

I suck at web design, so I made a contest to design rubycommitters.org.  - tenderlove
http://tenderlovemaking.com/2011/01/04/rubycommitters-org-design-contest/

======
lwhi
<http://www.no-spec.com/>

EDIT: Actually, I feel a bit bad for posting this - still, I do believe that
spec-work isn't good for designers. Competitions aren't necessarily the most
productive way to go about creating a new web design for an open source
project.

~~~
sudont
Why do you feel bad?

One of the biggest common gripes here is the non-technical partner who "just
needs a programmer" to get the project off the ground. Everyone bashes those
types, yet this exact thing, except for exploiting designers, is on the front
page. There'd be a riot if some marketer came on this board looking for a
programmer, cheap.

~~~
tptacek
Developers do speculative work for clients all the time. So, for that matter,
do software security people, and the dollar value of an hour of software
security work dwarfs both web devs and designers. But don't feel bad, because
lawyers also do work on spec, and their bill rates crush ours.

Designers need to stop acting like some kind of special priesthood. Yes,
people try to take advantage of them, just like they try to take advantage of
everyone else. The answer isn't to brand every contest, audition, or consult
project as immoral and exploitative.

~~~
mattwdelong
As a programmer who founded a Digital Advertising and Design group this past
year with a very talented designer, you couldn't be more wrong.

As a programmer, I have much more leverage when selling my services over that
of a designer. There are a lot more "designers" out there than there are
"programmers" and people use that to their advantage.

The fact is, you can go with cheap design because "it works" for most people
(that's not to say it sells). However, with a cheap programmer there are a lot
of the times that the code doesn't even work. That's the difference, and IT IS
exploited.

Edit: That's not to say a designer shouldn't come along and contribute to this
- I`m merely defending no-spec, which I agree with. You can design for free,
but don't do it with the anticipation that you will earn a living from winning
the spec contest, do it because you want to support the project. This is much
like a programmer would commit to an open source project.

~~~
tptacek
I think you're overstating your case. _So far_ , you haven't been put in a
position where you had to deliver functional code of some form to win a bid
for a project. Give it time.

If you're doing so well right now that you wouldn't even contemplate going out
of your way to win a particular client, congratulations. I understand that's
not an uncommon position for dev firms to find themselves in in 2010-2011.
Just understand that the pickier you get about who you want your clients to
be, the more work it will take to acquire those clients.

~~~
tomh-
Just out of interest, what kind of functional code for what kind of projects?
I imagine we are talking fortune 500 clients here?

------
tenderlove
There were supposed to be hearts in the title, but I guess they got stripped
out, so here are some hearts:

<3<3<3<3<3

~~~
spicycode
O/\O Have a high five, well played sir.

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enra
I felt like helping out, so here's my entry: <http://karrisaarinen.com/rubyc/>

Tried to bring the minimalistic Japanese feel to it, like Ruby is.

(The signature on the upper corner is only for the heroku preview. I wanted to
sign it for the competition, but didn't want to write my name anywhere on the
site)

------
leftnode
Why not just buy a nice theme on <http://themeforest.net> or any of the other
template websites and modify it slightly?

------
icco
The place you'll want to fork to get to work:
<https://github.com/tenderlove/rubycommitters.org>

I am constantly blown away by how overly complicated rails is for getting a
simple site set up. It almost seems like this site would be better as just
plain html (or a simple sinatra site...). But oh well, I digress, sounds like
fun.

~~~
veeti
A static site generator like <http://nanoc.stoneship.org/> would work too.

~~~
bradleyland
Or even better, Jekyll, which is the tool that powers GitHub Pages:
<http://pages.github.com/>.

------
pavel_lishin
Am I the only one who briefly paused before clicking on that link at work?

~~~
tenderlove
I like to think that everyone does that. ;-)

[https://skitch.com/aaron.patterson/r8s8i/keywords-google-
ana...](https://skitch.com/aaron.patterson/r8s8i/keywords-google-analytics)

------
dangero
99designs.com lets you host contests like this. It's a great site. I have used
it a lot lately.

------
EGreg
how is this different from 99designs?

~~~
tenderlove
There are Love Bucks at stake.

------
cancelbubble
<http://www.builditwith.me>

A web site that connects design & development entrepreneurs. It exists to make
creating apps easier by connecting you with like-minded designers & developers
with the same goal: create cool & useful apps. Build It With Me will help you
bootstrap your ideas into actual apps.

<http://collabfinder.com> (this site is not responding as I enter this)

Why'd we make it? Because we want to make it easier for likeminded developers
and designers to meet and collaborate with one another. In other words, we
want to help folks actually build the lovely projects they're thinking about.

