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Web 2.0 designs

Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:22 pm
by alex.barylski
I am trying to find Web 2.0 designs so I can hopefully develop a ocntact list of designers who are willing to freelance with the potential for full time employment.

I figured you all would be the best candidates for finding them as were all pretty tight that way. :P

Anyone know of any nice looking web 2.0 designs you care to share?

Also, if you think your capable of designing web 2.0 designs (and have a portfolio of at least 3 designs) and want to make a bit of money, I will hire you to re-design my existing site. :)

I will post this more officially in jobs section when i have some time :)

Cheers :)

Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:36 pm
by matthijs
What do you mean with "Web 2.0 designers"?

Do you mean I have to do glossy buttons, drop-shadows, big fonts and new! badgets?

I can do all of those. Not that I often do, but if you insist ... :)

Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:39 pm
by Oren
For your site? I thought you just got a new design :?

Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:51 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Oren wrote:For your site? I thought you just got a new design :?
I get the feeling some people just get easily bored and keep thinking of things to do. Are you not starting a web hosting company now?
matthijs wrote:What do you mean with "Web 2.0 designers"?
The term bugs me. Obviously you've lost touch with new technology Hockey ;)

http://cheese.blartwendo.com/web21-demo.html

Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 3:18 pm
by alex.barylski
matthijs what I mean by web 2.0:

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm

The first one by Ash Web Studios is beautiful. Excellent color matching, nice header/footer, fixed width, clear text, etc...

This guy is also a excellent designer and awesome XHTML/CSS as well.

http://www.avocadoweb.com/

I contacted him and never got a response, I assume he didn't like my terms. :P

Anyways, if you think you can flashy headers, nice web 2.0 looks with a side of XHTML/CSS on the side (which I may do myself to save money) by all means send me your portfolio.

I'll be honest, I'll not looking to spend more than $30-35/hour or about $120 for a PSD layout (header/footer/menu) and additional $50-75/page body thereafter. If I spend anymore I might as well go with a business that gaurantees me results, money back and on demand service. :)

I'm looking to develop a relationship with several designers as it's my weak point and don't wish to put all my eggs in one basket. As it stands right now I get about one gig a week (where I would need a single master template design and *potentially* pages - usually only 1 or 2 need design work though). However I just wrote up a contract with a sales guy and he's confident he can boost sales to 8 a week within 4 months - he's not officially starting for another 3 weeks though.

For my own site I'm looking to spend $300-500 CDN and need a logo I had designed, integrated into the new design (if it needs redone we can negotiate something). For clients (on basic packages) i'm looking to spend $80-120 on *complete* packages I'm looking to spend $300-$500 CDN.

Portfolio? Lets talk if my offers appeases you. :)

Oren I did and although it pleased me and a few others, I think it makes me appear as an individual consultant, which is not longer the image I wish to portray. It's restricting to, vertical navigation always does that. I like change, I change often. I use the Greek symbol delta (change) as a logo for a reason. ;)

d11wtq I do bore very easily. I constantly need to shake things up - complacency has no place in my life or business. :P Change is great, especially when it's for the better. I purchased by dedicated host yesterday and I've been cataloging all Apache modules I need to add and make sure others are disabled. My clients will not have direct access to the server via FTP or SSH. Saves me alot of grief.

Server-side blink tag. LOL

Thats great. :P

Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 9:16 pm
by AKA Panama Jack
d11wtq wrote:
matthijs wrote:What do you mean with "Web 2.0 designers"?
The term bugs me. Obviously you've lost touch with new technology Hockey ;)
It's one of those useless made up terms to try and redefine what is already existent.

They are basically trying to claim that sites using only div tags and CSS instead of tables are somehow Web 2.0. There is a little more to it that that. It's more of a Non sequitur than anything. :)

It was coined by Tim O'Reilly. It's kind of his way to get a little fame by renaming what is already in existence. He even renames different EXISTING aspects of web design and calls it Web 2.0.

Ever since CSS2 came out people have been able to do it but since most WYSIWYG editors are table based most people haven't. There is yet to be an editor that works like Dreamweaver but uses div tags instead of tables.

You know how some ignorant people use the term "The Internets" instead of "The Internet" where the knowledgeable people silently laugh at them for using that phrase? Well, Web 2.0 falls into the same category as "The Internets".

Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 9:44 pm
by John Cartwright
I was waiting for someone to say that, thanks Panana Jack :wink:

Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 1:54 am
by matthijs
Hockey wrote:I'll be honest, I'll not looking to spend more than $30-35/hour or about $120 for a PSD layout (header/footer/menu) and additional $50-75/page body thereafter. If I spend anymore I might as well go with a business that gaurantees me results, money back and on demand service. :)
..
For my own site I'm looking to spend $300-500 CDN and need a logo I had designed, integrated into the new design (if it needs redone we can negotiate something). For clients (on basic packages) i'm looking to spend $80-120 on *complete* packages I'm looking to spend $300-$500 CDN.
Well, to be honest too, and it's perfectly fine if you don't agree, this seems cheap to me. Obviously there are different markets within the broader web design business. From $100 stock templates to $100.000 jobs. Everyone may choose which market to target.

But $120 for a custom design? Make that $1200 and I'll start thinking about it. These $300-$500 packages, are they templates you re-use and resell? If not, I personally find it rather cheap. If a company wants a successful web presence, there's a lot more needed then a $300 template. If you send the same proposal to the other web designer, this might be the reason you got no response.

Again, if that's what you want, crank out 6-8 sales a week, good luck. As a designer I would be burned out creatively within 2 weeks. If not after a few days :) I put a lot of value on the whole process, from meeting a client, getting to know their business and building the website to putting everything online and following up. That process takes a lot more time then a quick morning of cranking out a template. It will cost a lot more. But in the end, the client benefits from that investment.

Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 3:43 pm
by alex.barylski
matthijs wrote:
Hockey wrote:I'll be honest, I'll not looking to spend more than $30-35/hour or about $120 for a PSD layout (header/footer/menu) and additional $50-75/page body thereafter. If I spend anymore I might as well go with a business that gaurantees me results, money back and on demand service. :)
..
For my own site I'm looking to spend $300-500 CDN and need a logo I had designed, integrated into the new design (if it needs redone we can negotiate something). For clients (on basic packages) i'm looking to spend $80-120 on *complete* packages I'm looking to spend $300-$500 CDN.
Well, to be honest too, and it's perfectly fine if you don't agree, this seems cheap to me. Obviously there are different markets within the broader web design business. From $100 stock templates to $100.000 jobs. Everyone may choose which market to target.

But $120 for a custom design? Make that $1200 and I'll start thinking about it. These $300-$500 packages, are they templates you re-use and resell? If not, I personally find it rather cheap. If a company wants a successful web presence, there's a lot more needed then a $300 template. If you send the same proposal to the other web designer, this might be the reason you got no response.

Again, if that's what you want, crank out 6-8 sales a week, good luck. As a designer I would be burned out creatively within 2 weeks. If not after a few days :) I put a lot of value on the whole process, from meeting a client, getting to know their business and building the website to putting everything online and following up. That process takes a lot more time then a quick morning of cranking out a template. It will cost a lot more. But in the end, the client benefits from that investment.
$1200 is steep, considering what I expect. All I'm looking for is to have a wireframe layout which I have sketched into a PSD/PNG. There is no meeting of clients, or constructing the XHTML, planning directory strutures, etc, etc...

It takes me several hours to hammer out designs in PSD, however I am not a designer and often little "niceties" like reflections or "cute" buttons, icons, etc can not be brought to fruition.

I would assume that a professional designer could hammer out designs faster than me, as I can hammer out code faster than an amatuer , keeping quality higher as well. Isn't that why we are paid for our experience? :)

Those $100 stock templates you refer to, is not really what I am looking for either. Yes they cheap, but they also usually include several page designs (5-8 pages) some pretty impressive flash banners and graphics works. I personally am loosing interest in that much "flash" and "jazz". Thus the reason I wantedweb 2.0 designers, they have slightly different approaches to design.

$35 CDN/hour is certainly on the lower end of hourly rates - globally for high quality designers. But thats what I am trying to figure out, what exactly is it going to cost me to hire a contract a quality designer. The problem is, I have had such a huge spectrum of quotes from both good and bad designers, it's hard to say. I have a local designer who has a nice portfolio and his request was $35/hour and at the same time, I've had less than appealing designers quote me at $75/hour when I didn't feel they worth that much. The last guy designed my current site charged $75/hour but gave me a deal as I'm friends with his sister.

I can get a unique design from http://www.perfectory.com for $700 USD and $100/page thereafter. or $1200 for some kick@$$ flash header included.

They offer the security of a business and tons of flexibility and a portfolion I can pick and choose. Why would I want to hire a contract designer for less than that? I've done business with them in the past and have been pleased with results, but I'm looking to cut cost and retain quality, I figured contracting to a designer without going through a middleman would save me money and make a designer more money than having gone through a middleman???

Anyways, that is insignificant.

What is important, is that if you feel you can satisfy my requirements and demonstrate with a portfolio of at least 3 designs, we should disscuss as I am open to pay more, but I need to be convinced first. :)

Cheers :)

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:43 am
by matthijs
For clients (on basic packages) I'm looking to spend $80-120 on *complete* packages I'm looking to spend $300-$500 CDN
The thing is, you are aiming at the lower-end market. Sorry, but spending $80-120 on complete packages? That's just mass-production and mass-replication work. In my opinion, if you want to give a client a good website, you need to spent more. The client has to spent more.

Another thing is, you say you do the consulting, meeting of clients etc. But how can a designer design a good website if he's never met the client and hasn't been into the process? Again, you might as well design 20 templates and re-use them again and again. Then you could change the colors and images yourself, to make them "unique".

It's up to you to choose a market. But have you ever considered increasing your prices? My personal guess is that in a not so long time we cannot compete in the lower-end market anymore because of the upcoming competition from countries like china and india. Hourly rates are a lot lower there, you can't ever compete with that.

Just last week I lost a pitch because I was too cheap. Other companies charged 10k-20k, were as I was around 5k (euro). For a basic website that is. My offer wasn't taken seriously, so next time I also offer 10k and will get the job. All I'm saying is: are you serious about the business model you have chosen to follow? Have you considered going in another direction? I just think that it if you charge reasonable prices for a website (custom made), it shouldn't matter whether you pay a designer $35 or $80/hr.

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:05 pm
by Jenk
I thought Web2.0 was more to do with functionality, ala drag and drop stuff etc. :\

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:15 pm
by aaronhall
Jenk wrote:I thought Web2.0 was more to do with functionality, ala drag and drop stuff etc. :\
It's all covered in this book

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:27 pm
by Luke
haha biggest leap since the dancing hampster. good stuff. every time I hear somebody say web 2.0 in a meeting I cringe. Then I have to stop myself from stabbing somebody with a pencil.

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 12:33 pm
by jayshields
On a side note: the design of perfectory.com is awful. I wouldn't pay £50 ($100) for my website to look like that. They're charging how much to design other peoples websites?

It's all table's and it doesn't even validate (HTML or CSS).

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 1:39 pm
by RobertGonzalez
There is a design firm in SF (two, actually) that have quoted a potential client of mine $10,000 and $11,000, respectively, for 5 wireframe mockups of a design. There is a firm in Colorado that posts on its site that typical wire frame mockups run $6,000 per to start. You are asking for someone to design them for you for $120? Seems like you are underestimating the market, eh?