Looking for a graphic designer / Wordpress theme designer

[Cromulent]

I'm working on a project at the moment but in order to take it forward I need to employ a graphic designer / Wordpress theme designer to do some work for me.

Obviously the big thing I need making is a custom Wordpress theme but I also need some other bits of artwork done such as a logo and some other stuff. The ultimate goal is to self publish a book which will need to have quite a lot of graphic design work done on it to make it look good.

All the artwork will be a mix of fantasy / sci-fi but I have no idea where to look for decent people do this sort of work. I have a very limited budget and so I can't afford to just employ an artist full time for a couple of months even though that would be what I would like to do.

Does anyone have any suggestions on places to look at for these services? This is a serious business project so it must look professional. I just need an idea of how much money I need to save in order to have enough to pay the correct fees for this work.

Any help is appreciated .

 

[gord]

Look at the big art portfolio sites, behance, deviantart, and Instagram to find people already producing the style of artwork you want. Contact those people to see what their rates are like.

Also, if finance is a concern, have you considered profit sharing on the publication?

 

[iKettles]

I think you need to be a bit more frugal with what you're looking for in a designer. Finding someone who can fully design a WordPress theme for you (not to count the development of it) alongside a logo, artwork and a print book for a tight budget just isn't going to happen. Actual good designers are not cheap and usually have a quite specific specialism.

In my experience freelance designers come at no less than £25 per hour and go all the way up to £100 an hour for UI/UX gurus. Similarly, for fixed price work, I would expect to pay £1k-£2k for just the design of a website. Development costs are around the same, dependant on requirements.

As mentioned above you can try some of the designer communities to search for someone with a style you like or go to a freelance job website like Elance/Upwork. You may also find it more cost effective to employ a student.

If I were you, I'd save yourself a few thousand pounds and go for a prebuilt WordPress theme and customise it to your liking. Hire a good illustrator and focus on the artwork, branding and content of the book.

 

[Cromulent]

Look at the big art portfolio sites, behance, deviantart, and Instagram to find people already producing the style of artwork you want. Contact those people to see what their rates are like.

Also, if finance is a concern, have you considered profit sharing on the publication?

Thanks for the reply. I'll check out those sites. I have consider giving the artist a share holding in my limited company and it is something that I'd be happy to discuss with them.

I think you need to be a bit more frugal with what you're looking for in a designer. Finding someone who can fully design a WordPress theme for you (not to count the development of it) alongside a logo, artwork and a print book for a tight budget just isn't going to happen. Actual good designers are not cheap and usually have a quite specific specialism.

In my experience freelance designers come at no less than £25 per hour and go all the way up to £100 an hour for UI/UX gurus. Similarly, for fixed price work, I would expect to pay £1k-£2k for just the design of a website. Development costs are around the same, dependant on requirements.

As mentioned above you can try some of the designer communities to search for someone with a style you like or go to a freelance job website like Elance/Upwork. You may also find it more cost effective to employ a student.

If I were you, I'd save yourself a few thousand pounds and go for a prebuilt WordPress theme and customise it to your liking. Hire a good illustrator and focus on the artwork, branding and content of the book.

That is the price I was really expecting when it came to website design. This is for a business so while I want it cheap I do have realistic expectations on what it will cost. The other posters idea of giving a percentage share in the company to the artist is a good one. I guess it is just finding the right person for the job. It is actually harder than it sounds to find artists that are willing to work with you over a longer period of time. Most of the artists I have found just churn out Wordpress or forum themes and don't really do any custom work. Might have to put an ad in the local newspaper to see if I get any responses.

 

[Dup]

You'll likely need an illustrator and a graphic/web designer as separate entities as they're two different fields really and asking for both will likely push prospective artists away.

I'd get the book side of things done first with an illustrator, then look into the branding and website. You'll find things will flow easily as the product is the main focus so all branding and graphic design work should revolve around the book/product illustration.

I'm a web designer and do not use themes or templates (nor WordPress for that matter), so I can advise on associated costs. I would ask you how many prospective pages you might need and what aspects of the site are important. Will you be taking orders/payments or is it just an online presence. For the branding, is it a company/publisher branding, or branding for the product only? But to design the site and branding effectively, I'd wanna work it around the product and any artwork/imagery associated with that.

Have you got examples of artwork you like already for the illustration that you would like? As has been said, in researching that and their proposed style, you'll likely find willing artists somewhere.

 

[Cromulent]

You'll likely need an illustrator and a graphic/web designer as separate entities as they're two different fields really and asking for both will likely push prospective artists away.

I'd get the book side of things done first with an illustrator, then look into the branding and website. You'll find things will flow easily as the product is the main focus so all branding and graphic design work should revolve around the book/product illustration.

I'm a web designer and do not use themes or templates (nor WordPress for that matter), so I can advise on associated costs. I would ask you how many prospective pages you might need and what aspects of the site are important. Will you be taking orders/payments or is it just an online presence. For the branding, is it a company/publisher branding, or branding for the product only? But to design the site and branding effectively, I'd wanna work it around the product and any artwork/imagery associated with that.

Have you got examples of artwork you like already for the illustration that you would like? As has been said, in researching that and their proposed style, you'll likely find willing artists somewhere.

The theme is going to be a military theme. Think things like this:

Good call on getting an illustrator separately. I know the square root of jack about art so hadn't realised. I want to get the website theme developed first because it is a company website that will have multiple products so branding the website only on one product really wouldn't work. Plus due to funding requirements I need to get a community built around the game first and that means having a web presence first.

I've actually been doing some research on software to run on my website and Invision Power Board looks like a good option since it has all the features I need such as a blog and custom pages you can make. The price for the cloud hosted version sounds reasonable.