Beautiful Website Design - The Right Price
By Dustin Schwerman

Attractive need not mean elaborate. Appealing doesn't have to be complex. A beautiful website design does not have to be an expensive one. It often can be, no doubt about that. If you plan to hire a professional graphic designer to create a custom banner, logo, layout, button system, and a few miscellaneous images while it's at it, your site is not going to be cheap.

Graphic design is both a highly technical and highly creative profession, requiring not only a steady hand and an artistic eye, but also a keen understanding of the various tools offered by this generation's wide selection of graphic programs. And, as with all professions that require a high level of both technical skill and creative thinking, graphic designers can charge a professional rate for their services.

But custom graphics doesn't mean half a portfolio's worth, and a professional rate need not be an exorbitant one. Many web design companies provide graphics as part of their website packages. Now of course, in these circumstances, you want to make sure you are getting what you are paying for. You don't want to pay a graphic designer's rate for a selection of stock images or - worse yet - a template. You want to get what you paid for: custom graphics specifically designed to improve the appearance and communicate the essence of your website.

Graphic artists have the tricks of their trade as everyone does. I've mentioned before my disdain for charging by the page for websites when adding pages is one of the simplest tasks that a web designer can perform (which, one assumes, is why most of them do it). With websites, the simple rule is that duplication is vastly easier than creation. Having watched my brother at his work, I would say that with graphic designers, that same rule holds true with one minor variance: replace the word "duplication" with "alteration".

If you are getting a major picture for your site, a logo that basically picks and chooses from portions of that picture, and a banner that is predominantly the logo, you can go into negotiations with your graphic designer with a bit of an advantage, knowing that only one of those images requires a significant amount of creation. Likewise, do not expect to have to pay for each minor change you request of the designer. Altering a color, removing a piece of an image, and other minor changes are simple affairs to the competent graphic artist. These are not (usually) painters whose work once set on canvas cannot be easily removed. A graphic designer skilled in its trade has each image broken up into a variety of layers that can be modified, added, hidden, and masked as easily as a web designer can change the positioning of a single div without moving anything else on the page.

But be specific about what you want, or be reasonable about the changes made, if you want to only have to pay your quoted price. Mastery of masks and gradients in no way provides mind-reading powers, and if you have your designer create an entire image for you based on only limited input, it is unlikely to be exactly what you envisioned. Alterations are easy; scrapping a project and then trying to guess how to redo it is not, and is likely to require additional recompense for time spent.

In short, if you are getting a lot of highly creative graphics, expect to pay well for them. If you are going to need several full drafts before you are satisfied with the final project, don't expect to only pay for the first. But don't negotiate with a graphic designer under the assumption that alterations are a difficulty, or that highly similar images must be purchased separately. Knowing what it takes to create and alter your beautiful website design is key to getting the right price.

Copyright © 2008 Dustin Schwerman.

Dustin Schwerman is the primary web designer at Truly Unique - Business Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in impressive, custom sites designed to capture the essence of the businesses they represent, as well as creating useful web-based programs to improve and simplify some of the tasks of running a business. Their goal is to provide these services at affordable, pragmatic rates based on effort involved, rather than arbitrary costs based on number of pages or hours. Truly Unique works on sites of all varieties, from office supply to men's designer jewelry.

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