I am sick of the bs from my local guy. Everytime my wife and I have an idea or concept it gets manipulated into "his" idea. We hired him for his talents and abilites, which he has both. The problem is for whatever reason or another, he thinks our company can be his. He alsways talks about partenership this, blaa blaa blaa.
This is out business, just the two of us (wife and me). We aren't interested in a partner nor have we ever wanted one or brought the subject up. Our designer is 30, so he is not some young kid; however we are finding it increasingly harder to get thngs done.
Neither my wife or I are proficient in Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML, etc. He know this and that is why he pay for these services.

Last week at our latest meeting the converstion went from revamping the webiste and redoing our business cards to another talk about "partnership."

I write all of this b/c we can no longer waste time. His good at what he does, but this alterior motive concerns us and interfers with our progress. We are a SMALL company that is trying to make a name or ourselves outside our local market.

We are looking for someone with the time, talent and desire to work with an up and coming clothing company to help bringour ideas to life. The web stuff is not complicated, something simple (simialr to www.threadless.com and www.shmackclothing.com) Not that we are trying to bite their style, but simple and to the point.

If anyone has these qualifications and time post up. If you know someone post it. We are frustrated and can not waste any more time.

Thanks for reading....

 

It sucks that some people don't understand their limits. If you'd be willing to work with somebody not local to you, I could keep my eyes for someone. I can throw up a page, but not near what you want. I think there's a few here that could though. jacksonpt, calrocx, and lee all come to mind, so you might want to ask them.

 

I realize that non-local makes the process a bit more complicated, but I think that can be worked through. It is more important that I find someone with the time to put into it. I know local people that have degrees and such, but no time.

I will take any help I can get as my current situation is a little aggrevating and disturbing.

Thanks Chris

 

Eric,

Not sure of your timeline but if you are close to a community college or local university they often take these projects on by the students and get graded. When I was in school we did some developmental html for Battelle and worked with them as if they were a real client and learned a ton.

Web development is not that hard to do, just using the correct design cues. Do you have access to Front Page? I would love to help with this but time is really short. Do have connections at my old college still but doing it from here could be a PITA.

Honestly...I'd learn it if I were you and start with a purchased template (you can find these all over the net for less than 50 bucks) and just start tweekin' it.

Hope this helps.

 

Here..

www.cscc.edu Look for Technical Communication department. Lots of contacts there.

 

I've used elance successfully with subscription website development projects. You can read feedback and see samples of a prospective vendors work. You WILL get multiple bids for your project from all over the world for much less than you'd think and with tight timelines. Please no flames about outsourcing. Be very careful describing your project, only detailing the needed end result, or someone else may get the jump on you from info in your RFP.

http://www.elance.com/

 

thank you all for the input. This has become very frustrating considering the amount of time we have already invested. I get so frustrated sometimes b/c we have been working at this for almost 2 years. Hindsight being 20/20 I could have taken classes and learned this myself.

 

I do site design/development for a living. I recently started my own company on the side (gotta keep my regular job for the time being), but I'd be happy to talk with you.

Check out my site: Jackson Taylor Interactive - you can get in touch with me though that site if you want to talk more about what you want/need from your site. I'll tell you right off, graphics are not my strong point (I'm a coder by education), but I can usually get by.

 

Thank you for the offer. Your detailed and outlined business approach is what we have been looking for. THat is, someone with the skill to define their abilities and effectively convey that to their client(s).

My wife still works for a local restaurant. It is a partnership with three guys, all of which are great friends of ours. The third partner is silent and is a business consultant and successful commercial property "man". We are meeting with him next week to iron out a 2 year business plan. While we try to be very organized, starting a business like this without a plan leads to

Once we sit down and figure out all our goals and deadlines on paper it will allow us to have a plan and some direction. While all of this seems very obvious it is a trial and error process for us. We learn everyday and have finally started to postion ourselves with the right people.

Jackosn, we will be in touch soon.
Thank you all and keep it coming. The more graphic designers the better.

 

I also do web design for a living... almost 11 years now. I have had my own design company for 10 of those years. I would be willing to help if you need it also. My degree is in print (no web degree at the time of graduation), but I know web inside and out! PM me if you would like to chat!

 

Thank you all for your offer of help.

We have to finish dealing with our current design mess. Our now fired designer is trying to strong arm us into a usage contract after the fact. Not a big deal, just time consuming and a slight headache. As soon as this all gets sorted....back to business

 

Eric, if I had the time I would help you out, but luckily you have some great, talented guys here to help you for now.

I work primarily in web development in the portal environment, though I have done webdesign (and still sort of do) for the last 7 or 8 years.

The idea of using a college student is NOT a bad one. I did work for several people during college and it worked out quite well. Just an FYI...

but jackson and eric are both talented guys... good luck

 

(my non asked for .02) DONT use flash, IMHO youll have a much better site without it, expecially with more and more people moving to phone surfing or likewise.

I HATE flash, refuse to install it and generally dont deal with sites that do use it.

 

Erik, glad to hear things are moving along with your company. Sorry about my lack of following through with the pictures, but they are in my webshots page, easy to find, they should be the first album there... Tell me which ones you want and I'll email them or whatever to you. Also, found out that if you talk to your CPA, he'll be able to pinpoint where the write-off will come from. Hope to see that website up soon, I love those shirts and have seen them all over the southeast now. I even saw one when I went on a paddling trip to the Hiwassee in TN. Just to let you know, tons of people have your shirts and they are popular in Auburn and Alabama campuses.

 

thats way too general an opinion. flash is FANTASTIC for presenting a sort of ebrochure for something... like a purely information based presentation. if youre doing ecommerce (which it seems like eric is doing) then yes, steer clear of flash.

 

ok so i should have been a BIT more specific, flash driven menu's !!! flash driven "body" pages that are doing nothing more than displaying simple info that a simple table and some pics could do...

<tin foil hat on> then there are the privacy issues that go along with it concering flash "cookies" that you cant simply delete...

most of my knee jerk reaction comes from hitting the "want something like this website" and the first one i hit has most of the front page dedicated to some flash something or other and im left looking at 90% of the page with this right in the middle..

to me that says, the majority of our site is based around flash, and im moveing on to the next link in my google search.

"presenting a sort of ebrochure for something" going back to my first post...again very bandwith intensive for both serving and for recieving.

(Granted i may be in the major minority in not installing flash so take with a grain of salt)

 

it totally depends on how it's used, what you are trying to accomplish, and the audience you have targeted.

 

Oh i might also add that if your looking for someone new, you might see if they are used to programming for cross platform browsers. IE is far from the only game in town these days and its surpriseing how many sights look crappy in Firefox/mozzila or Apple's Safari.

 

true.

 

I think this topic got hi-jacked!