Whatever I do i can't make a professional looking design

Hi
I've got content (articles, reviews, news), got a nice custom php/mysql driven content manager that i wrote, but can't make a nice, professional looking design. I have the skills in terms of html/css, but not the eye for design.

Any tips?

 

Outsource and hire a designer. That's what I've done in the past and it works quite well

 

I agree you should hire someone if you can't do it yourself.

Try to learn by following tutorials.

 

No money. This thread is more of a personal rant tbh, 'cos I know what i have to do, its just a matter of keep trying till I get something nice I think. I might cheat and pop over to the free template sites but don't want to do that.

 

To be honest, free templates look very unprofessional in my opinion. I see a site that looks even remotely like a template and I close it, I hate template-looking sites. If I need a unique looking design, I either head over to a well known design studio and look at some examples to come up with my own, or I outsource and hire a designer. Some good design sites are hicksdesign.co.uk or AlistApart.com (development). Best of luck.

 

It's just really annoying.
The best I've come up with in the last month/2 was for a college project... have to do a crappy website managment part of my course, and I actually know more than the teacher. So I had about a month to work on a design (although that is only four "lessons".

IMO it looks "okay", not very good. But ... it fully complies with xhtml ... 1.1 iirc.

[right ok i can't even post a picture ... but if you actually are remotly interested its just at
http:// img316.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled61xb.gif


Just thinking how i could adapt that now for a more article based site (hardware reviews/news). Pff.....

 

That image isn't showing up for me.

 

Yeh it wouldnt let me, says I need 10 posts. I only signed up today so havn't got many posts. Sorry. You have to copy and paste it in, or wait untill I get 10 posts. But i'm not going to spam my way up just for an image!

 

just go here

http://search.ebay.com/website-templates_W0QQfrppZ50QQfsopZ1QQmaxrecordsreturnedZ300

 

I see it now, but yeah, you just need to look around at what other designers have done or outsource and hire a designer.

 

If you're in school, can't you find a design oriented person who's having problems with the coding end and work out an exchange of expertise and tutoring?

cheers,

gary

 

Personally I think there are some brilliant templates out there!! Buy a CD of templates off ebay for less than a tenner and have a look through it. You could also use a torrent client or p2p to find templates. Then do checks to see how many other sites there are out there using the same template. Do an image search for this as many template users dont change the name of image files (which you should obviously!). Then mess about with the template so that it is different and personalised. I find that paintshop pro is adequate for this.

~Jamie

 

Thanks for your suggestions.

I just got annoyed and made something finally. Not very professional at all, theres errors, its based off something I did a few months back, the graphics are embarassing but meh. Its at techneek.co.uk. I will be changing it over this week.

Thanks

 

free templates are unprofessional because they are free (but that's not to say anything i do looks any good either *sigh*)

your new template looks a little bearable, but i'm sure you can come up with soemthing nicer. btw your ads are, as you may have known, in the wrong colors.

 

Ah yeh I know they are in the wrong colour. I just copied and pasted the default code

 

Not all templates are bad. Take a look at this dude's templates (all free, btw)
http://andreasviklund.com/templates - they're pretty darn good.

 

Yeh but they're all from OSWD. Which is a good place. But apart from that most are rubbish imo i think.

 

True, but using templates can give pages a lower value (seo) compared to a handcrafted site.

I recommend if you have little to no budget for this learn. D/L free 30 day trial...if you like it in 30 days buy it, if you don't you should be able to build your site in 30 days .

 

Whatever you do, don't use free templates. As mentioned there are tons of other sites that use that same template.

I do sympathize with your struggle to get good design. I had that problem. I would start a design and thought it looked great. I then realized it didn't look as good as I thought.

You admit that your design isn't professional. That should tell you that you do have an eye for design in one sense.

I just kept practising. Eventually I got that skill. However, if that isn't going to be you and it would be just a waste of time then hire someone.

If not then keep plucking away.

Hope it works out.

Skinny

 

Lower value SEO-wise? So Google magically knows you're using a template and punishes you for that? How does Google know you weren't the one who made that template first? Plus, most of the time you don't use the exact same design - you tweak with things and move things around, and in the end, you might hardly even recognize it from the original template.