Ask HN: Best way to hire freelance website designer? - rmp2150
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undoware
In all seriousness -- don't. At least, not unless you have a major website to
design. There are just too many excellent ready-made options these days.
Instead, hire a usability expert. Usability is what actually gets you
returning business. (Disclosure: I work in UX.)

No one uses a website because it's pretty. Everyone uses a website because
it's useful. It's a testament to human superficiality that in 2013, there is
still such a thing as a 'web designer' for sites smaller than 20,000 uniques a
month, while many of these same sites (and many much larger sites!) are
usability nightmares.

Hiring a designer when you don't have a UX consultant is like sending interior
designers to Louisiana after Katrina: nice, but it would be even nicer to get
the levees rebuilt, hmm?

(Sorry, I'm on a bit of a rant; I hope it is informative enough to justify its
irate voice. Allow me to continue just a bit longer.)

Do you have a tailor make your jeans? No. Do you have a haberdasher dash your
hats? No. Do you have a cobbler hand-cobble your shoes? .... So why are you
paying someone to put e-lipstick on what might very well be a www-pig?

So, go to useit.com and read up about usability, and then hire a UX (user
experience, or usability) expert. Go get yourself a website that works as good
as it looks. Because you deserve it --- and so do your visitors.

~~~
undoware
Also, just to clarify: good user interfaces are _tested_. Their creators
collect _empirical data_. This is what separates visual design from UX. UX
(user experience) is _testable_ , and you can get hard data, distribution
curves, and confidence intervals. Anything less should make you feel....
unconfident. At least, for an interval. ;)

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lifeguard
Hiring a freelance website designer can work well if you know what you like
and have a tightly scoped plan. I assume you just want something that doesn't
look bad as opposed to something awesome, because awesome is very expensive.

I like to use the template method. Give the designer 2 - 3 generic wire-frames
that mirror your site's major "views" or function. Also request a generic
template for 'leaf' or low level pages to use in the future for new content
pages. Deliverables should be valid PNG/HTML/CSS/js files. Next map these new
templates to the various pages in your site, and put the content and
navigation together. This is old school webmaster work and any staff person
with HTML skills should be able to do it.

I prefer the above method to giving designers free reign. But the decision
makers must do their part: commit to a design and not allow feature creep. It
also ensures that you can maintain the site going forward yourself or with
just an HTML hacker.

Contact a local university or use craigslist.

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rush-tea
There are only two that specialize in web design that I know of, dribbble.com
and behance.com

99designs is also good, but it's more generalist marketplace vs the two I
mentioned

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ing33k
had some good results with 99Designs
[http://99designs.com/](http://99designs.com/) also do check
[http://dribbble.com/](http://dribbble.com/)

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meerita
What kind of design service do you need? I can provide help.

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megri
I think Odesk is best place to find

