gdstudios venting session Part I - Web Design Template sites

This should spark up a nice debate today:

I know that these types of sites are an excellent business idea, but as a designer, I feel really cheapened when I see web design template sites. And the worst thing about them is that, today, they even produce attractive templates. Years ago, template sites only offered crappy-looking designs, but this latest worries me slightly. I spend weeks making a good custom design, these template people spend weeks making ten designs. Some of these new template sites are actually winning web awards. Imagine that, template sites winning design awards. Isn't it ironic...

Like I said, it is a sound business move to make these sites, but it frustrates me the same as a designer. Knowing that making even one of these types of sites shouldn't be this easy makes me a bit concerned for the design industry. Next thing we know there will be 2Advanced inspired templates out there and, God forbid, Whoswe-inspired templates. ;) I'm saying this: If FWA gives a favorite site award to any of these template sites it will really show just how bad things have gotten. I hope it doesn't happen. FIGHT THE TEMPLATE!

Two recent award-winning template sites:
http://www.ultravertex.com/
http://www.designgalaxy.net/

hmm.. and i thought about starting an Template site :cool:

part of my job is occasionally taking a website generated by something and fixing it to work with out the backend.

its a friggen nightmare. I also occasionally get to fix front page sites. o friggen joy.

Template sites I guess are just another unavoidable aspect of the industry. Many sites use them, I don't mind making them if needs be because it makes the work easier when updating etc but enough of the practical side ... :D

With the spread of template sites, the immediate thought would be that there's going to be less pure design work out there, or at least it will become harder to find.

Can I also now vent on something ... ? (going to anyway)

I signed up to elance yesterday and I was having a look at some of the projects posted and was absolutely amazed at how little some people are willing to work for on there and how little client budgets are because they know there are people out there who will work for practically nothing in countries (just from reading profiles on there) such as India, China and Russia.

I saw one job posted where the client had a budget of "less than $500" and wanted a forum writing from scratch that would match the new invisionboard forum (1.2) and they wanted it in a month! That forum has taken a team of experienced forum developers over a year to make!

I guess it's nothing new but I was a little taken aback by it once I signed up and could actually see all the bids and profiles of companies out there!

Quote:

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Originally posted by jamble7000

I saw one job posted where the client had a budget of "less than $500" and wanted a forum writing from scratch that would match the new invisionboard forum (1.2) and they wanted it in a month! That forum has taken a team of experienced forum developers over a year to make!

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Yes, this really annoys me, but it's the luck of the draw and the price for having the Internet. It's both good and bad that elance exists. It's just unfortunate that there are people in the world who are willing to take less money for jobs that obviously are worth more than they are charging. Extremely irritating in my opinion. I stay away from Elance because I had heard about this in the past. A damn shame if you ask me.

There's a bunch of sites popping up on the web that deal with this very issue - if you want a good laugh, head over to Duckthatjob.com (though first you should replace Duck with a rhyming non-Flashkit-approved word).

People honestly think that they can get away with murder in the current environment (if you do a search, there probably is someone offering that as a job as well).

As for templates, I don't really see them as being bad, per se. First off - you too can make money by making better designed templates (any designs done within a content management system have to be template based anyhow), and this is just following the trends of other industries - Word comes with letter style templates, most desktop publishing apps come with templates as well. It won't stop creative people from being creative. May just have to work a little harder to convince your client why they should avoid these templated sites.