Web Template Designer

We've been hiring free-lancers web designers to do template work for us. So far, more than 40 people were interested and a few are already doing work for us.

A learn quite a bit on the process of hiring professional web designers. Here are some insteresting (IMHO) points:

• Anyone that puts a page together thinks he/she is a web designer;
• I've got some "portfolio" links that made me think if I had gone color-blind, style-blind and usability-blind:
  • Red background with green font can't start to describe some of the crappy sites that people put on their portfolio. These are definitely not designers.
  • Then there is the other side of the spectrum, the super-designer: Super flash-based resume-site, with intro page, music, and a usability that is just impossible. Oh, that red dot on the corner means continue?
• A lot of people don't know the difference between a web designer and a web developer. Most people consider "the person that does website" to be both. Not really. If I'm hiring a web designer I couldn't care less about your C#, PHP or MySQL skills. Those are actually turns off for me. I want to see people that do print, photography, video and web art. That is a designer.
• Letter of presentation: It goes from the most informal possible, like "I'd like to do templates for you" (without a resume and a portfolio) to the most well-crafted well-revised formal letters that you would send to an IBM recruiting department.
  • "Dear Recruiter..." or "ATT: Recruiting department": What? We are a startup!
• Even pro designers sometimes don't understand the difference between building a design for a site and a web template for a Site engine (like Sampa). When you build your uncle's shop website, or a Wikipedia.org you actually know pretty much what the content will be. You know what the header logo will be, what the footer links will look like, how many menu entries there will be, etc. Templates are more complicated. You have to create a more generic HTML/CSS that can fit to multiple content, grow and shrink approprietly, etc.

Now, I've decided that whatever is on a persons resume or portfolio will be irrelevant. I'll give the guidlines document to any person that asks for it. And any person can create whatever template he thinks is good. If I like, I'll buy it, if I don't... it won't cost me a thing.

Comments

[David Woods]

I have to disagree with part of your third point there.

Now, if you're hiring a designer then no, I don't think that terrific PHP or C# skills would help to balance out an otherwise mediocre design portfolio. But between two equivalent designers, go with the one with the development experience.

A designer who is also an experienced developer is going to have a much greater understanding of the limitations and flexibilities of HTML. For instance, I've never met an only-a-designer that develops liquid websites. They all ONLY develop fixed-width designs.

(They also don't understand repeatable background images. Don't ask me why.)

I also have another point to add:

beware the print designer. I've lost count of the number of projects where I've been given a design from a print designer and I've had to redo it. Sometimes it's really basic things that cause problems -- like when the designer takes the request for an 800x600 design as literally 800 by 600 pixels, not allowing for toolbars/menus/etc!

It also drives me crazy when I see a design from a print designer and the mockup copy is all anti-aliased. There are only fairly rare and sometimes unpredictable instances where non-Mac users see anti-aliased text in their browser -- so in my opinion, showing anti-aliased text in a mockup is misleading.

[David Woods]

(by the way, I've actually been getting your RSS feed for a couple of months now -- it's just an odd coincidence that you posted three topics in a single night that I just had to comment on!)

[Riika]

Good to see that someone else out there knows the difference between a "designer" and a "developer" :)