Hi,<p>My company(startup) is seeking a great in-house web designer to join our team. The problem is where do you find talented designers?<p>Finding good programmers is quite easy. You know they'd frequent local hacker meetups, picking up the esoteric languages and doing cool hobby projects. Great programmers have such characteristics. Are there similar ways to seek great designers out? Where do they usually hang out? And how to tell if they're great? We don't want to use job boards because a lot of noise resumes will come in.
You should browse CSS top sites and try and look up the designers behind the sites.<p>Are you open to remote work arrangements? If you want to get in touch with me I'm happy to refer some guys I know who are <i>really</i> good. Rates may be a bit high, but you tend to get what you pay for. More than anything, I've found referrals of both programmers and designers to be the most effective route of finding talent.<p>As for your other question about characteristics. Check their portfolio first. Just ask them what their whole belief on design is, and they should be able to go on and on about it. If they start sounding like they wrote portions of Keeping It Real (37 signals), you have a winner. Any smart designer knows design is never about making something pretty, it's always about creating something that any normal human being can use without any pain and minimal thinking involved.