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Most of the web designs look great! How did everyone manage to put together such sharp looking sites?

I'll just tell myself they had designers so I don't feel to badly about my design skills (i'm a programmer) :)

Yep. We had an awesome designer working with our team. He mocked all the pages up after discussing our ideas, then cut then up perfectly for html/css (button sprites, background images, etc).

Wouldn't have been nearly as good without him.

Many teams did have a designer or somebody with some web design chops - so don't feel too bad.

Smart move, too. For a rapid development competition like the Rails Rumble, a good first impression goes a long way.

Absolutely true. I did a solo project, and not only did my site suffer from my poor design, but design sucked up an inordinate amount of time because I'm so much slower at it.

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