How to choose a designer, and how much to pay them
Design is an important part of marketing and advertising.
In fact it is safe to say that design is an important part of daily life! Everywhere we go we our senses are assaulted with the hard work of designers. Everything from the color scheme of Walmart, to the sleek curves of a corvette were designed with you in mind, by a designer of one sort or another. Good design is often more attractive than bad design. It is simply more pleasant to experience design that is done well, and thus god design reflects value and quality, while bad design reflects well, just the opposite!
This also applies to websites. With the right design and development your site can appear to be as big and important as the webs biggest players. You can stand right next to your multi-billion dollar competition in the realm of the internet and look like a rival even when you are a two million dollar a year business. The internet is the great equalizer, and design plays a big role in that.
It is very safe to say that the webs most successful websites are often designed by the webs best designers. It can also be said that well performed design work by a seasoned professional will add value and quality to your brand perception and awareness.
This bieng said, not all designs and for that matter, not all designers are created equal. The design field is full or artist from design school, and self taught visual masters. Every designer may have a different take on the same project, and every designer has a style that is a little bit different than everyone else.
When it comes down to it design is a matter of personal preference. This is why you find autoparts websites that have very ugly outdated designs, and photography websites with a photorealistic look and feel. The decision makers behind the website play a huge role in who designs the site, and in the end their personal preference (or lack there of) is reflected in the finished work. Even in the realm of Good Design, and there are many good designers out there, in the end its a subjective science.
My strongest word of advise on design to website owners is this: Are you artistic? Do you consider yourself stylish for todays popular culture? If you learned to draw could you become a professional designer in any field? If you answer no to any of those questions you may not be qualified to have an opinion. WHAT!? Yes I am serious, if you lack style, and do not have any experience with art or design you may not even know what looks nice, or be qualified to make a decision on the creative style of your website.
So if you think there is even a chance that you have bad web design taste, you should leave the design decisions to a professional designer, and let them do their job. Every web designer and developer in the world can tell you horror stories about the perfect site the client destroyed. It happens every day. People with no design sense are asked to make design decisions, and this results in badly designed websites and web pages.
If you feel this could possibly be you (and be honest this is actually most people) your best bet is to find a designer with a portfolio you think looks nice. Then ask a couple friends for their opinions (preferably artsy ones). If you find the right designer your lack of design sense will be overcome by the designers skill and experience.
I know this is a brutal article where you may feel attacked, but the natural world (of the world wide web) shows I am right on target. My biggest example is myspace.com. This is a website where people all over the world (millions of them) were allowed to create their own designs for their own pages. What resulted is the worst collection of poorly designed pages in the universe. Myspace is a hodge podge of ugly, disgusting, porrly thought out, and unusable mess. Note that its biggest compeditor has overtaken it in many ways. Myspace has become the childrens version of a much better designed, and more well thought out site… Facebook.com
Myspace is proof that ordinary people mean well, but they also suck at design.
Let the designers be designers, and the businessmen be businessmen.
When you do find a designer that you like, and they promise to create the worlds most amazing website for you, make sure you let them do their job. A designs biggest enemy is often its own client. What you should be doing instead of trying to impart some form of control on the design process is imparting your knowledge of your own business into your website.
If you are an accountant of 30 years, you know exactly what your clients are looking for. You will also have the best understanding of how the internet can be used to benefit them. Use your own skill set to make sure the finished design incorporates all of the important things a site of your industry needs to include. Together with the designers “mad skills” and your experience you are going to be fast on your way to a great website.
Quality to Price Relationship
People do not always notice the price to quality relationship in the world of design. For the most part, that is because one does not really exist! I know that sounds odd, but you may pay a designer in new york city to create a business card for $5,000 and find a designer in Montana of the same skill that creates a similar card for just $200. Just like corn or sugar designers will charge what they can based on supply and demand. The better the designer, the more demand they will have and the higher their prices are likely to be. This can change greatly on geography.
Artists often work in specific realms of design. For this reason a great painter might make a terrible tatooist. This can also be said of architects and web designers. It is often a good idea to stay away from designers that are not comfortable with the medium you are looking for. A great video effects artist might have no clue how navigation on a website should work.
A great example of where people often make mistakes is hiring a long time print designer to do web work. A website is completely different than a print piece. You might find people that have great skills in both mediums, but having a skill set in one medium does not always translate to another.
When it comes to price there is a baseline truth that seems counter to the last point. You pay more for better design. While it is true that quality and price are not reliant on each other, it is true that experienced web designers are not going to work for pennies, and the highschool kid down the street will not turn out the same quality of design as the professional web designer downtown. In your geography there will be a variety of designers with different levels of skill in many mediums. The cheapest designer will almost never be the best designer. The key is in finding a great designer that has reasonable pricing for your area.
Is your designer also a geek? When we are talking web design we have to keep several issues in mind. The first is usability. Does your designer have an understanding of web usability best practices, and is he or she capable of creating an easy to use website?
The second issue is Accessibility. Disabled people often use screen readers and other programs to use the world wide web. Also if your client base is older you should consider how your site is designed for these people. The best web designers love to make sites viewable by everyone. (This always excludes 100% flash based websites! Never build a 100% flash based website)
You should also consider your return on investment. If your designer is capable of creating better brand perception that will add up in dollars and cents, and can be well worth the money for a good designer. It is also true that current, fresh, professional designs we be something you can keep online for a longer period of time. If you pay for a cheap design, you may end up re-designing much sooner when you realize it was a mistake.
How much is to much money for web design? That is hard to say, but for my local market in central virginia you should expect to pay $40 – $100 per hour of design work. A simple design for a website will require 10-15 hours for the front page and a secondary page. If you include several sessions of revisions (that is up to you) it may run as high as 40-60 hours for those two pages of design. If you need dozens of sub-pages with individually created designs this can add up very quickly, just make sure you get an estimate before hand, and ask the question “are revisions included in this estimate, and if so how many?”
In the end when it comes to web design you get what you pay for. In my professional experience a well seasoned web designer will be more efficient, and will turn out a better design in the end.
One Response 
Leave a Reply 
Aaron Mills is a Project Manager for Jailbreak Creative. He has many years of experience working in the web industry and regularly works with local and national clients on a variety of web projects.
Aaron has extensive experience working in both PHP and Ruby on Rails Projects. Aaron also does work with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and web marketing. 
good info – i got a comment just last week about a medium sized website someone wants built. “i have to be honest i didnt know it was going to cost that much” – but the truth is, our prices are about half that of the normal industry prices! makes you wonder…