainly for regular web sites/graphics. Spend some time and read some tutorials. Get yourself very familiar with CSS. And begin scanning through CSS galleries to get inspiration. Sites like Vimeo are extremely easy to design. Don't waste your money.
The easier it looks, the harder it is. If clean aesthetic was that easy, there would be more Apple's and fewer poor attempts. But there's not. That said, let's see some links to your work. :)
His web design work is fairly nice:
http://www.streetread.com/about
http://www.tweako.com/
Not that this means much to his argument, but still interesting...
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#39I still think it's best to hire full time designers then going to an outside firm. I am biased because I am a user interface designer for startups. But I think working on something full time lets you understand the application much better.
Re: Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
For icons I've been using the Crystal set by Everaldo, released under LGPL. http://www.everaldo.com/crystal/
I have a particular dislike for that icon set. Things that are shiny are too shiny and things that aren’t shiny look flat. It also has a bad case of Apple envy; but is nowhere near up to the OS X icons’ standard.
The thing about the Apple icons is that they're all surprisingly well thought-out. Despite the general joke, they've very rarely overshiny and that gives them a really nice, solid feel. Things like the default Leopard folder and the TextEdit icon are entirely non-shiny. So when people aim to out-Apple Apple, it feels overdone, like this icon set in particular.