Partial Graphic Design
If you have your own graphic designer, we highly recommend that you check that they know about Web graphic design, and can create HTML templates compatible with our system.
Unfortunately, not all graphic designers fall into this category. That's not a problem in itself, but can become one in certain circumstances.
For instance, some designers only know how to do print design (e.g. brochures and business cards). That's fine, and in that case we recommend you use them for this part of your business, and use our full graphic design service to do the Web site graphic design.
Similarly, some other designers only know how to do multimedia design (e.g. DVDs). Again, we recommend you use them for that service, and use our full graphic design service for your Web site.
Where problems can arise ...
However, we occasionally come across designers who don't know have the technical knowledge to do the full Web site design, but still want to create the Web site "conceptual" look and feel.
This is where we urge you to be extremely careful! This could lead to an extremely difficult and costly solution for you. It might be OK, but it might not.
The trouble is, if they don't have the technical knowledge for doing graphic design on the Web, there's a strong possibility they will design something that's unworkable on a Web site.
For instance:
- They might ask for things to be positioned precisely on the Web page, not taking into account the many differences between your users' computers, Web browsers, screen sizes, operating system versions, installed fonts, and other variables.
- They might create a very "heavy" design, with lots of graphics and animation, that might be too slow to load on your users' computers - even if they have broadband Internet access.
- They might use obscure fonts for headings and text, but these fonts might not be available on users' computers.
- They might create a design that's so "tight" and precise that it's too inflexible for you to edit the page content yourself later.
- They might create a design that looks great on screen, but doesn't print well.
- They might not understand the specific standards of designing for the Web - for example, not putting text in two columns.
Of course, they might not make any of these mistakes! Unfortunately, it's very difficult for you to know this in advance, unless you know them very well.
What we recommend
For this reason, we highly recommend you do not use this option.
If you're using your own designer, we highly recommend you work with somebody who knows what they're doing - all the way from start to finish. Otherwise, we recommend you leave the Web graphic design in our hands.
We occasionally - but reluctantly - do allow clients to use this option. And if you really, really, REALLY want to do so, we'll work with you. But please understand the risks involved.
Fee
Unfortunately, there's no way we can quote you a fee up front for working with this sort of designer.
Some of them are a dream to work with, and create elegant designs that are perfect for the Web. In that case, it's easy for our designer Natasha to convert their design into Web-ready form.
On the other hand, we've also received terrible design concepts from some designers. Some have even been totally unusable, so we have to do them again from scratch, which is even more expensive than us doing it in the first place because we waste time messing around with the bad design.
So the best we can say is that we'll give you an estimate your designer has done their work and delivered it to us. However, even that fee might be adjusted later, if we discover other problems when trying to implement their design.
We're sorry that we can't be more definite. This is not the way we usually like to work - we would much rather quote you a fixed fee so you can budget for it. Unfortunately, we simply can't do that in this case, because we see so much variability in the quality of designs from inexperienced designers. That's why this is our least preferred option for your graphic design.
