still trying to get advice on graphic

14 replies
ADMIN -- I AM NOT SOLICITING PEOPLE TO DO WORK FOR ME!!!

I am going nuts trying to get some help with some graphic artwork. Please advise.

Admin here deleted my thread and said to post an ad. THIS IS NOT AN AD.

I've had several requests on Fiverr deleted because they don't conform to their guidelines.

So I literally hired three graphic artists on Fiverr and now one of them says my request is too vague and he wants to cancel the order.

Look ... I'm a programmer. I cannot draw worth diddly-squat. I have no idea what I want, except that it's a graphic image, not fancy words. (That is, say, a graphic of a car driving down a mountain rather than fancy lettering like "downhill racing". This is an EXAMPLE -- not what I want at all.)

I do not have $299 or so to spend on 99Designs at this point. Isn't there anything similar?

Nor do I have any real idea what I want other than some people to brainstorm and give me some ideas THEY have.

Most artists are great at coming up with ideas. So why am I running into so many brick walls trying to find some who are willing to help me come up with a simple graphical design for something I need?

Everybody wants me to tell them what I want. I DON'T KNOW!!! I have a domain name and a general concept.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME PMS OR POST A REPLY HERE THAT SAYS YOU'LL WORK WITH ME! I think that's what got the last thread deleted.

Most places (like this) are deleting my posts asking for help, and the places where I can actually hire people are deleting my requests for being too vague. WTH...

If I were to run an ad here, would I get any better response?
#advice #graphic
  • Profile picture of the author Engineer2Blogger
    You can try upwork?

    Choose a good designer with a good rating at the price you're willing to pay?

    I've used it plenty of times and it's never disappointed.
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  • Profile picture of the author SageSound
    I'm looking for SEVERAL suggestions, not just from one person. Apparently the first graphic artist I hired on Fiverr isn't much of a graphic artist. All he does is fancy word lettering. He refused to help with images. At least you get a refund on cancellations.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sumon2k7
    Honestly in Fiverr, it's hard to find professional people at a glance. Most users follows illegal way to bring their account gig on the highest rating page. So it becomes tough to consider.

    I would like to suggest you use Upwork and also you can try People Per Hour.
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  • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
    This is a sort of a you-get-what-you-pay-for issue. It's unlikely you'll find what you want for only $5. At Upwork, you could probably hire three artists for $20 each, to improve the chances that one of them can "get inside your head". Clearly you'd have to pay each of them; you don't get to pick people's brains and then not pay them. But maybe that $60 budget meets your needs. (I happen to have worked with just such a logo designer on Upwork, who was great at getting inside of my head, but I'll respect your post by not posting details here.)
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  • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
    I can refer you to the guy who does almost all of my logo & header work. He's local in the town I live in, and also does web design. Not the cheapest, but not $299 either. And he gets the work done within 2-3 days. You definitely see the improvement from fiverr, trust me; I had a couple reliable basic logo designers there and he is much better.

    Personally, on a client job recently, we hired three fiverr "researchers" to do some work in parallel (ie. we were testing them out to do the same thing, and see who could come up with the best results...so we could make a long term decision). They all had excellent ratings. I wrote a clear 1-1/2 page description of what I wanted, and messaged each beforehand asking if they felt they were up to the job.

    Each and every one failed to deliver. One gave me an illness excuse as the expiry time approached; I gave her more days and she still did nothing. The other two missed their dates and I cancelled. Since the jobs were cancelled, they didn't get a negative rating. So that's how they escape judgement. It was a thoroughly disappointing experience. Plus they tie your money up in fiverr as a buyer, which ought to be illegal.
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  • Profile picture of the author wrcato2
    One thing you can do is go to Google and type in your keyword being something that you want "a old '54 Chevy driving down mountain," and click on images to get a good idea of what you want. This may clarify in your mind in order to put it into words that may give vision to your designer.
    Whom-ever you may choose.
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  • Profile picture of the author BarnerdMendy
    If you really need to hired a good person for your graphic project you can try upwork or freelance. Lot's of good guys there who can help you go get your job done.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      Most artists are great at coming up with ideas. So why am I running into so many brick walls trying to find some who are willing to help me come up with a simple graphical design for something I need?
      Coming up with ideas isn't as easy as you seem to think. Sounds like you want several people at the low end of the pay scale to come up with ideas for you to consider and graphics for you to look at - BEFORE you hire anyone. If you don't know what you want - how can anyone else?

      You know the niche or product - you know whether you want to feature images or not - whether you want to feature 'movement' or not, etc.....and probably have some idea what colors you prefer to be used. People can't read your mind so you HAVE to be able to define your needs to a certain degree.

      I'm looking for SEVERAL suggestions, not just from one person.
      You are asking for SEVERAL people to do work for you on the CHANCE they will end up with a low paying job to design a graphic. Ethical designers license images - and no one is going to pay a fee to give you free "ideas".

      My advice is move away from Fiverr - put the job on Upwork or Freelancer - lay out what you want and PAY for one or two artists to submit draft ideas to you.

      A better plan for you might be NO GRAPHIC for now - you say you have a domain name and concept. Could be you don't have a clue because you aren't ready yet to design graphics for this site.

      Build the site - do the content - sales pages, whatever. As the plan comes together you may find the concept of images/graphics also begins to gel.
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  • Profile picture of the author lgibbon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by SageSound View Post


    Most places (like this) are deleting my posts asking for help,
    So why keep reposting them then?
    Surely that means they're not allowed.
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  • Profile picture of the author agmccall
    Originally Posted by SageSound View Post

    Most places (like this) are deleting my posts asking for help, and the places where I can actually hire people are deleting my requests for being too vague. WTH...
    Because you are basically posting an ad and trying to disguise it as a question. Go to the classified ads section and post your job, it is really that simple

    al
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  • Profile picture of the author SageSound
    I just got my second cancellation request on Fiverr.

    Apparently these graphic artists are not very creative.

    And no, this is NOT an "ad disguised as a question".

    My ads have gotten deleted as well. That's the issue here.

    The problem is I simply want to have a discussion about this, and people keep trying to stick their nose in and solve it for me by offering their services. PLEASE STOP!!!

    What I'm finding is that aside from 99Designs, nobody will let you post an ad or request to get multiple submittals.

    And everybody I've talked with so far wants me to describe what I want -- they don't seem to actually create anything from rough ideas.

    Sheesh.

    (I'm a software developer myself. Sadly, it's nearly impossible to get people to describe what they want even simple software to do when they ask for programming help! It's no different than the nature of what I'm asking here. I guess programmers have some special kind of creativity that graphic artists are lacking.)

    -David
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    • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
      Originally Posted by SageSound View Post

      I just got my second cancellation request on Fiverr.

      Apparently these graphic artists are not very creative.
      Some of them are. But you are offering them $5. Would you spend a few hours of your time for $5? No, of course not.

      Originally Posted by SageSound View Post

      What I'm finding is that aside from 99Designs, nobody will let you post an ad or request to get multiple submittals.
      I told you above: Upwork does. But if you hire multiple people, you're expected to pay each of them. Is there something wrong with this?

      Originally Posted by SageSound View Post

      (I'm a software developer myself. Sadly, it's nearly impossible to get people to describe what they want even simple software to do when they ask for programming help! It's no different than the nature of what I'm asking here. I guess programmers have some special kind of creativity that graphic artists are lacking.)
      Horsefeathers. It's a conversation between buyer and seller. If anything, you have better insight because you are used to being on the seller side of the conversation. So just put yourself in the designer's shoes.
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    • Profile picture of the author kilgore
      Originally Posted by SageSound View Post

      What I'm finding is that aside from 99Designs, nobody will let you post an ad or request to get multiple submittals.
      Simple. Use 99Designs. Don't want to pay that much? Lower your expectations. Part of what makes for a good designer are good ideas -- it's not just the technical ability to use Illustrator to draw a pretty picture.

      Originally Posted by SageSound View Post

      (I'm a software developer myself. Sadly, it's nearly impossible to get people to describe what they want even simple software to do when they ask for programming help! It's no different than the nature of what I'm asking here. I guess programmers have some special kind of creativity that graphic artists are lacking.)
      It's not all the dissimilar from programming really. You say that programmers have a special kind of creativity, but have you tried hiring the programming equivalent of a Fiverr graphic designer?

      For $5/hour you can probably hire someone of of a site like Freelancer who is somewhat well versed in the syntax of a programming language. If you give him or her a detailed spec of what you want they'll probably be able to build what you want. But, of course good programming involves a lot more than just putting your semicolons in the right place. So what you'll get is code that will most certainly be ugly and disorganized. Functions will be 300 lines long. Naming conventions will be non-existant. Documentation will be sparse and unhelpful. And good luck trying to reuse or extend classes. In short you get spaghetti code.

      The reason the code you get with a low-end programmer is so convoluted really comes down to thinking. Programmers at that level don't think through their problems -- not on the technical level, and certainly not on the business level. It's not that they are necessarily stupid, but they just don't know how to.

      Have you ever tried soliciting ideas on an project from a $5/hour coder? They generally have no idea what would make an interface more intuitive to an end user, when you should use dependency injection, when you might want to use a service-oriented architecture, or when you should just keep it simple and get things done fast. If a client came to you and asked you questions about these things, no doubt you'd be able to provide some good input. But I'm also guessing you don't charge $5/hour.

      It's the same with a designers. You hire a $5 designer, you get a $5 designer's work. Want more? Pay more? It's that simple.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
        Originally Posted by SageSound View Post

        Apparently these graphic artists are not very creative.


        And everybody I've talked with so far wants me to describe what I want -- they don't seem to actually create anything from rough ideas.

        Sheesh.

        (I'm a software developer myself. Sadly, it's nearly impossible to get people to describe what they want even simple software to do when they ask for programming help! It's no different than the nature of what I'm asking here. I guess programmers have some special kind of creativity that graphic artists are lacking.)

        -David
        There are some questionnaire type questions that a good concepts person will give you before working on a project.

        Things like: What colors do you like, what feeling do you want the graphic to invoke, what fonts do you like, etc...

        You have to be able to narrow down some of this stuff. You also should spend some time looking at other sites and be able to point out the things you like and why you like them.

        If someone wants to cancel your order, then they likely feel they can not give you what you want or they still don't get a clear picture from what you are giving them.

        I have no idea what you need, but there are services on this forum for well under 100 bucks, and another option is to post it in the "warriors looking to hire you" which I think will cost you 5 bucks to post it but then you can have others come in and tell you what they can do and for how much.

        I've had to hire a programmer to do stuff, and it wasn't just "make me a script that does this." I gave full details on things to the best of my ability.

        While it's true that some "designers" are just people who are technically good with using photoshop, you will have to dig for the ones that have some unique looking designs if you are looking for a bargain. But be prepared to help them a bit.
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