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Ask HN: Idea critique required.

2 pointsimwhimsical10 comments

First off, it's wrong to call this a "startup" because thats not what I want this to become.

Im starting a small scale service, to help me understand design better. It's one of those things, "You don't understand what hypothermia is until you're actually facing it" (Reference from the movie The Guardian)

It's essentially a design/code service. I make custom-designed portfolio's and landing pages.

So here's how its supposed to run: People can sign up, and enter their name, email, age, occupation, and a 100-word description of themselves. Then, I select the one that seems most interesting, and design a portfolio/landing page for that person. I design it, and code it. So yea, Invite-only.

This is not free. Neither is it too costly, because making money isn't my motive. The price can be anywhere between $20 to $40 for each portfolio (including the coding)

Is this the best way to go about learning how design works? I'm looking for something small scale and not too flamboyant.

Shoot me an email with your opinion here: mail at arsalanbashir dot com.

Thanks, cheers!

A couple of thoughts:

1. What exactly are you trying to understand about design? Are you trying to learn "designing for a client"/the business behind it? Or are you trying to find projects for you to practice css/photoshop skills?

2. Basically, you're holding a contest for people to present themselves as the most interesting person to you, just so they have the right to pay for your services. It seems a little audacious. Unless you can prove that $20-40 for your services is such an incredible deal that it is worth the effort, I think it would be hard to attract signups. Offering a free portfolio--that's a different story.

I must admit that I am not sure whether I understand what you plan to do, so let me try to rephrase it: you want people to fill out a profile to describe themselves, and then you use it to build them some kind of MySpace profile page, just hosted somewhere else? I could imagine that there are a few people willing to pay for that, if you host the page at a nice location (e.g. their own domain). Not sure whether this will help you learning about design though.

So here's how its going to be:

+ Describe themselves. I choose interesting cases, and design a landing page. And then code it in HTML5/CSS3. And send them the files, so they can host it wherever they like.

If you send people just the files, without hosting, you are limiting your target group to pretty technical people who know how to maintain their web space.

I see where you're going with this but who is that target audience? Technical people? Non-technical people? And at that price, how different could the result be for me vs anyone else?

If I'm an active technical person and I don't have a blog, my profile page on github is a reasonable landing page. If I'm less technical, maybe LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, at the very least it'll give an indication of my personality.

Thats the point! There is no limitations on what the target audience could be.

While, yes, social media can be an indicative of ones personality, I think a more concise landing page would be far more effective in all cases.

Well can you help design the landing page for http://www.nodemesh.net

Sure, lets kick things off! Can I have your email ID?

My email is nodemaker@gmail.com.

Just sent you one!

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