Affordable Web Designer Wanted

RicardoSmith

The Corinthian wrote:

.....Wasting pounds in order to save pennies is actually a particularly Irish business practice, as I don’t think I’ve seen the same level of penny pinching in other countries.....

I always wondered about this aswell. I see this a lot too, both in companies and in people I know. Its like people who buy diesel cars, when if you do the maths of extra insurance, tax, servicing, and cost to buy that the diesel cost you, and sometimes the petrol car works out cheaper.

I know that anyone I know working in design/web etc, they get the bulk of their work and clients from the UK. Its more profitable and less hassle.

kstanl

smeggle wrote:

According then to the 'Pro-designer/coders' advicing in this thread thats great value for money. Most clients are bull****ted by these 'Pro-designers/coders' with loads of waffle and then charged over the top prices.

Actually I think you'll find that what clients pay for when they commission 'Pro-designer/coders' is exactly that - a professional service that utilises the expertise of several people with specialist skills across the necessary spectrum of technologies and creative. Most of these people have families to feed, mortgages to pay and what-not. Any business that commissions some Jack-of-all-trades working out of his bedroom to establish their online brand will end up paying for it in the long-run.

Smeggle, I'm not trying to make a scathing attack on you but I personally feel that your attitude stinks. Saying that Web Design is so simple that even a monkey could do it is the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from an arrogant marketing executive. The fact that you're passing yourself off as a Web Designer and that you cheapen the value and difficulty of good design is nothining less than shocking. It takes a serious amount of talent to be a good Web Designer. If you're deluded enough to think that anyone can knock up a great looking site, then you'd be doing yourself and the rest of us a big favour by going down another career path.

cormie

I've read every post here and I'd just like to say a thing or two.

Both Smeggle and Figment have done me favours for free that cost them either time or money and would have cost me money if it wasn't for them. From my experience with them both, they are both nice guys and wont rip you off.

In terms of what the OP is looking for, well it's up to him, I'm sure both sites will work, it's up to him what kind of design he is prepared to pay for. Maybe he could go with Smeggle now to get his business off the ground and when he is earning enough he could go to Figment if he considers Figments design abilities to be worth it for his business. The title of the thread is "Affordable Web Designer Wanted". It's up to him to make the choice between the two types offered here.

smeggle

kstanl wrote:

Smeggle, I'm not trying to make a scathing attack on you but I personally feel that your attitude stinks. Saying that Web Design is so simple that even a monkey could do it is the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from an arrogant marketing executive. The fact that you're passing yourself off as a Web Designer and that you cheapen the value and difficulty of good design is nothining less than shocking. It takes a serious amount of talent to be a good Web Designer. If you're deluded enough to think that anyone can knock up a great looking site, then you'd be doing yourself and the rest of us a big favour by going down another career path.

I never slagged of figments design work. I have in fact just spent the last hour looking over his/her design work and it is very nice. Some of it is similar to most 'Template' based sites yet some is exceptional especially science.ie - very nice.

My argument is not about the design. It is about the coding that is running that design. OK so maybe I took the mickey a little about 'A monkey could do it' - fair enough, I apoligise for being slightly uncouth. But my main point still stands - you can have the best design in the world but that design is worth nothing if it is not run on the correct code.

It's like building a Ferrari and sticking a mini engine in it - it doesn't work! And that is not a micky take it's plain and simple fact. Figment has a very nice template/design being let down by a few simple and easily correctable mistakes.

Again my apoligies for taking the mickey about a 'Monkey could do it' but whilst spoiltchilds design is nice and pleasant to view it's coding whilst an admiral attempt has been made to get it to the more modern standards of W3C compliancy and fair play to them for that, it's got a few errors. Had people not started in by insulting my own work I would have been only to happy to say 'Here you go matey' You need this, change that to xxx and if you want I'll give that css a tweak for you to make it resolution compliant.

I'd do that basically cause I am a nice guy and because I do know how to do it. I just spent 3-4 years studying it over at W3C. Slag my designs of all you like - that at the end of the day is down to personal choice. Personally I can't abide flash/.swf sites. They take to long to load and just annoy me most of the time but thats me - so what!

But if you want to attack my professional abilities as a coder then please do so from fact. You have no idea as to what my qualifications are or are not yet you still insult me. I have not insulted Figment in any way or anyone else for that matter. I certainly do not see why you feel you have the right to insult me.

edit: Figment? If you do want it fixed pm me and send the relevant files. I have no problem sorting it for you at no cost. Upto yourself if you take up the offer or not.

DonkeyStyle \o/

smeggle wrote:

most of that work is done by the direction of the client who's website it will be.

I think that's the key difference though, if you're paying 4 grand, I don't think the designer is just going to tweak the template colours a bit and knock out a quick banner.
I'd expect more than an off-the-shelf template look for that price, I'd expect a whole unique look and branding, with a nice company logo I could use on letterheads.

I suppose it all depends on how important the clients image is... for example, Paddy O'Shea probably won't need a 4k uber-designer site to tell his prospective customers where to get the cheapest bag of cement in Waterford... where as an upmarket clothing store would want to put forward an image of elegance which takes a lot of design talent (and time) to get right. (Figments car analogy was spot on IMO)

I'm probably one of the few non-professional web coder/designers who knows how good I'm not... if I don't think I can deliver the level of design I think they need, I point them elsewhere, I reccomend that other 4k designer.

There again, just because they're charging big bucks, it doesn't mean they're any good... I'm sure we've all seen horrendous business sites and thought - "God almighty, I wonder how much they payed for that abomination?!"

Figment

OP, sorry you even asked yet?

smeggle

Figment wrote:

OP, sorry you even asked yet?

probably lol

btw that link in your sig to designers guild of Ireland - looks like the domains been suspended - whats the story there?

kstanl

smeggle wrote:

My argument is not about the design. It is about the coding that is running that design. OK so maybe I took the mickey a little about 'A monkey could do it' - fair enough, I apoligise for being slightly uncouth. But my main point still stands - you can have the best design in the world but that design is worth nothing if it is not run on the correct code.

Run on correct code? I assume you're talking about standards compliance? I agree that standards compliance is very important but, eh, design is important too. The parts must be of equal quality or the whole will fail. If you mark up an XHTML strict site that looks utterly s**t, then you've failed. Similarly, if you knock up a beautifully designed site that failes in every browser except IE, then you've failed.

smeggle wrote:

It's like building a Ferrari and sticking a mini engine in it - it doesn't work! And that is not a micky take it's plain and simple fact. Figment has a very nice template/design being let down by a few simple and easily correctable mistakes.

I seriously think you're clutching at straws there. It doesn't fully validate. Boo-f**king-hoo.

smeggle wrote:

I just spent 3-4 years studying it over at W3C.

Really? That's interesting. You were in MIT for 3-4 years? Or was it France or Japan? I didn't realise they ran open courses! I'd love to hear more. Odd though, 3 or 4 years studying with W3C and your terminology seems pretty simplistic.

smeggle wrote:

Slag my designs of all you like - that at the end of the day is down to personal choice.

Well I'm not a designer myself but from a developers point-of-view, there's good design and there's bad design. It's not as objective as a lot of people would have you believe.

smeggle wrote:

Personally I can't abide flash/.swf sites. They take to long to load and just annoy me most of the time but thats me - so what!

Apart from the accessibility implications, I find Flash sites can be hit or miss. But, as an experienced designer, surely you know that it's not the technology, it's the designer/developer using that technology. Almost all of my Flash sites load almost instantaneously as the assets and data get loaded at run-time.

smeggle wrote:

But if you want to attack my professional abilities as a coder then please do so from fact. You have no idea as to what my qualifications are or are not yet you still insult me. I have not insulted Figment in any way or anyone else for that matter. I certainly do not see why you feel you have the right to insult me.

Well seeing as you managed to insult the whole industry by claiming that monkeys can do a designers job, I think your opinion, experience and ability should come into question. I'm not insulting you, I'm simply pointing out to you that, in my opinion, you don't seem to have that much experience or know what you're talking about. Aside from standards advocacy, you don't seem to have put forward much of an argument and the points you have made are a bit baffling to be honest.

Figment

We are moving around servers at the moment but staying with Hosting365 who is sponsoring the hosting. Lots of big back end changes to the site required it.
Basic structure (without much design ) will be there and a great new feature currently being built by K!LL!@N.
It will be live again tomorrow and we will be putting back up the salary survey and past articles back up later in the week.

Rollo Tamasi

kstanl wrote:

Apart from the accessibility implications, I find Flash sites can be hit or miss. But, as an experienced designer, surely you know that it's not the technology, it's the designer/developer using that technology. Almost all of my Flash sites load almost instantaneously as the assets and data get loaded at run-time.

Two very good points there kstanl.

kstanl wrote:

Well seeing as you managed to insult the whole industry by claiming that monkeys can do a designers job, I think your opinion, experience and ability should come into question. I'm not insulting you, I'm simply pointing out to you that, in my opinion, you don't seem to have that much experience or know what you're talking about. Aside from standards advocacy, you don't seem to have put forward much of an argument and the points you have made are a bit baffling to be honest.

RicardoSmith

Its like the dreaded phrase, "that will take 2 mins". :rolleyes:

I've worked with monkeys, I've never found them that great in fairness.

smeggle

kstanl wrote:

Well seeing as you managed to insult the whole industry by claiming that monkeys can do a designers job, I think your opinion, experience and ability should come into question. I'm not insulting you, I'm simply pointing out to you that, in my opinion, you don't seem to have that much experience or know what you're talking about. Aside from standards advocacy, you don't seem to have put forward much of an argument and the points you have made are a bit baffling to be honest.

emm Duh!

smeggle wrote:

OK so maybe I took the mickey a little about 'A monkey could do it' - fair enough, I apoligise for being slightly uncouth.

Not even going to bother answering the rest of your comments as really they make little sence.

and btw W3C Schools is at www.w3.org - it's free and anyone can use it to reserch the correct coding required and the correct standards. you may also find this place very usefull, I've used it also for going on 3years now www.webproworld.com - You get a lot of the staff from W3C there giving advice etc btw.

oh and also theres quite a bit more - oh yeah some liked my designs, some didn't *Shrugs* little I can do about that.

Like any form of art it's upto the individual person wether they like your design or not and no amount of awards, pats on the back or whatever will change that. Personally I dislike most of Van Gough, De Vinci, I thought Monet was abysmal yet I love Picasso, Dali, Rembrant, Lorrain but thats me and how I look at there forms of art/design.

I believe Dali said it far better than me when he produced a work of art which is just ablank page with is name on it. The art world was horrified at his imputance yet all failed to grasp the fact that Art and It's Beauty is in the eye of the beholder not the Artist.

So maybe my design/s are mediochre and if you knew the brief for that corkandcounty site then youi would vey quickly see that I have done my job as was required. Cork and County is a local 'Free Paper' gathering it's revenie via advertising. There site reflects the same an advertising driven site with articles. As I said when I linked to it the site is a sample site and more work is yet to be done on it such as color coded sections amonst a lot of other things but it is in no way as bad as the majority of advertisment based revenue sites on the Internet.

Some things on the nav layouts are to be changed - order of placement etc. The calender is to be dropped (Never liked it anyway) the googles will eventually be dropped to the foot of the page but there is no way it can be called a bad design. It does what it is intended to do display adds along with client usability. (They will input all of the content themselves via a simple admin panel).

It runs though on compliant base code though content area can invalidate this if it's not watched. The tcm breaking news also needs to be addressed as the text/java is incorrect (Same problem spoiltchild has). I have the code for it but as yet I haven't done any more work on it as I'm still awaiting client feedback.

I'm not going to defend myself to anyone anymore. Christ, apart from an off the cuff remark about monkeys show me anywhere I have insulted anyone in this thread? Unless you call saying hey matey you got a couple of probs with your backend coding there to look over, unless then you call that an insult then I have not insulted anyone.

My work can speak for itself - you either like it or you don't. My clients must as most have been with me now for over 2-3 years and re-new every year. I've just renewed 2 contracts and have 3-4 renewals coming up next mnth. All of these clients are more than happy to continue with my services and all are happy with there designs. That says enough for me and there opinion is far more valid to me than anyone elses.

They are the ones paying me after all....

dahamsta

Do you need a hand down off that horse?

ChicoMendez

smeggle wrote:

oh and also theres quite a bit more - oh yeah some liked my designs, some didn't *Shrugs* little I can do about that.

More on the dont than do i guess... but hey once you are happy thats all that matters

smeggle wrote:

So maybe my design/s are mediochre

chalk it down kid!

smeggle wrote:

I'm not going to defend myself to anyone anymore.

Good decision . You are biginning to ramble big time... and it an't doning you any favours!

smeggle wrote:

My work can speak for itself

We gathered!

smeggle wrote:

My work can speak for itself - you either like it or you don't. My clients must as most have been with me now for over 2-3 years and re-new every year. I've just renewed 2 contracts and have 3-4 renewals coming up next mnth. All of these clients are more than happy to continue with my services and all are happy with there designs. That says enough for me and there opinion is far more valid to me than anyone elses.

Thats becuase they are in the penny penching bracket of irish businesses. Not caring for or wanting anything other than a 'cheap' solution

smeggle wrote:

They are the ones paying me after all....

As a famous man once said...

if you pay peanuts you will get monkeys!

kstanl

smeggle wrote:

Not even going to bother answering the rest of your comments as really they make little sence.

You don't understand what I was saying? Not surprising I guess.

smeggle wrote:

and btw W3C Schools is at www.w3.org - it's free and anyone can use it to reserch the correct coding required and the correct standards. you may also find this place very usefull, I've used it also for going on 3years now www.webproworld.com - You get a lot of the staff from W3C there giving advice etc btw.

I assumed, from the way you phrased it, that you had actually been studying WITH the World Wide Web Consortium. I've been marking up standards compliant and accessible websites for a good while now. As I'm sure many people on this board have. Honestly, we don't need the newbie lecture on standards. It's embarrassing.

smeggle wrote:

oh and also theres quite a bit more - oh yeah some liked my designs, some didn't *Shrugs* little I can do about that.

They're not good, it's that simple. Sorry!

smeggle wrote:

Like any form of art it's upto the individual person wether they like your design or not and no amount of awards, pats on the back or whatever will change that. Personally I dislike most of Van Gough, De Vinci, I thought Monet was abysmal yet I love Picasso, Dali, Rembrant, Lorrain but thats me and how I look at there forms of art/design.

You're right, some of those artists might not be everyone's cup of tea. However, they do all share one common trait - they were irrefutably talented. Design is objective in that one might not like a particular designers style. However that shouldn't give talentless individuals a carte blanche to produce utter crap and pass it off as 'something that might not appeal to everone'.

smeggle wrote:

I believe Dali said it far better than me when he produced a work of art which is just ablank page with is name on it. The art world was horrified at his imputance yet all failed to grasp the fact that Art and It's Beauty is in the eye of the beholder not the Artist.

Yeah... I suppose future generations will look back at that Cork site and wonder why everyone thought it was so f**king s**t at the time.

smeggle wrote:

...but there is no way it can be called a bad design.

I don't mean to be cruel... but it is bad design. It's absolutely pig.

smeggle wrote:

Christ, apart from an off the cuff remark about monkeys show me anywhere I have insulted anyone in this thread?

Actually, I think you'll find that the monkeys remark has pretty much got everyone as insulted as they're going to get. You came on here and collectively assaulted every professional designer by claiming that they're pretty much a bunch of talentless losers. I'm sorry, but you're getting what the f**k you deserve. The fact that you can't design to save your life means that you're being put in your place - and deservedly so.

smeggle wrote:

Unless you call saying hey matey you got a couple of probs with your backend coding there to look over, unless then you call that an insult then I have not insulted anyone.

XHTML/CSS is backend coding now? :rolleyes:

smeggle wrote:

My work can speak for itself - you either like it or you don't.

I don't.

smeggle wrote:

My clients must as most have been with me now for over 2-3 years and re-new every year. I've just renewed 2 contracts and have 3-4 renewals coming up next mnth. All of these clients are more than happy to continue with my services and all are happy with there designs. That says enough for me and there opinion is far more valid to me than anyone elses.

Oh right, so you've convinced some penny-pinching clients that you know what you're talking about. It's not exactly a great feat. It still stands that your work seems to be way sub-par.

smeggle wrote:

They are the ones paying me after all....

Peanuts and monkeys.

smeggle

So how about you two guys showing your work then? I mean like your so exalted brilliant designers that can slag my poor mediochre designs of you must have all the awards under the sun and be so amazingly wonderful and brilliant that gives you the right to slag of someone elses work that your stuff must be so dazzling uber fantastico that such mere mortals like us can't be allowed to view your stupendous monumental designs.

We seem not to be worthy of your exalted precence oh great ones...

please show me your work so as I may learn from your greatness oh mighty great ones...

Allways the same couple of gob S***es who mouth of and probably wouldn't know the arse end of a server/html markup if it throw up in there face or for that matter how to even co-herantly put any form of structured argument or factual argument together to support there insults.

especially yourself kstanl... Oh great and mighty brilliant designer whos exalted work is so great and wonderous that it would degrade you to show us mere mortals a viewing of your god like creations..

I mean I assume thats the case as you seem to be able to speak from some great height to give you the right to totally insult and 'Slander' my work.

Why not show us your work? even one itty little bit of your exalted godlike brilliance?

kstanl

First of all, I'm not a designer... I'm a developer. I work with designers and people with various other skills in order to achieve an end goal. I certainly don't pretend to be able to do it all myself like some people!

And stop playing the victim please; you came on here saying that Web design was so easy even a monkey could do it, then you pulled some piss-poor piece of design out of your hat. You're getting the grilling you deserve. Having said that, I'm going to stop now. There's just no point in arguing with you as we're on totally different planes of existence.

Ph3n0m

And I am finally stepping in, as this thread has degraded into nothing more then a (albeit funny) slagging match

Thread closed