
How to find the right designer - sgrove
http://www.attackofdesign.com/how-to-find-the-right-designer/
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unshift
i used this exact method to find the designer i hired about a month ago.

overall, it worked out, but it was a frustrating process. i was aiming for
some specifics: a female designer who was up to date on HTML5/CSS3 and ideally
had some wedding stuff in her portfolio.

i probably contacted no less than 25 people (through their websites) over the
course of two weeks, and was met with either a lack of response, note saying
they weren't accepting work, couldn't start soon enough, or for one reason or
another i reconsidered.

eventually i found someone who is now doing some really great work, but it
wasn't a fast process.

it's important to carefully check out portfolios, because while most things
look good on Dribbble, a nice icon or logo doesn't necessarily translate into
solid web design skill. i spent a lot of time validating pages (and pages
linked in their portfolio), looking for design elements i liked and didn't
like, and overall indications that they'd be good for me to work with. that
way, once i hired my designer, i knew what to look out for (e.g. press the
issue of validating HTML).

all in all -- Dribbble was a good place to find designers, but i still had to
do diligence on my end to find the right one for my project. that's basically
echoing the point of the article, but it's worth repeating.

~~~
premchai21
I'm curious: are there reasons you were searching for a female designer
specifically? (Unless I'm misinterpreting that sentence, that is.)

~~~
unshift
yup. i'm working on a site for weddings and wanted a female perspective

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justinph
Dribbble? Really?

Dribbble is neat and all, but using it to find a designer is like picking a
book by looking at the lower lefthand corner of the cover--it doesn't tell you
anything. You might find a designer who is good at fancy effects in photoshop,
but it won't tell you much about UX, architecture, coding experience, etc.

Dribbble could be the start of your browsing experience, but should by no
means be viewed as the go-to place.

~~~
huhtenberg

      - I hate cats - the hair, the smell...
      - Oh, you just don't know a good recipe
    

Same with Dribbble. All good designers have links to their portfolios full of
uncropped samples of their work. _Most_ of good designers on Dribbble also
have Pro accounts meaning that their "shots" typically have full-size versions
attached to them and the shots are organized into the projects.

Nobody is saying that one needs to pick a designer because of that one 400x300
shot that looks awesome. What the OP meant is that Dribbble is a great visual
directory of a metric ton of _really_ good designers.

~~~
sgdesign
Thanks for explaining my own point better than I could!

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cuchoperl
Where can you go to look for a UX/UI designer that can help with the usability
of your website? Dribble is ok to showcase a nice logo, a nice button etc, but
fails for non-cosmetic driven design.

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matt1
Quick plug: I'm working on a startup called Lean Designs to help developers
who struggle with web design create beautiful sites. In a nutshell, it's an
HTML5-based WYSIWYG editor that exports to professional HTML/CSS. I invite you
all to check it out:

<http://www.leandesigns.com>

~~~
pchristensen
Even if you never become a customer, watching Lean Designs develop via its
blog is amazing! It's too bad LD will be a huge success because matt1 is a
programmer I'd love to have on my team.

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michaelpinto
As a designer I found the article a bit of a throw away. Firstly designer can
describe a wide range of talent — anybody from a branding expert to an
HTML/CSS production jockey. The way you'd search for each of those roles is
quite different, it's like the difference between a Unix admin and a Object C
programmer who knows iOS.

I think the main problem that many non-designers have when hiring talent is
that they don't understand the process of a designer, so they don't know how
to manage a designer. I also think there's the sin of going the cheap route
and then being unhappy with the results.

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dreamdu5t
What about designers who can code? I think that's a major consideration in
hiring a web designer.

If you get one who can't code, how well do they understand what is possible or
easy in the browser? How well will they work with the coder you have to hire?

A lot of times you can get a decent frontend person who designs and codes for
less than you can hire a coder and a designer.

~~~
flyosity
Depends on what you want them to code. Any great designer who works on the web
can write HTML & CSS, else they're not a great designer. If you want them to
know Rails, Python, or PHP and help you with middle-tier integration, then
that's probably a more difficult task.

~~~
thomasgerbe
"Any great designer who works on the web can write HTML & CSS, else they're
not a great designer."

Couldn't disagree more. I've worked with so many amazing interactive designers
at agencies who didn't know much about coding but because of the division of
labor managed to execute some killer sites.

I'm not arguing that designers like myself shouldn't know code but rather that
amazing web designers who don't know code do exist.

~~~
flyosity
You can't design for the web (or for any medium) without knowing its
constraints. If a "web designer" doesn't know HTML or CSS then how can they
adequately design for the web as a platform when they don't know how it works?

~~~
jamesteow
Because they use the web everyday.

At my old company, we taught designers contraints about web elements and what
could typically be styled and executed. This relationship between front-end
dev and web designer was pretty key. I never coded but because of my usage of
the web, I knew the constraints.

Those designers ended up designing some of the most used sites in the United
States.

When working at an agency, one rarely ever touches code because the client
either has a team to deal with it OR there are full-time front-end devs.

But hey, if those designers who multiplied revenue for ecommerce sites and
increased viewership for content sites are bad web designers, then I'll take
those scrubs anyday.

~~~
DieBuche
I've seen a lot of "web designer" who treat a website like a regular printing
product. Only really understanding the constrains _and_ the possibilities
enables you to stuff that is really built for the web, not adapted to it. I
think it would be rather unlikely for a designer w/o any coding expirience to
think of stuff like this: <http://www.designmadeingermany.de/magazin/5/>

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mtgentry
Coroflot.com and behance.net are good resources too.

Generally speaking, talented designers (and hackers) enjoy working on
interesting projects. If your idea is better than anything they're currently
working on, they might work for equity. That's how I approach it anyway.

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peng
If you're looking to hire a logo or icon designer, Dribble is the place to be.
However, crafting the perfect 300x400 teaser has little to do with web design.

Do you want to hire a window decorator, or someone who will help you solve the
hard problem of making your app easier to use? Think carefully. You might not
want a real web designer. A graphic designer is certainly a safer hire--they
won't futz with your codebase, anyway!

~~~
sgdesign
The truth of the matter is that Dribbble has the best designers out there. And
yes, that includes great user experience designers
(<http://dribbble.com/rogie>), and even great front-end coders
(<http://dribbble.com/simurai>).

I think a lot of people mistakenly assume that a "user experience designer"
has to create ugly mockups and clumsy prototypes. The best user experience
designers are just designers that do their job well.

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shawnee_
There's a decent mix of dev/design talent on Forrst

