Unless you try FDSign :thumbsup

Never late, well priced and great quality :glugglug

I agree and most of the designers that we use are very professional and 100% reliable. The one job that we were let down over was a one off for an urgent project that we needed done straight away. It turned out for the best for us anyway as we are far happier with the design that our regular designer was able to rush through and get us out of trouble with than anything else we could have used.

Most clients are a ... uhh.. nevermind. I have nothing but love for you all! :)

Soon accepting more orders.. maybe. Dunno. Maybe not. Gotta start being the nice guy again soon.

... same expiriences here, than I found sharky and things changed. don´t use amateurs and you won´t get disapointed !!

... shamefull selfpromotion !!

and why should I be ashamed? am I promoting myself based on lies? my services are something to be ashamed of? I know the design market and more or less I know who are good, bad, late, on time, expensive, inexpensive, plain crooks, or any mixture of the above. I won't talk about others, but I know about my company, and I know something: we've nothing to be ashamed of. I know my prices are inexpensive (they're not the lowest either), I know I never EVER missed a deadline and our clients say we're good, we also are always between the design contest winners here on GFY, just if you've doubts. So... should I be ashamed? HELL NO! :winkwink: (but I know about a couple that should be)

Trax,

I am of course partial to our design company, webinc.com but there are also other good teams out there.

Always take the time to research the company / designer that you are looking at hiring. Take the extra time to go through there portfolio, ask questions, etc.

Customer service is very important to our company, and should be important to any potential client :)

thanks

Todd

I found one designer who did the most awesome designs at great prices and has (had??) a well-respected reputation in the industry. Unfortunately it took him nearly 4 months to finish the projects, and one still is not done almost 6 months later. I'm still owed several other sites.

Meanwhile, he referred me to someone else to do work that was waiting.

One designer did SUCH an awful job that I dumped his designs. Before I did, I showed it to several other designers who all said a 5-year old could have done a better job, that the buttons looked like a newbie to Photoshop and the fonts were horrendous. I won't reveal who it is but others think he does awesome work (from comments on this very board). I can easily see why people issue chargebacks against designers (yes, I asked him to fix the buttons and fonts and he told me he'd already spent enough time on my sites, was not doing any more work on them, period).

In the interim, I found someone who does incredible work, and on time. He's not well-known, he doesn't have a portfolio, but what he does is highly professional and on time.

I had one person design something for me and install a script and gee whiz, after I told him I didn't need more work done, 1/3 of the files disappeared into thin air. Yes, that will teach me not to wait 24 hours to change the FTP password

All in all, I'd say designers are like any other industry out there, there are good, and there are bad.

What I find depressing is that so much design looks the same, especially those dizzying and busy pink and blue splash pages for the teen sites. How about some originality?

In an attempt to clear my name, I have posted a full explanation for my dissappearance in this thread: http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...hreadid=131136

I am currently working things out with the involved parties/clients. It was never my intent to 'run away' with their deposits or leave the work incomplete.

I'd say 80% of times is because of the client that doesn't want to risk with anything out of the standard, like in the teen example you mention. Show most people in this board something out of these guidelines and they'll go like an angry mob trying to lynch you just because you used red and black (just an example) colors for a teen site, no matter how good is it. So, most designers go with the crowd just to avoid to redo everything and make the page looks like all other pages in that niche. Furthermore, one of the most common requests to a designer is "I want a site that looks like [put site here]" or even blatants copies (there was a thread about some program which stolen all or almost all the designs from ARS, TCG and the suchs). When I've time, I try to make something original and show it first to the client or as an option. Sometimes it goes thru, sometimes not. But if I'm busy, simply go to the sure shot and it ALWAYS gets accepted. In short: not all the burden must be put on the designer's back :winkwink:

btw, the post above should've been: 50! (speaking of originality) :winkwink:

another thing: did you notice in the last days a bunch of requests for premade templates? Even if they're spam driven (one of them is for sure), you see several webmasters here interested in going with crowd, fuck originality, so, who's guilty about this lack of originality?

Me. It's my fault.