

Ask HN: Idea critique required. - imwhimsical

First off, it's wrong to call this a "startup" because thats not what I want this to become.<p>Im starting a small scale service, to help me understand design better. It's one of those things, "You don't understand what hypothermia is until you're actually facing it" (Reference from the movie <i>The Guardian</i>)<p>It's essentially a design/code service. I make custom-designed portfolio's and landing pages.<p>So here's how its supposed to run: People can sign up, and enter their name, email, age, occupation, and a 100-word description of themselves. Then, I select the one that seems most interesting, and design a portfolio/landing page for that person. I design it, and code it. So yea, Invite-only.<p>This is not free. Neither is it too costly, because making money isn't my motive. The price can be anywhere between $20 to $40 for each portfolio (including the coding)<p>Is this the best way to go about learning how design works? I'm looking for something small scale and not too flamboyant.<p>Shoot me an email with your opinion here: mail at arsalanbashir dot com.<p>Thanks, cheers!
======
pikewood
A couple of thoughts:

1\. What exactly are you trying to understand about design? Are you trying to
learn "designing for a client"/the business behind it? Or are you trying to
find projects for you to practice css/photoshop skills?

2\. Basically, you're holding a contest for people to present themselves as
the most interesting person to you, just so they have the right to pay for
your services. It seems a little audacious. Unless you can prove that $20-40
for your services is such an incredible deal that it is worth the effort, I
think it would be hard to attract signups. Offering a free portfolio--that's a
different story.

------
tjansen
I must admit that I am not sure whether I understand what you plan to do, so
let me try to rephrase it: you want people to fill out a profile to describe
themselves, and then you use it to build them some kind of MySpace profile
page, just hosted somewhere else? I could imagine that there are a few people
willing to pay for that, if you host the page at a nice location (e.g. their
own domain). Not sure whether this will help you learning about design though.

~~~
imwhimsical
So here's how its going to be:

\+ Describe themselves. I choose interesting cases, and design a landing page.
And then code it in HTML5/CSS3. And send them the files, so they can host it
wherever they like.

~~~
tjansen
If you send people just the files, without hosting, you are limiting your
target group to pretty technical people who know how to maintain their web
space.

------
delano
I see where you're going with this but who is that target audience? Technical
people? Non-technical people? And at that price, how different could the
result be for me vs anyone else?

If I'm an active technical person and I don't have a blog, my profile page on
github is a reasonable landing page. If I'm less technical, maybe LinkedIn or
Facebook or Twitter, at the very least it'll give an indication of my
personality.

~~~
imwhimsical
Thats the point! There is no limitations on what the target audience could be.

While, yes, social media can be an indicative of ones personality, I think a
more concise landing page would be far more effective in all cases.

------
nodemaker
Well can you help design the landing page for <http://www.nodemesh.net>

~~~
imwhimsical
Sure, lets kick things off! Can I have your email ID?

~~~
nodemaker
My email is nodemaker@gmail.com.

~~~
imwhimsical
Just sent you one!

