Ask HN: what are the good places to find a web graphic designer?

2 points by snowfox 12 years ago | 5 comments

I just release my MVP beta bamrang.com. Everyone tells me it looks terrible (and I agree ;P). I need to find a designer.

I can't pay big bucks for it and have no experience working with a graphic designer before. But where to find one that is "good enough"? One that is willing to customize instead of giving me a standard template like those on Themeforest. What is the ballpark figure I should be looking at? Is it normal for a designer to keep all the IPs of a design, even if it is done for a customer? How these things work?

zachlatta 12 years ago |

If I were you I'd start with something from Themeforest or similar. 99.99% of your users will never know and it'll make your website look much more professional.

Anonymous238 12 years ago | |

Agreed. Go buy a cheap template, and set it up in an afternoon. If the site begins to gain traction and has potential, then invest in something a little more customized. This only applies if the design and layout of your site isn't one of the main selling factors.

I mean, if you're setting up a blog, and people are going to love it because of your incredible sense of humor and unique style of writing, then a template is perfect to get up and running. If your site is about food recipes, where there's a million sites as competition, but you've thought out a unique method of navigating and displaying them to users, then you need a custom solution right out of the gate.

snowfox 12 years ago | | |

Thanks both of you! That's what I am going to do. Get a theme and rebuild the landing page.

3stripe 12 years ago |

I think your copy needs some work too... I just skim read the page and still have no idea what Bamrang does.

Replacing "Help Make The World A Little More Accountable" with something more specific might be a good place to start.

Also, too much text for a homepage... I guess some of this falls under the remit of the graphic design... because you need to demonstrate visually what your product does.

Good luck!

PS. I am also a graphic designer... http://www.greig.cc

andrewhillman 12 years ago |

dribbble. Have someone do a .psd, then bring it to a xhtml chop shop for little money. Simple yet effective.