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I suck at design - best ways to find (paid) help

Hi,

I am having a pretty well validated B2B idea that I would continue to test and get further validation for.

Being confident that I can build the web app needed for this, I generally suck at design. Whatever I do just does not live up to my own criteria or aesthetic liking. Thus, I would like to find someone that could help work creating high fidelity designs of a dozen of screens for a web app that I can then bring to live.

How do you usually go about these things when creating a new web app, where do you get design ideas from and how do you build the mockup screen ? If you hire external help how do you do it , going through upwork or other freelancer services or a more specialized design service ? Any experiences with hiring on dribbble?

Any experiences and hints shared are much appreciated.

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    I'm not a great designer either. I usually go with UI libs like antd, Material UI, Bootstrap. Also "steal like an artist". if you see another site with a design you like try to make something like it and the is the idea behind https://inspireframe.io/

    Anyway, I wouldn't worry about the design much for now before validating the idea further more.

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      This looks really cool. I will try inspireframe.io tomorrow, exactly because Figma is quite some effort to get something good looking to work.

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        Yeah figma is overkill for backend devs

        We have a bunch of backend devs using https://versoly.com/ (i built it)

        But I usually recommend just using a free template if you have more time than money. At the early stage.

        You should be talking with customers using cold outreach and being in niche forums (fb groups etc).

        For the web app we used https://blueprintjs.com/ but it still isn't 10/10

        There is also https://tailwindui.com/

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    Hey @Cactus1549 I run DesignJoy.co and do a lot of design work for the Y Combinator community specifically in the area of brand and UI/UX. If you're on a tight budget, I recommend checking it out. Otherwise, if you prefer to work with a freelancer, Dribbble is flooded with them. 👍

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    Just like you, I completely suck at design. There are so many tiny details to pay attention, logos, colors, small variations... Anyways, for Python for the Lab I started looking for someone on Freelancer, with simpler tasks: a logo, an illustration for an article. A guy seemed the best, but when I asked him for some samples of more sophisticated jobs, he submitted illustrations with a watermark that was not his, and he was very reluctant at providing one with his own watermark, to prove authorship.

    Anyways, I dig harder online and found my designer on behance. You can also try Dribble. Takes a bit of time going through portfolios, but it is much more reliable than looking at freelancer websites (provided that you are willing to pay fair prices). Communication is always key, especially on deliverables. Do you want to have HTML+CSS+JS, or just the design files, etc.

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    What a great thread, that's exactly one of the topics we will be discussing during our live stream

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    I've used https://manypixels.co and have been pretty happy with it.

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    I am a great designer. I recommend you check out Logobly.com for logo design.

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    If you just need someone to make your UI look nice, then using a site like Fiverr or Upwork is probably fine, but you should be prepared to have unsatisfactory results, as you're paying for cheap work.

    If you're looking for a designer to make your product work well, that's probably going to be more expensive, if you're not looking to break the bank it might be worth trying the DIY approach (UI libraries).

    For the latter approach, finding a design mentor might be helpful, someone who you can touch base with once every few weeks to go through your decision making and get their thoughts.

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