If I may: Design is how something works, not how it looks.<p>My view is that if you pick a <i>designer</i> with a <i>style</i>, you're gambling. I've seen an alarming increase in designers with styles over the past 10 years and I don't like it. It flies in the face of what I think a good designer should <i>be</i> and <i>do</i>. That is, they should be able to look at a project, any project and come up with the best design <i>for that project</i>.
I hate getting pedantic on subjects like these, but it's kind of important if the subject is how to hire a designer.<p>The article doesn't at any point mention what kind of designer they're attempting to hire. It seems they were looking for some combination of graphic, brand, interface, and... probably a few others. I don't think they were looking for a product or experience designer, but it's not entirely clear.<p>Design is often a failed effort at organizations, especially those with broad aspirations and significant size, because it must deliver collateral, interactions, and experiences that are emotional, consistent, powerful, scalable, and understandable while communicating brand.<p>This is hard, and made harder if you can't describe or define the design work you need to execute across all its surfaces.<p>Hacker News comments & articles generally draw a single line between aesthetic and interaction design, with a tenuous acknowledgement that uniting multiple interactions in a consistent, comprehensible manner is a distinct discipline.<p>Companies will continue having difficulty hiring appropriate designers until designers better define the work they do and value they add.
Important: this is good advice for hiring a <i>graphic</i> designer. After all, that's one of the main reasons they have a portfolio.<p>But hiring a <i>UX designer</i> is a completely different process, which needs to show their deep, deep understanding of product, user stories, etc.<p>And too many companies think that graphic designers are UX designers too. It's very rare to find designers that do both really well. And this article doesn't even mention the distinction.
We just had a similarly great experience with redesigning FamilyLeaf's homepage. We weren't sure exactly what we wanted except for the general style, and we picked an awesome illustrator and let him run free.<p>Folyo (<a href="http://folyo.me" rel="nofollow">http://folyo.me</a>) was also a great resource that helped us find our designer Paddy (<a href="http://lefft.com" rel="nofollow">http://lefft.com</a>).
> Make sure you like the designer’s style so much that you would trust them to create a design for you without any input.<p>This concept extends beyond design -- you want anyone you work with to be someone you trust to do their job.
> <i>We just rebranded and redesigned the entire Grouper site in about 3 weeks.</i><p>Read this ^ , clicked the link and didn't really like the site. It's just... boring, from the palette to the layout, to @font-face of choice looking clumsy on Windows, to the logo, to the illustration and icons style. I don't mean to sound like an ass, but that's not a design that grabs attention and prompts to stay and explore. Perhaps it's an improvement over what they had originally, but that's not very good either.
I once hired a designer to put together the cover art for a CD, based on the fact that he was nearby, affordable, and had a limited but decent portfolio online. (The project had a small budget, so we weren't shooting for the stars or anything.)<p>Little did I know, his expertise was in building ambigrams, and we spent an entire round of drafting + feedback moving away from an ambigram concept. Everything worked out in the end, but the initial miscommunication was probably our own fault. We hadn't done our research, and we probably weren't the best of clients to begin with, as we had no idea what we really wanted and thought we were safe leaving the direction up to him (with hardly any input on our part).<p>So, ultimately, we trusted him more than we probably should have, given how little we actually examined his style and areas of expertise.
Every designer has their style and if they are given free range to develop something in that style then both parties win. The designer will be more excited about the project and they will get the project done faster.<p>This is great advice for finding a designer. Dribble for a designer is like viewing a developers code in github. You gain insight into what they can do and what they like to do.
So true. Maybe the same can be said of designers wondering if they should take on a client? The pay might be good but if the style the client wants is different from the designers style it might be a good idea to not take on the client.<p>Since I work alone so often, I always assumed that other designers could do-it-all and mesh with any style the client wants but after a few years I'm starting to realize the opposite is true. Designers have their own unique style that they replicate over and over. We have certain theming and placement of elements that we stick with throughout numerous projects.<p>Perhaps showcasing our style is more important than showcasing clients in our portfolio? (which I badly need to update)
Provide clear requirements - No
Provide realistic schedule - No.
Provide decent pay - No.<p>"Make sure you like the designer’s style so much that you would trust them to create a design for you without any input."<p>Right, just make sure they be stylin' yo!