Meet Design Inc. — Beta.
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Today we are thrilled to announce the Design Inc. Beta. We are opening our doors for the first time to share the first aspects of our platform and to share a bit more about what we have been up to. Skip to the bottom if you want to sign up for our Beta, or continue reading to get the full skinny on Design Inc.
Design Inc. is a new way to easily find and work with amazing hand-picked designers of all kinds.
What problem are we solving?
We want to bring great design to the world at scale.
Why is this particular problem worth solving?
Great design is the highest form of hope and the truest expression of a new future. We believe we can make our world a better place by using design to enhance the products, services and environments we use to be more efficient, enjoyable and delightful. We simply don’t have enough designers in the world to meet the growing demand, so we need new ways for the next generation of hopeful designers to learn and gain real-world experience, outside of the traditional schooling systems.
How will we bring great design to the world?
We are building a platform to enable anyone to find and pair with a world-class designer in a new and interesting way. People looking for a designer can use Design Inc. and our guided help to find and work with the perfect hand-picked designer for their project. Designers are able to create a profile in a matter of minutes and share these profiles with potential folks who want to work with them.
How does Design Inc. work?
I have been a designer for over 20 years and have worked in almost every designer role you can imagine from being a freelancer, an individual contributor, a manager, a creative director to being a designer co-founder. I believe the best way to solve any design problem is to work closely with a designer, one-on-one for a defined amount of time on a specific challenge.
With Design Inc. you can hire the best designers for a dedicated design block of one day, one week or 2 weeks. You can book a designer for as many subsequent design blocks as you need for your project. Since the designers on Design Inc. are some of the best in the world, they are able to cut to the heart of a given problem and provide clear design thinking and solutions.
When viewing a designers profile, you can see their availability and rate. When you see a designer on Design Inc. listed as “Part-Time” this means they are typically available around 10–20 hours a week and typically work during the evenings or the weekends. If you find a designer listed as “Full-Time” then they are usually available for around 30–40 hours a week and around 8 hours a day.
The designers on Design Inc. have worked with some of the greatest companies in the world.
Meet some of the designers on Design Inc.
We want to highlight some of the first designers to join our beta this week. You can hire any of these folks right now through Design Inc. Here are some of our favorites:
Charlie Waite is a full time designer at GoPro here in Southern California. He can flex between creating strong brands and visual styles to working through complex UX flows and complicated product design. Charlie is listed as part-time on Design Inc. and typically works nights and weekends on projects that don’t interfere or conflict with his work at GoPro. You can see more of Charlie’s work here.
Jenn Julian is a product designer from San Francisco who has a unique blend of visual design chops and deep product design skills. She can take the most complicated problems and distill them down into beautiful clean and clear solutions while creating a complete visual language and rebrand at the same time. Check out more from Jenn here.
Tara Mann hails from New York and is a modern product designer with a special focus on iOS and Android app design. She brings a very user focused approach to her design. This makes her great at helping folks truly identify the core benefit of their software to its users, and then ensures her designs reflect this purpose. See more from Tara here.
Josh Taylor is one of the best designers I have ever met. Working out of Oakland, he is thoughtful and easy to work with and comes up with some brilliant ideas coupled with a very clean and memorable aesthetic. Josh is most known for his extensive work with Evernote where he launched a variety of software products. You can see more from Josh here.
Tegan Mierle is known for her easy to use consumer facing designs coupled with attractive icons and illustration work. She is based in San Francisco, and has had a long career in design. Her work extends broadly from marketing and ecommerce design to complicated B2B applications. View more from Tegan here.
Rogie King (pronounced Rah-gee) is truly a creative force. From Helena, Montana he is an incredibly prolific designer with a current emphasis in dope illustration work. Don’t be fooled into thinking Rogie is just an illustrator though, he has been a staple of the design industry for over 10 years and has had extensive experience in creating beautiful websites, apps and visual languages for years. Rogie has a distinct style, and truly is one of the greats. He can design anything you can throw at him. View more of his work here.
Dann Petty is a legend. Saving one of the best for last, Dann represents the quintessential modern designer excelling in a variety of styles and forms. He is very strong in both brand and UX design and is looked to as a design mentor from many new designers coming up. Dann has worked with some of the most well known companies in the world and is one of the fastest designers I have ever met. Dann cranks out more design work in a week than most people do in a month. View Dann’s profile here.
Design Inc. Beta — How to Sign Up
I’m looking for a designer. How do I sign up for the beta?
We aren’t quite ready to open your side of the platform yet, however we can still help you get great design. Please fill out this form, describe your project a bit and we will respond asap with a few designers on Design Inc. we think can do a great job for you, then you can hire them through Design Inc. We will also provide you with a short summary of how many design blocks you should consider booking for your project. We back every project you book through Design Inc. with our 100% Happiness Guarantee which means we will make sure you are totally stoked and satisfied with the design work you receive and won’t quit until you are.
Go here to describe your project and request a designer through Design Inc.
I’m a Designer. How do I join Design Inc.?
We love designers! You can apply here (takes about 5 mins). To be a designer on Design Inc. you have to be of a high-caliber. We review each and every portfolio and only invite the best designers. We recently periscoped portfolio reviews and our friend Bryan Landers did a nice writeup on what we look for. We will be sending out batches of invites every week from this point forward.
A few cool things to note about being a designer on Design Inc.
- We make the payments and contracts seamless for you the designer so you can focus on doing great design work.
- When you book work with your designinc.com/username URL we collect all the funds up front and release them to you as soon as your work is completed and approved by the person or company who hired you. If there are any disputes then we have your back.
- You are not tied to Design Inc. We dont care if you freelance on your own, have a job or make tacos. We do hope over time you find booking work through Design Inc. to be the better alternative. We are here to help you in any way we can.
- As a designer on Design Inc. you will have access to perks, meetups, events and all sorts of interesting things we have planned to bring a great deal of strength and community to our designers. Working as a freelance designer can be very lonely and we hope to really change what it feels like to be an independent creative in the world by creating a way for you to truly make a great living full of balance and happiness and community.
- Over time we hope the initial batch of Design Inc. designers will become the mentors and teachers of the next generation. We are building mentoring into our platform to ensure design quality remains high over time.
Final thoughts from the team
We have been working very hard to make something we love and would like to see in the world. I wanted to take a quick moment and recognize the amazing people I get to work with everyday and say thank you to each of them. We are really lucky because our engineers are also great designers (sidenote, I love the trend I’m seeing lately where more engineers are designing and vice versa).
Bjoern Zinnsmeister — my Co-Founder, engineering guru and great designer. Bjoern is leading our engineering efforts and has been with me since we hoped on this train. View his Design Inc. profile here and follow him on Twitter @zinssmeister.
Mikey Wills — was our first engineering hire. Mikey is also a clothing and software designer and highly ranked amateur pool player. Mikey takes care of all our front-end code and has a great eye. You can see Mikey’s Design Inc. profile here and you can follow him on Twitter mukealicious
Matthias Kadenbach — from Germany is an incredible engineer and hasn’t created a Design Inc. profile yet because he is knee deep in code. but you can follow him on Twitter @mkadenbach
Joel Beukelman — most recently joined us from Google as our Director of Design. Joel is a bad ass designer who I have known and worked with for years. You can peep Joel’s Design Inc. profile here and follow him on Twitter @_bklmn and also be sure to check out his thoughtful and personal vlog here.
And you can see my Design Inc. profile here and follow me on Twitter @hemeon.
Thank You!
We have a long way to go, but can’t wait to show you what’s next. Thank you for your ongoing support. Please send feedback and questions to marc@designinc.com You can follow our journey on Twitter designinc
Please remember to drink water,
Marc Hemeon
Founder & CEO of Design Inc.
