Web designers should start companies, not freelance

&#62;a rockstar designer should take more stake in a company than a &#62;rockstar developer.<p>That made me laugh. I imagine the post was written by a designer.<p>I understand how important design is, it's <i>as</i> important as the backend. But somehow the OP believes that it's only the design that made some apps successful. He also undermines the countless sleepless nights the "engineers" at Apple spent trying to make things work to fit the design. Without fair share of both, it's impossible to make a product successful.<p>&#62;A web site can be as clunky as it can be in terms of back-end &#62;but if the front-end kicks ass,<p>The OP also makes the mistake of thinking, that design is only buttons and borders. Front is a fairly delicate balance of UX, UI. Without an appropriately "designed" backend which is equally responsive, all falls apart.

"<i>A web site can be as clunky as it can be in terms of back-end but if the front-end kicks ass, people can easily overlook the back-end. But the same is not so true in reverse, which is to say, no one gives a crap about the “back-end”, as long as it works.</i>"<p>weakest argument ever, and the whole post stands on it.

As a designer who's launching his own business (<a href="http://folyo.me" rel="nofollow">http://folyo.me</a>), I can certainly identify with this.<p>But I also know that it's easy to be blinded by the new entrepreneur's enthusiasm and see the world through rose-colored glasses. Whether you're a designer or developer, starting your own company or project is not for everybody and has numerous downsides.<p>For example since launching Folyo, I've spent almost no time on actual design. Instead, I'm spending most of my time either coding (I've learnt Rails) or writing on the blog (<a href="http://blog.folyo.me" rel="nofollow">http://blog.folyo.me</a>) to try and drive some traffic to the site.<p>I also didn't take on any new client projects, which means I've missed a couple nice opportunities, and also made much less money in the past couple months than I usually would.<p>If you're a designer and you want to stop freelancing while staying independent, I would instead advise that you sell Wordpress themes, sell icon packs, or maybe write an ebook.<p>Starting a company is definitely not the easy way out, and is not for everybody.

I don't know if web designers should start companies or freelance, but this article didn't do anything to cement my opinion on the matter.<p>He starts out with a message to startup founders about how design will singlehandedly bring your site to prominence. He doesn't present any evidence for this.<p>He posits that designers don't get involved in startups because they believe their services aren't all that valuable. I think this is a rather unrealistic view of the situation. If anything, designers are prone to exaggerate their contribution to a project in my experience. I would suggest the reason designers don't get involved in startups is because they've dealt with enough nutty entrepreneurs to treat the field with skepticism. This is a realistic view — most startups simply aren't profitable ventures.<p>He then concludes that designers should get involved with startups because they're simply more satisfying than freelancing. This seems like such a subjective point that it's not even worth mentioning.<p>He never does directly address the claim in the headline, that designers should start startups.

Allthough I give this guy a credit for praising often neglected designers, he is in no way entitled to bash on engineers and say that they are less valuable. A good design might attract the user on the first, but if the backend sucks; adios muchacos.<p>I have a feeling that he doesn't understand that to be a truly great designer, one has to have a great knowledge of the backend programming as well. Design borders dont end at the front. They strech deeply into all the lines of code. And for a product to work nad become great, designers must become engineers and vice versa so that they both get best of both worlds.<p>I suggest the author to look more into 37signals, and how theyre designers operate. There is an excelent video on peepcode where Brian Singer shows his design methods. Allthough you need to pay to see them (24$), they are one of the most valuable insights in the design process.

Here's why many "rock star" designers don't like (generally) working for a single company or brand like a startup. First you have to understand not all designers are created equal. You tend to have "Rock Stars" (or in the agency speak a Creative Director) and a spectrum down to "production" designers. "Creative Directors" tend to be good at a lot of the different design disciplines, they understand business objectives, they can help with product and feature vision, they understand usability and they can make things pretty. Its the entire package.<p>If they go to work for a brand new startup they start with a blank slate, all the needs and challenges are large and the designer is fully engaged because they have to draw on all their different skill sets to solve problems.<p>But as time progresses the needs of a startup tends to shift from where there is less need to do full UX the product is now defined and its about making small incremental changes. This is where they go from being a "Creative Director" to a production designer. As a CD they get to design the web site with a brand new look and feel, as a production designer they're doing a new module on the home page which matches the existing design standards.<p>Basically the challenges keep getting smaller, and the designer is less engaged. There's a similar arc in development, however while at first you need to do "Big Things" (get the site up) and some of the changes become smaller, at least those small things can be as challenging (or more so) then the "Big Things" (optimize the load time).<p>Finally as a designer you live and die by your portfolio, and having a one site portfolio gets you nowhere. Unless you're looking for a big exit you're much better off getting more work, and more projects it both grows your portfolio and expands your experience and abilities.

"Why? This is the result of a designer under-valuing the importance of what his/her work can bring to the table in a startup. IMO, a rockstar designer should take more stake in a company than a rockstar developer. Look at Apple, I’m not so sure if their designer(s) took much credit for what they did in turning around that company (Unless Jobs designed the ipods/iphones/macbooks himself, which I doubt)."<p>With Jobs's recent passing, the last sentence is a statement that has plenty of evidence and testimony to argue either way. It doesn't bode well for your overall argument for you to say "Did Apple designers get enough credit? Who knows? Who can be sure?" and leave it at that.

If you are going into the real estate business, you partner with building engineers, not interior decorators. Designers are interior decorators. Although they create an immense amount of value, once their work is done, they are not so much needed afterwards.

I totally agree. I'm a designer/developer (better at design) and I have a company, I don't freelance. I make that distinction very clear. Sure, the company has me as its only employee but that's temporary. Now, the article's title seems a bit misleading. It sounds more like the author is advocating that designers stop freelancing and join a startup full time, not to stop freelancing and start a company.<p>I wish the post had touched on topics like the fact that considering or calling yourself a freelancer is short sighted and that starting a design company can be better for your bottom line in some markets.<p>That said, I also feel a bit bad for many of the people who will read this. At least the ones who are designers. These days there are about as many people who think they can call themselves designers as those who think they have the next big app idea. I include myself in this. Anyone nowadays can read some NetTuts, get a book on HTML and think they're a designer. It sucks and it hurts the good ones out there.<p>While I cringe lately at posts like this that give hope to people who have no business in the areas of design/development/entrepreneurship, I'm also glad they show up here on HN as I myself needed them about a year ago to get where I am today. I'm not an iota as skilled as a lot folks here on HN but I'm glad that the few who do have "it" (as in, "what it takes") get to read this and hopefully it fuels them to do things the rest of us only wish we could do.