I'm Sacha Greif, a designer & entrepreneur living in Kyoto.
These are my notes about running Folyo, a private job board that helps startups find great hand-picked designers.
A recent Hacker News thread pointed out that Stack Overflow used 99Designs to crowdsource their logo. As usual when somebody mentions 99Designs, this prompted a lively debate on the evils of spec work.
But setting morals and ethics aside for a moment, you can’t ignore the appeal of 99Designs’ promise of cheap, good-enough design. So I thought it would be interesting to explore the different options out there when it comes to design that doesn’t break the bank. Read More…
Folyo is by no means the only company that helps you find a designer. On the low end, 99designs has conquered the “get it done for cheap” market.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for higher quality work, Scoutzie is targeting the same market as Folyo and seems to be doing well too.
But keep climbing up and increasing project scopes and budgets, and you’ll find GroupTalent.
Whenever the topic of hiring a designer is being discussed, the distinction between user experience design and graphic design is sure to come up.
Someone will typically point out that while most companies think of a “designer” as someone that makes things pretty (i.e. graphic design), the real value of design lies in improving how things work and creating a better user experience. Read More…
You might have heard of FeeFighters. It’s a great credit card processors comparison service with a great-looking homepage, and one look at their new service, Samurai, makes it obvious that they care a great deal about design. Read More…
A common problem when hiring a designer is knowing who will code (and by that I mean implement in HTML/CSS) the mockups. Some designers will do it themselves, while others will only provide you with static elements and let you do it yourself.
So which should you pick? Is getting a designer+coder always better? Read More…
On top of short-term contract jobs, Folyo also gets a lot of full-time job offers. If you’re wondering which way to go, here’s a couple things you should know.
Just like Folyo has to reject designers to ensure it only features the best, I also have to make a strict selection of job offers.
If your job offer has been rejected, in 99% of cases it will be for a simple reason: the budget was inadequate. Read More…
