fair price for custom design?

In your opinion, whats a good, fair price for a completely custom and unique forum skin? (designed and coded)

 

I think it depends on both the designer and the design you are looking for. I'd say if you are at least willing to spend $200 for your own custom skin made from scratch, you should be decently satisfied.

 

A recent design I completed --> Inside Transport
If you are looking for custom and classy - you will pay a nice price for it because the design puts in a lot of work implementing different stylistic enhancements - I like to stick with the default coding of vBulletin, modifying the style via css with nice gradients, custom buttons, forum icons, etc... I'd say a decent price for a skin will range from $200 - $300 -- more if the skin has custom coding or other enhancements like adsense optimization, brandable logo design, etc...

I've heard some designs going for $750+ -- which to me seems a bit of insanity - I like to keep my pricing reasonable. But then again - if you put 20+ hours into the design - you want to be paid a very fair wage for the job...

Jacquii.

 

Like they said, it really depends on what you want. The median annual salary for a web designer in the U.S. is about $65,000. That translates to roughly $34.00 per hour with a standard 40 hour work week and working 48 weeks per year. Of course for freelancing its going to vary widely.

I have seen quotes for a custom style range from $300 or so to as much as $5000 depending on what was wanted.

 

My prices start at $200. I, too, tend to stay with the default coding, and designing a header template, custom forum icons, custom buttons, gradients/textures, etc. This makes for easier vB upgrades, quicker page loading, etc.

Coding always costs more. I'm not a coder, and don't mess with that. I know of other designers whose prices start at $400 and go up from there. One designer I know charges a minimum of $600.

It's not a case of you get what you pay for. Stylishly simple designs can be just as attractive as the coded skins.

PS - Jacquii - excellent job on that design.

 

Thanx Peggy! The Client was very happy with it. And yes! I love the concept of easy upgrades - Some of the really intricate skins designs can be total beasts to upgrade. I prefer simplicity.

And wow - $5000 for a custom skin - Boy oh boy do I need to learn how to code so that I can bring in some of that hardcore money LOL

Jacquii.

 

Now for people like me what does coding and non coding mean?

 

Ms Jacquii, I might have to holla at ya for some design work on my forum!

Great job on makin' a Truck site look VERY cool :thumbup:

 

I don't do template designs, yet. I do however do webdesign and my prices for design only start at 50 USD. I did however code one site with others and that came out to a little more than 7K USD. It was worth it and it was fun. If you've got the eye and the skill for both design and coding, then it's a nice little business idea to dive into.

Coding means to edit, insert or remove code from the actual template files to change things up. Think of it as editing php files to get different things. Non-coding means that you're not editing template files and the design looks somewhat close to the original stock vB architecture.

 

I love designing. Been doing web designing for probably 15 yrs or more. But just started with vB designing about 3 yrs ago. There are so many ways that it's incredibly satisfying.

 

I'd love to learn how to design, but I'd have to start with a clean slate - I have no existing talent whatsoever when it comes to coding.

 

Thanx Arny - Glad you like the design - It is one of the better designs that I'm quite proud of... Also - Just shot you a PM - I'm not very familiar with wordpress as I said - but would be more than happy to work with you on the vBulletin aspect of the redesign!

Jacquii.

 

designing and coding are two different things sweetie. Altho some designers do use coding to achieve the look they're after.

I don't.

 

You'd need to get your Photoshop-skills on, too.

 

About 10.5 years here of designing and coding here. It's definitely relaxing, of course it's even better with some nice soothing music and a bottle of wine at your side. :lol: :yes:

 

That's where I fail. I absolutely cannot understand Photoshop. Too many gadgets and gizmos. I download the 30 day trial every year or so but still its way beyond me. Even bought the "newbie" version of Photoshop Elements but can't do anything with it. After all these years, I haven't even figured out how to edit text in a layer. You'd think you could just select the text and type over it, but no that just adds a new layer. Following online tutorials? Can't do it. I get to step 6 and the ADHD/Kender in me says "What does this button do?" and bam another amorphous blob.

I have The GIMP but it seems to go out of its way to make the worst interface known to mankind. Must be after an award or something. My current graphics editing skills are limited to cutting rectangles, and pasting them elsewhere or layering transparent PNG files to achieve something specific. For that I use Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing. It is Windows only though.

 

Bleh! I don't use Photoshop at all. I hate it. I use a variety of design software to achieve my designs, including Paint Shop Pro 7, Fireworks 8, The Logo Creator, Artisteer, and others. Variety is the spice of life, dontchaknow.

amen to that. A frozen strawberry margarita makes it even better. :speachless: :rofl:
Do you do vBulletin coding?

 

Depends on the style, the complexity of the style and graphics involved as well as the amount of custom coding which is required. The factors involved are endless.

I wouldn't style for less than a $1000 but then I don't style for vbulletin and refused styling. I will on the odd occasion design graphics for some of the top vbulletin styling providers but these days photoshop is more dormant to me than it is being a productive software.

 

I don't actually. I meant websites but I've had my hand in doing some IPB coding, of course I think everyone will have to relearn because of the new code structures for IPB3 and vB4.

 

I don't use photoshop either - I mainly stick with PhotoImpact by Ulead (or Corel now I think...) --- It's an awesome program - I've used it for years - PS was just confusing to me - the learning curve is too steep LOL - I do use a variety of other graphics programs though to get the desired effect.

Jacquii.

btw - Hey Shelley! :p -- $1000+ skin designs - Damn! I need to know some of your clientele and some of your industry secrets :yes: