Looks like lot of startups are looking for UI designers and PHP developers (I have received multiple requests in the last few days).
If you fall into one of the two categories and can do a good job, you have a strong chance of building a good client base @ pluggd.in
So, please hop on to the startup forum section, the startup marketplace section, introduce yourself and share details of your earlier projects. I suggest startups to keep a tab of that section.
My only request is to keep your pricing reasonable – I have encountered UI designers asking $2-3K for redesigning pluggd.in and that’s so unjustified that I can’t even recommend these guys to startups – so essentially they lost a few WoM publicity/referrals.
To cut the long story short, plan for a long term association with these startups and if you do a good job (and keep your pricing reasonable), you will get more business.
Lets keep it simple.
2-3K USD is it? Oh boy!
Yep! and all this for designing a WP theme!
Compare this with few famous wp designers like brian gardner – they charge $99 a theme and gve support for free.
The reality is that many startups don’t give enough respect for UI design. At our company, most UI enquiries come days before the site is supposed to go live, limiting creative inputs from the designers side.
I’d say startups who solely focus on the net for doing business should give first priority in developing a clean and user friendly design. The code can be built around the design rather than the other way round.
Ramesh – I completely agree with you. Infact, that’s a mistake that every product team commits and to me, the UI is an integral part of the entire product.
But the reality here is also that most of these startups are by hard core techies who can’t design ‘sexy’ UI..so maybe UI cos. can probably work out a few ways/best practices that can be shared with these startups?
Use A List Apart which has elegant information on UI and also apply 37signals “Getting real”
Better UI makes ppl stick and i will make remark in their brain.
That is why /. and YC[hackers news] is still famous than junk spamy digg.
Ashish,
What is a reasonable (hourly) rate for this kind of a job ?
Ashish, the ones asking for such absurd prices, are most probably just starting out. People like these are few and rare. If you are really looking for a redesign, I would suggest you put up an online auction on elance or rentacoder. Even better, put it up on your boards.