Where have all the good designers gone?

[tylercruz]

*Note to mods: I could not find a suitable place to post this, so I hope this area is fine. If not, please feel free to move it.

Where have all the good designers gone? I used to create and code all my sites myself, but recently I've been hiring others to do it, as I am too lazy to do it myself, and I lack the skills to receive the quality of work I want.

I've tried Elance.com and Guru.com various times, hiring freelance web designers and developers. I chose the best of the bidders, but their work was still very low quality. I've searched online through various web designers, and I keep seeing extreme poor quality work. Usually their site is a site taken from TemplateMonster.com, which makes fresh tears crawl down my cheeks.

So where have all the good designers gone? Have they disappeared? Have dot com corporations hired them all and snapped them up? Do all the good ones charge $300 an hour now?

Right now, I spend around $1000 a month on outsourcing work. I found a good backend programmer - he is not cheap, but does a good job. I've probably spent 3 grand on him since I met him a couple years back.

What I NEED is a good designer. One who understands clean commented HTML and CSS. One who understands cross browser/resolution compatibility. One who understands usability, layout, design, and creativity. One who understands that Photoshop is not meant for basic bevelled buttons and lensed flared images.

Is this too much to ask? Am I too greedy? Perhaps I expect too much?

I am looking for these lost good designers. I don't pay generous salaries, but I pay fairly, and more importantly - I give continual work.

If anyone knows of these hidden good web designers - please let me know!

[rocknbil]

Well while I consider myself only mediocre, I adhere to all of the concepts that you seek - LOVE the comment about TemplateMonster lol . . . . personal pet peeve of mine, stolen/borrowed/bought elements+WYSIWYG editors do not equate to awesome creativity.

For my part - the reason **I** do not seek work on those sites is the inverse of the reasons you complain about. We have to eat. We have mortgages, children, bills. Those avenues do not meet those needs. The bottom line is that everyone wants it good, they want quality work, and they want it fast, but no one wants to pay what it's truly worth - something that offsets the realities of the cost of living. So what you will find there are people trying to break in, willing to work for the breadcrumbs thrown out by their benefactors.

So I got a regular job in the industry, yes, snagged up not by a large corporation but a small one, and while they don't charge $300/hr, it is probably more than you are willing to pay. I spend my days grinding away at making someone else rich, but it pays the bills and there are insurance benefits for my wife.

This solution comes at a dear cost to the creative psyche: while I try to dedicate time and energy in the evenings to my own projects, at the end of the working day my creative energies are so drained by daily tasks it's truly like squeezing water from a stone.

Like I said, don't know about "good" but this designer's still around, it's just the starry-eyed dream of making it big as a web guy has turned into a really bad version of "Office Space."

Which reminds me, I have to get that cover sheet for my TPS report, just got a memo . . . . :-)

[chaplin]

Hmm, the good designers are certainly not gone. Neither i think they are charging 300/h. In my country you can hire a really good designer for $10/h and i am sure they can work fine on distance. Well, there are few who charge 50 per hour, but they are a bit 'too creative - great - genious' (in their mind) so regardless the charge i would not hire such one. But that is different topic. All around the world there are plenty of them who would do great work for 10-20/h.
I guess you need to claim what you are searching for, when you contact them. In my practice the most customers i've met were searching for low cost solutions. So when a new customer is asking for quote, most often i think about the cost. But when you ask them that you care for quality job and what you understand as quality you should at least receive some more relevant responce.

[limbo]

If anyone knows of these hidden good web designers - please let me know!

Sure, take a look at any CSS Gallery and you will find links back to hundreds of dedicated designers who understand web sematics, browsers (all CSS designers have not option but to understand browsers!), layout, accessibility, etc, etc.

They may not come as cheap as $10/hr (which, quite frankly, is peanuts!) but you'll get them at at way under $300/hr. As a bench mark I do not think that £30-40 ($60?) an hour is unreasonable fee, so long as the workload is agreed first and not ambiguous in any way.

I think there are thousands of budding designers out there flexing their creative biceps, just need to find the Dojo [webmasterworld.com] that offer the best teaching methods ;)

[tylercruz]

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by CSS gallery - could you give a couple URL's? Thanks.

[Easy_Coder]

tylercruz - Don't forget that there was an internet bubble that burst too. I'm guessing that there are many people no longer in this industry.

[martinibuster]

elance shmelance. Get creative.

A quality design starts at around $2,000. The quality designers in the SF Bay Area I know get their jobs from word of mouth.

Have you tried poking around the campus of your local graphic design school? How about going through award winning blogs and contacting the people who designed them?

[edited by: martinibuster at 7:31 pm (utc) on Mar. 1, 2005]

[Essex_boy]

IN the dot net magazine a few months a they ran an artice on just this subject, people were leaving as the compettion was way to stiff.

Just like you say hire a good third worlder for naff all - you cant compete.

[limbo]

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by CSS gallery - could you give a couple URL's? Thanks.

We're not allowed to post specific URL's but this link'll get you looking in the right direction:

[stopdesign.com...]

[supermanjnk]

another thing about the poking around your area for people who do design it's a lot easier to check up on someone that you can meet with face to face.

personally I wouldn't call myself a great designer, while i know a great deal about css, when it comes to adding graphics i just get lost, I was never very artistic, so most of the sites I make have little or no graphics. Which is fine in some cases, but a lot of the time a graphic would make the design that much better.