

Offer HN: free design work. - sahillavingia

Inspired by http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1826828 I decided to see if HN would be open to the idea of a weekly "giveaway" for around 5 or so design hours [1]. And the idea seemed to go over well, so I've decided to do it.<p>The first one is today. Just comment with a link to your project/company. After around 24 hours I'll pick the post with the most upvotes and send them an email.<p>In return for the design hours, I'd love to write a blogpost with a before/after and about the overall process.<p>I think it'll be fun. :)<p>[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1827654
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SkyMarshal
Africa Nutrition Society - <http://answeb.org/>

I'm doing pro-bono work for them to move their flat html to a CMS so the
people running the organization can update news, events, calendar, etc. on
their own without need for tech support, but am still just evaluating CMS's
and hosts (probably gonna be Django-cms or Vosao on GAE for the amazing price
point).

Their flat html site was designed by a company in UK, but is not as modern
looking as it could be, and the information architecture is busy imho. They
don't have all the content available for it yet either, but had to make it
public for their annual African Nutritional Epidemiology conference in early
October. It's also all table-based, and converting the non-tabular elements to
div/span something I'd like to do, but getting it converted over to a CMS is a
higher priority.

I've got my hands full getting the backend up and running and would love to
have a review by a pro web designer. In addition to being able to blog about
it, I'd be happy to include 'Design by Sahillavingia' at the bottom and
introduce you (via email at least) to the organization principals.

~~~
sahillavingia
You "win." I'll be contacting you... now. :)

EDIT: I can't find an email address on your profile, could you email me (in
prof.)? Thanks!

~~~
SkyMarshal
Great, thanks Sahil, added my email address to profile comments and just
emailed you.

Thanks also to everyone who upvoted, much appreciated!

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neilkod
<http://www.mymomjust.com> and <http://www.mydadjust.com>. Using hadoop/pig, I
searched through my 620-million strong twitter archive for all tweets
containing "My Mom/Dad Just....." The results are hilarious. It's just a
single-page site and could be some low-hanging design fruit.

~~~
mikeklaas
I think your site already looks quite good. Just clean up the about bar
(remove underlines, vertical center text, add more space between each item)

~~~
neilkod
um how? Dammit Jim I'm a data nerd, not a UI designer! This is why I threw my
hat into the competition ;)

~~~
jeroen
Like this? <http://kruisit.nl/projects/mymomjust.png>

I would also add a hover effect for the arrow and maybe some javascript to
replace the page reload. Since this seems to be HN feelgood week: need a bit
of help?

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ronnier
<http://ihackernews.com> \- HackerNews for iPhone/Android/Mobile phones.

~~~
csmeder
I love ihackernews.com, I just emailed you.

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samdalton
<http://fairtradeauckland.org/>

Fair trade is an industry that places emphasis on the producers of goods,
rather than the distributors of them. A group of people in Auckland, New
Zealand, are donating their time and resources to try and convert Auckland to
be a fair trade city. With a population of over 1M people, this would make a
significant difference to the lives of many producers in developing areas.

I've been managing social media and IT for the group, but we've yet to find a
good design for our branding. The website above is a temporary page with some
basic information, however as you can see it's nothing flash.

The entire project is coming from community efforts, so this would fit us
perfectly, and if we're successful in our goal, many people around the world
will benefit.

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jacquesm
Hey Sahil,

I'd very much like to take you up on your offer of doing design work but I
would feel embarrassed to see you do it for free which means I can not enter
in this round.

But if after you're done doing this really fantastically nice thing you feel
you still have energy left over to do one more site and get paid for it then
let me know, email in my profile.

greetings,

    
    
      Jacques

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nowarninglabel
<http://www.staticbuzz.com/> \- Implementation of Q&A site model, done in the
Drupal cms. Bonus, if this is picked, I'll make your design into a theme and
contribute it back to drupal.org where the ArrayShift install profile is still
in need of a good default theme. (*Note: The is site is hardly used, but I've
actually used it many times to showcase what Drupal can do)

------
lyime
<http://mugasha.com> We make it really easy to listen to long DJ sets. Best
place for listening to electronic dance music.

~~~
anujv
I have used you guys before, pretty good site, well designed. It would be cool
to see more social integration with your site. I like hypem.com (for listening
to music) because of its integration with for instance, last.fm. Really spurs
for discussion and brings me back to the site to listen to music.

~~~
lyime
Hey, Thanks! We are working on improving the social component of Mugasha right
now. Should be live in the next 2 weeks.

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kareemm
cool post :)

we just redesigned <http://www.easycalapp.com> \- a frustration-free booking
calendar for solo entrepreneurs - but we need a sales page.

~~~
JimEngland
Quick thing to fix:

When the page loads in my browser (1366x768 resolution), it automatically
scrolls me down the page a bit, enough so that I cannot see the EasyCal logo
without scrolling back up.

This is because of the auto-focus on the email address text field under
"Interested in using Easy Cal?". Maybe remove that and only apply it when "I
want to try it!" is clicked?

~~~
kareemm
good idea, i just fixed it, thanks :)

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phamilton
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/park-in-the-
shade/id391296993...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/park-in-the-
shade/id391296993?mt=8)

It's a simple fun iphone app.

~~~
ashbrahma
Neat idea!!

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michaelfairley
<http://remembersaurus.com> \- My recently launched webapp, and also my first
attempt at making something look decent on the web.

~~~
philfreo
Hey we're doing some really similar stuff at Quizlet.com (small startup but
over 1 million registered users), let me know if you want to chat.

<http://quizlet.com/>

~~~
gradschool
Very cool site. I can't remember the link, but I read a while back about a
researcher who discovered that the optimum way to memorize using flash cards
is if a learner who answers incorrectly is shown the correct answer and then
asked again after a number of other questions just at the point where the
correction is on the threshold of slipping out of his short term memory. This
length of time has to be optimized for each learner by some sort of adaptive
algorithm. Have you considered doing anything like that, or do you already?

~~~
philfreo
You're talking about SRS (Spaced Repetition -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition_software>). We don't
technically do SRS (yet -- although we're thinking about it).

But our "Learn" mode does keep track of what you know and what you don't know,
and keeps asking you the terms you have trouble with until you know them all.

Hit me up by email if you have any more feedback for me - would love to keep
improving the product.

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anthonyc
CityReporter - <http://plus1lab.com/about-cityreporter>

It's a service for state and local governments to improve their customer
service relationship with their citizens. It implements the Open311 GeoReport
v2 API, meaning the data is open and Free.

We could really use a nice theme for the web administration interface! I have
no idea if that fits within your 5 allotted hours though.

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happybuy
I'm looking to produce a few banner ads for our new startup:
<http://www.happybuy.com/>

Would be interested in an outsiders thoughts on the best creative to express
the idea of the site and have banner-ad viewers turn into active users.

My initial thought would be to simply have different banner ads highlighting a
product along with its price graph. It quickly shows the utility of the site
and how you can save money by knowing the best time to buy. Turning product
info such as:

[http://www.happybuy.com/product/Apple-iPad-MB292LLA-
Tablet-1...](http://www.happybuy.com/product/Apple-iPad-MB292LLA-Tablet-16GB-
Wifi/amazon/B002C7481G)

into a mini-banner ad could provide some insight, more so than a simple brand
focused ad.

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mr_november
<http://peerlove.com> \- web based employee recognition

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daleathan
Hello Sahil,

Excellent offer, I hope you have fun creating and blogging about the process.

I would like to suggest creating a logo for the Gramps project [1] (a
Genealogy Program) which I just found a few days ago and in a reply to me one
the developers mentioned that they have "No real official logo."[2] and from
the looks of the project they could use a new wiki template[3].

Please consider upvoting to help improve the project.

[1] - <http://gramps-project.org/> [2] - <http://goo.gl/JDN1> [3] -
<http://www.gramps-project.org/wiki>

~~~
manveru
I should replace myself with a bot that does this, but here's the real URL of
[2]: [http://gramps.1791082.n4.nabble.com/Impressed-with-Gramps-
an...](http://gramps.1791082.n4.nabble.com/Impressed-with-Gramps-and-some-
Observations-td3008884.html#a3008884)

------
perucoder
<http://maziesoftware.com/>

Please help! I'm always hard on my own designs but I dont think my current one
is good at all. My product is a meeting management web app.

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andrewacove
<http://www.getaquirk.com/> Ties your social network accounts (FB, Twitter,
4SQ) to a QR code. Scan to connect.

Main focus is on getting users past the home page to sign up for the service.
What's there still doesn't do a good enough job convincing the users why they
should sign up.

The next problem is getting users to actually connect through the service.
Channeling users to download a scanner app and download their QR code is
probably the next major step.

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cosjef
Startup Weekend Atlanta (Start Atlanta)! We are planning the 3rd annual
startup weekend in Atlanta. We have a base Wordpress site up, and need some
graphic design help. The more pressing need is for a logo. The event will be
held at the Georgia Tech ATDC in January 2011. Our team of 6 has no graphic
design expertise, and we will otherwise have to pay for the design work out of
sponsorship dollars. The upside for you is getting your design in front of
Atlanta's entrepreneurship community. Sound like a win-win?

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casabian
I'm doing a project in which I live in a different neighborhood in New York
City with different people every week. I guess I'd rather see this go to the
Africa nutrition society but I'd love to improve the site and do some cool
things with maps / linking to specific posts.

The site is on tumblr right now at <http://thenycnomad.tumblr.com>.

Thanks!

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csomar
I'm building an HTML5 Video Player. I would be interested in a nice and custom
carcass for it. (That is the buttons, progress bar, volume...)

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rfugger
<http://ripplepay.com/> \- It's a monetary system that works in a peer-to-peer
credit network rather than the hierarchical banking network. See
<http://ripple-project.org/>.

It's been a project of mine for five years now, and I'm working on a rewrite
and need a new design.

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simonk
<http://www.rhinoaccounting.com> \- Web based accounting software

------
mattmiller
<http://www.agentshowroom.com>

It is a Facebook app that lets Realtors shows their listings. I have tried to
make it presentable, but I usually end up doing tasks that are more fun and
let the design suffer. Thanks!

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nihaar
<http://broker.mapthatpad.com> \- looking for advice on making this look more
professional. Would also like to pay you for your work if interested in taking
on this project. Hit me up via email.

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lappet
<http://tambramsham.appspot.com/> A Geography Quiz app! The maps are from the
CIA Factbook and there are some countries no one is ever heard of :)

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Concours
I asked for some feedback here for my site: <http://www.mcsquare.me> , the
main concern was about design and the ads, maybe you could take a look.

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Nogwater
<http://www.SpellingThing.com/> \- Web based spelling practice app. I'm
clearly not a designer and would love some help.

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kenneth_reitz
I'm writing a new todo application that runs and syncs on ALL platforms: Fin.

<http://kennethreitz.com>

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kreedskulls
SafeB4Sorry - <http://www.safeb4sorry.com>

Any thoughts? We are a Life Insurance Agency!

------
techbio
<http://www.ampnote.com/> \- Guitars and Gear, Mostly Text

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chrischen
Http://Like.fm - you don't have to design it, just advice on how it can make
it look better. Thanks!

------
zaidf
<http://tekbob.com/join/default>

:)

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sjs382
<http://isshort.com>

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revoltingx
I'm struggling to design a decent toolbar location for an RPG Maker type
website.

Here's a snapshot:
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Vtq6sCdzyKs/TMUub_v3L9I/AAAAAAAAAG...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Vtq6sCdzyKs/TMUub_v3L9I/AAAAAAAAAG4/MvKs9JNXXjg/s1600/map_editor_2.png)

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klbarry
I work in sustainable fashion. We have a designer, but he is busy with other
projects. I would love an infographic to help me put the facts on the fashion
industry and pollution/waste etc in an easy to read and visually interesting
format for lay people.

~~~
pamelaravasio
Hi Klbarry,

there are a couple of option you might want to look at: 1) There are 2 books
that have numerous stats like the one you probably looking for. One is
"Travels of a t-shirt in the Global Economy" by Pietra Rivoli, the other is
"Sustainable Fashion and Textiles" by Kate Fletcher.

2) I've written a blog post some time back for which I've researched data that
you probably just could pop into a info graphic to make it visual. Here's the
link: [http://shirahime.ch/2010/03/wardrobe-undressed-why-the-
fashi...](http://shirahime.ch/2010/03/wardrobe-undressed-why-the-fashion-
industry-needs-to-change/)

Under the same blog you'll find also book reviews of the two aforementioned
books if you need a in more depth idea of what they offer.

Cheers, Pamela \--- <http://shirahime.ch>

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yousuffauzan
<http://cineight.com>

App is working fine. Need help in making it look good

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taggstr
Pick this one.

