Web designers should start companies, not freelance | Hacker News Reader

Web designers should start companies, not freelance

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24 pointsFaerris28 comments

>a rockstar designer should take more stake in a company than a >rockstar developer.

That made me laugh. I imagine the post was written by a designer.

I understand how important design is, it's as important as the backend. But somehow the OP believes that it's only the design that made some apps successful. He also undermines the countless sleepless nights the "engineers" at Apple spent trying to make things work to fit the design. Without fair share of both, it's impossible to make a product successful.

>A web site can be as clunky as it can be in terms of back-end >but if the front-end kicks ass,

The OP also makes the mistake of thinking, that design is only buttons and borders. Front is a fairly delicate balance of UX, UI. Without an appropriately "designed" backend which is equally responsive, all falls apart.

oh, i am a developer, btw.

That was a very weird argument in that case. 'Cos i'm a dev, and truly understand the value of designers(since i don't have the talent or haven't spent as much time on it).

Also a reason most people don't take on designers on board is that design is fairly broad in iterations. Quite a lot of successful startups probably hire a designer to finish a design(plus a couple of iterations on it). But the involvement of the dev side is more granular, and continuous till the end. Ofcourse most companies when they take off, do bring a full time designer on board.

There is an event horizon that one passes at a certain time in their career in which they come to realize that the two disciplines are indistinguishable. Both are expression of creation, a person that does not see the creative value of one has not reached the pinnacle of the other.

Nicely said. I am a developer and a designer, and I used to tell people it wasn't worth learning HTML or CSS since it's taken care of in many CMSes and plugins. But now I've come to realize that people who have little working knowledge of HTML/CSS are unable to even conceive of using the Web to its full potential.

No offence, but find me a CMS or plugin that can make me facebook or basecamp.

Or any app to be honest. If you want to make a nice application, that path is not in the slightest bit open to you.

For simple websites I agree and say the same thing, otherwise, no.

Either I don't understand the meaning behind your response or you didn't understand danso's comment.

My thought was that he was stating that you need both to make a complete project, which is true.

Your last sentence suggests you think HTML/CSS is only good for simple websites? I don't quite understand what you mean.

It seems danso was saying what you might be suggesting, based on whether I understand your comment.

Either way, could you clarify what you mean? I think the "No offence" part is throwing me off.

I think you misread my comment. I said I used to think that a CMS or plugin could take care of most people's HTML needs. In fact, it might be the case that someone has to rarely write raw HTML thanks to the tools out there. But if that person never learned HTML in the first place, then they are at a severe disadvantage. As would be someone who never learned how to write because he figured he could just dictate into the computer's speech-to-text program.

Design can be split-tested by someone with average skills and end up with above average results. The same is not true of development. Throwing together a bunch of things and trying them in production leads to unmaintainable code and many hard to track down bugs. One requires time and persistence, the other requires knowledge, planning and problem solving.

>Design can be split-tested by someone with average skills and end up with above average results.

I do think split testing is not the answer in every case. Firstly you have to know what to split test. A product like Dropbox cannot be designed just by split testing for example. See MS Windows file copy as an example, i still think it's broken.

With dropbox, somebody noticed a problem and wanted the product to be so easy to use, even to the extent of being invisible. I would imagine split testing would lead to dozen tabs of configuration of file sync rules.

I'll dare to say that the two are just as important. Think of it as one being a heart and the other being a liver. Both are just as important since without one of them you'll die. Have a poor heart or a poor liver and you'll live a sub-optimal existence.

This post was written by neither.

If he's going to be critical, then I will be too.

A rockstar developer would never think that and a rockstar designer would not have created stiqr.com. I'm pretty sure I counted 4 different sans-serifs.

you missed the point. the point was that designers need to do more than just "freelance" and startups should embrace them more as co-founders. not sure why you brought up stiqr, that is just something else entirely.

A startup is comprised of whoever you want. Startups are picky. Fulltime on a startup means money is tight and bodies need to be worth their weight in gold. There are enough people who can do both design and development work to seek out someone who purely does design.

"A web site can be as clunky as it can be in terms of back-end but if the front-end kicks ass, people can easily overlook the back-end. But the same is not so true in reverse, which is to say, no one gives a crap about the “back-end”, as long as it works."

weakest argument ever, and the whole post stands on it.

In other fields, that's called a marketing gimmick (some would go far by calling it a scam).

I wonder what craigslist thinks of this argument.

As a designer who's launching his own business (http://folyo.me), I can certainly identify with this.

But I also know that it's easy to be blinded by the new entrepreneur's enthusiasm and see the world through rose-colored glasses. Whether you're a designer or developer, starting your own company or project is not for everybody and has numerous downsides.

For example since launching Folyo, I've spent almost no time on actual design. Instead, I'm spending most of my time either coding (I've learnt Rails) or writing on the blog (http://blog.folyo.me) to try and drive some traffic to the site.

I also didn't take on any new client projects, which means I've missed a couple nice opportunities, and also made much less money in the past couple months than I usually would.

If you're a designer and you want to stop freelancing while staying independent, I would instead advise that you sell Wordpress themes, sell icon packs, or maybe write an ebook.

Starting a company is definitely not the easy way out, and is not for everybody.

true, it's definitely not for everybody. but just wanted to say, i've seen your service and it's great. think you are definitely on a right track.

i can't imagine how valuable your service could be to hundreds of startups out there, especially in S.V.

I wonder if there's a market for a kind of paid mentorship, for developers looking to improve their design.. A few emails a week and one or two face to face meetings / Skype sessions ...

"wow.. You really need to work on typography.. Let's look at these examples .. I'll send you some homework. Now let's talk about the color theory you went through this week.."

I don't know if web designers should start companies or freelance, but this article didn't do anything to cement my opinion on the matter.

He starts out with a message to startup founders about how design will singlehandedly bring your site to prominence. He doesn't present any evidence for this.

He posits that designers don't get involved in startups because they believe their services aren't all that valuable. I think this is a rather unrealistic view of the situation. If anything, designers are prone to exaggerate their contribution to a project in my experience. I would suggest the reason designers don't get involved in startups is because they've dealt with enough nutty entrepreneurs to treat the field with skepticism. This is a realistic view — most startups simply aren't profitable ventures.

He then concludes that designers should get involved with startups because they're simply more satisfying than freelancing. This seems like such a subjective point that it's not even worth mentioning.

He never does directly address the claim in the headline, that designers should start startups.

Allthough I give this guy a credit for praising often neglected designers, he is in no way entitled to bash on engineers and say that they are less valuable. A good design might attract the user on the first, but if the backend sucks; adios muchacos.

I have a feeling that he doesn't understand that to be a truly great designer, one has to have a great knowledge of the backend programming as well. Design borders dont end at the front. They strech deeply into all the lines of code. And for a product to work nad become great, designers must become engineers and vice versa so that they both get best of both worlds.

I suggest the author to look more into 37signals, and how theyre designers operate. There is an excelent video on peepcode where Brian Singer shows his design methods. Allthough you need to pay to see them (24$), they are one of the most valuable insights in the design process.

Here's why many "rock star" designers don't like (generally) working for a single company or brand like a startup. First you have to understand not all designers are created equal. You tend to have "Rock Stars" (or in the agency speak a Creative Director) and a spectrum down to "production" designers. "Creative Directors" tend to be good at a lot of the different design disciplines, they understand business objectives, they can help with product and feature vision, they understand usability and they can make things pretty. Its the entire package.

If they go to work for a brand new startup they start with a blank slate, all the needs and challenges are large and the designer is fully engaged because they have to draw on all their different skill sets to solve problems.

But as time progresses the needs of a startup tends to shift from where there is less need to do full UX the product is now defined and its about making small incremental changes. This is where they go from being a "Creative Director" to a production designer. As a CD they get to design the web site with a brand new look and feel, as a production designer they're doing a new module on the home page which matches the existing design standards.

Basically the challenges keep getting smaller, and the designer is less engaged. There's a similar arc in development, however while at first you need to do "Big Things" (get the site up) and some of the changes become smaller, at least those small things can be as challenging (or more so) then the "Big Things" (optimize the load time).

Finally as a designer you live and die by your portfolio, and having a one site portfolio gets you nowhere. Unless you're looking for a big exit you're much better off getting more work, and more projects it both grows your portfolio and expands your experience and abilities.

Hi, I understand what you are saying. But I couldn't really agree on how designer becomes less engaged as startup matures. I think that's the one big misconception a developer (and designer) gets when they think of startups. Because in reality, the amount of work one can do in any given startup is unlimited. If there are no work then you create work, it's do what's best for the company. It's a life-long cycle.

"Why? This is the result of a designer under-valuing the importance of what his/her work can bring to the table in a startup. IMO, a rockstar designer should take more stake in a company than a rockstar developer. Look at Apple, I’m not so sure if their designer(s) took much credit for what they did in turning around that company (Unless Jobs designed the ipods/iphones/macbooks himself, which I doubt)."

With Jobs's recent passing, the last sentence is a statement that has plenty of evidence and testimony to argue either way. It doesn't bode well for your overall argument for you to say "Did Apple designers get enough credit? Who knows? Who can be sure?" and leave it at that.

If you are going into the real estate business, you partner with building engineers, not interior decorators. Designers are interior decorators. Although they create an immense amount of value, once their work is done, they are not so much needed afterwards.

Unless its a company that generates content on a timely basis. In that case it's possible the reverse is true. Once the platform is up and running the programmer is not needed as much as the designer.

It's all about context.

Every company is different and the proper number of programmers to designers will depend on the needs of the company.

If a company reaches a point that it doesn't need as many of one side, then there's a chance it's close to not needing as many on the other. But if the company wishes to grow then chances are they will still need both.

I totally agree. I'm a designer/developer (better at design) and I have a company, I don't freelance. I make that distinction very clear. Sure, the company has me as its only employee but that's temporary. Now, the article's title seems a bit misleading. It sounds more like the author is advocating that designers stop freelancing and join a startup full time, not to stop freelancing and start a company.

I wish the post had touched on topics like the fact that considering or calling yourself a freelancer is short sighted and that starting a design company can be better for your bottom line in some markets.

That said, I also feel a bit bad for many of the people who will read this. At least the ones who are designers. These days there are about as many people who think they can call themselves designers as those who think they have the next big app idea. I include myself in this. Anyone nowadays can read some NetTuts, get a book on HTML and think they're a designer. It sucks and it hurts the good ones out there.

While I cringe lately at posts like this that give hope to people who have no business in the areas of design/development/entrepreneurship, I'm also glad they show up here on HN as I myself needed them about a year ago to get where I am today. I'm not an iota as skilled as a lot folks here on HN but I'm glad that the few who do have "it" (as in, "what it takes") get to read this and hopefully it fuels them to do things the rest of us only wish we could do.

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