Am I the only one who wants to MURDER some of the designers around here?

find 2-3 guys that do good work and only use them whats so hard about that ?

And it's no wonder some of you beg for work and make 100 banners for free to win a $25 contest.

Worthless tools.

I have some guys that do me good, but the downside to that is all the projects start to look the same, or they are booked and can't get right to me. So I look for new ideas, fresh designs.

maybe problem in you? ;)

Designers are just odd.

Half of them almost finish the work and then disappear and never deliver so they don't get payed for what they did.

That's way is best to learn design by yourself.It's not so hard.

give your work to the second designer, first

I really wish most of them weren't so damned table happy

See that is why you are an idiot sigwhore,

there is tons of people who can claim to do design but very few people can. you get what you pay for, its like when you get idiots who say some designers overcharge you can go to some outsourcing company and get complete crap, does crap convert? not usually.

it amazes me how the word "designer" is tossed around so easily, tons of wannabes when very few actually know what they are doing.

dude

give us a shot i the future

we have alot of very satisfied clients and work well with them

anyway, you're right - designers are some kind of shit cause client is the same peace of shit very offen. all the same as men and women.

Agreed, unless you are new in this business I do not see why designers would charge you up front. Designers and programmers are the most flaky people in the industry so why anybody would give them money up front is mind boggling.

Hit up Czarina over at xlabor, she does great work.

I think her ICQ number is 276592701

Shoot your own content too right?

I can understand that people (designers) sometimes get a bit greedy and take a bigger work load than they can handle, in which case the timeframe limit suffers, but I cannot understand why anyone would use different colors than specified, different pics and make a different "feel".. When I worked actively as a designer before - my main problem was that most of my clients didn't have a clue what they want, and a good part of those wasn't even sure about what they DON'T want.. From a designers point of view, you cannot get anything better than a client who knows what he wants, and provides all texts / sample links / guidelines.. Plus I've been ripped off by quite a few of them, and that's why I stopped taking on new clients (unless they're referred by people I work with), so now I just stick with a group of webmasters I trust and use any spare time for my own projects.
Take sandmans advice & try to find a few designers who actually listen to what you say and stick with them..

golden words!

+1

who is your designer?...

when you want to get it done right the first time...feel free to hit me up on ICQ to get a quote. our portfolio can be found at:
www.envisionextadult.com

and you get to work with me : )

If you ever want to try somebody new, let me know. My designer has some free time and I'll gladly give him some of your work. No money up front, your reputation is enough. Don't like, don't buy.

OK... I just killed one of them.

Onto the next one.................

I am with you!!! after my job was half done I sent one of my designers a note about a bunch of issues... well he still delivered crap!!!

I am fed up, lets break out the bats and beat the SH^*&IT out of them

sheesh.. thatz why i dont take any prepay.. .. yknow keepin it real and such and such.. cost me money but nobody wanna kill me at least..

yah, who are they?

I know what you mean. Good designers are hard to come by. Actually most good professionals are hard to come by. But you notice it more with designers cause you use them more usually.

are you still paying your filipino designers $3.50 per gallery?

i can put you in touch with our designers... they're good at giving me exactly what i ask for as long as the requirements are clear enough

plus they give you drafts / mockups at specific stages of the design before they finalize anything

the pricing is really competitive too

I have luckily found a couple I tend to stick with, they do fast work and they are good and cheap.

I've got one tied up in my basement now, here is what I'm gonna do to him...

I'm going to starve some rats for a week. Then I'm going to shove a piece of PCV pipe up his ass and turn a rat loose inside so he will crawl up into his rectal cavity and chew into his insides. The rat will feast on him. When he is full and comes out, either from the pipe or from eating his way out, I will turn another loose... and then another... and another...

Muahahahahaahah!!!!!

HAHAHA! A very simple logic

You had better hope they don't realize they are good (and nor does anyone else), because with demand comes workload (bye bye fast) and then, if they have any sense, higher prices.

It is always possible you may have found someone who is totally unaware of his or her talents and/or utterly lacking in ambition. But it never hurts to ask yourself how likely that is.

"Cheap" is the main reason for most of the problems that people have with so-called designers. Adult webmasters typically want to pay less than 1/10th of what pro marketing/design people charge. In essence we expect professionalism and talent for less per hour than we probably tipped the waitress last time we went out for dinner. Surprize, surprize, we often get what we pay for.

you get what you pay for

Indeed. I'm going to try that next time around.

Just a bit of advice, and I know 99.999% of you already know this, but...

Make sure you buy the domain they will work on, not the other way around. I know far too many people who get burnt by having the designer running the whole show and registering the domains, then all of a sudden dropping of the face of the earth with a 5+ year lock on the domain.

I really like Bluewire Design, Pro Adult Outsourcing, and Insane Adult Creations. All of these companies have been reliable and very talented.

King.. glad to see you are happy !

exactly, and only THEN give to the first to fix it

It can be difficult to communicate ideas to designers.

That's why I design my own stuff.

That's pretty normal. If you know exactly what you want, make a sketch and fax it to them.

none of the quality designers would let a client hang out to dry with a design they weren't happy with ...they would rework it until it was what you wanted

It`s true, for me request a designer or get a good hair cut is same painfull, I never get what I asked.

I hate coders and designers, inspite of being a designer myself. I'm so fucking happy I am able to do my own designs, and I'm a lucky son of a bitch, as I found a trustworthy coder.. hopefully no more headaches regarding either issues.

The 'big' design companies like bluedesignstudios, dickmansdesign and webinc are some of the guys *I* would use, I'm not alltogether sure I'd trust the smaller, one-guy operations any longer..they have a tendency to end up MIA after a while.

Hmm, I think its a typical situation when there are so many private designers hanging around. What else did you want? I'm writing my guide now.

A larger operation does X amount of work, most of it will go as planned and make the regular profits and some a bit extra, so they can afford to absorb the cost of those jobs which for whatever reason, over-run. Similarly they may have pencilled a particular person in for a job, but if that person gets tied up, they are able to switch the job to someone else.

In the long run, the solo designer could do the same thing as regards absorbing costs, but if he is unlucky enough to get several tricky jobs, one after another, that will mess with his head and his finances. And of course, since he is on his own, everyone in the queue gets stuck. More pressure.

Given that his appeal is often low price, which in turn may mean he is inexperienced both in his work and with handling customers (together with the type of customer he is most likely to attract), it is more likely some of his jobs will go bad. He may not have the nerve to want payment up front, so he is going to get stiffed regularly. Etc. Etc. None of which is an excuse, I'm just saying why the situations we hear about are pretty much inevitable.

My biggest issue with "adult" designers is their sameness. It isn't only that at a given time, many are producing very similar work (currently split into two camps, toon and non-toon), but that when you look at their portfolios, by and large you see the stamp of the designer and little evidence of something tailored to their clients. Much of the work doesn't reflect good usability or marketing practises. A lot is so heavy, you had better hope your visitors are impressed by the design, because they will barely notice your content.

But again all that has to come down to the price we are willing to pay and the way in which we expect to conduct business. In the past when I have worked with mainstream agencies, I usually waited a couple of days for an appointment to sit down and discuss my project: some webmasters expect the job to be finished or well on its way within that timescale. Depending on what I wanted, that first meeting could involve from one to half-a-dozen people. I might see and talk to others before the job was done: I recall having a logo made once and I was given four suggestions, all of them mocked up at different sizes, ranging from business cards to the side of a truck and the agency had tested recognizability, readability, etc., before I was shown a thing and I got a written report analyzing their results.

What I particularly appreciated was that I needn't have a clue, except in the broadest terms, what I wanted them to produce. They would ask lots of questions and produce something effective (most of the time) and unique. Needless to say, the billing went past the prices charged in this business, before anyone ever sat down to work on the finished product. But why do we try so hard to skimp on the very thing on which we depend so much to produce our income?

It seems to me that our obsession with cost when it comes to designers, suggests that we are planning for failure (how much will I lose if it doesn't work?), rather than for success (is this a reasonable investment if it helps me earn $$$?).

I couldn't agree more.

hehehe words to the wise

Thats the nice thing about programming, unless you misunderstand what they want, you can't fuck it up.

It either works or it doesn't. None of that "shades of gray" bullshit.

That's why I stopped doing design. It's too subjective, and there's no money in it.

Its called the Milk and Stall the American game. They agree to do the work for 1/2 the price and they take double the time to complete it by bullshhitting around...

I think, they feel like they think Americans are fucking them cuz we pay a lower price for the services so they make intentionally make mistakes to draw out the projects and take on as many projects as possible!
It Sucks dick and is very streesful dealing with dishonest people and I am about to terminate one of our relationships soon because of it!

They just need to be more, honorable and say pay me a little more and I will get your work done on time but this never happens!

very funny thread, should attract all the designers and artists from the board in here.

good time to plus the sale of

animatedguy.com Pr3

icq 50663030

"I'm a designer"