Designing for friends

February 05, 2004 | View Comments (13) | Category: Our Thoughts

Summary: Designing for friends is not as easy as it sounds.

The toughest job I have ever come across involves me designing a site for a friend. What makes this even more difficult is that the friend is not going to pay me for it. The obvious thing would be to say that I should treat her like any other client and request payment, but there are some people in your life that get your special treatment. What makes these kinds of jobs difficult is that you want to provide them with an A+ quality site, but also have to balance your time so that you can try to do other things that will generate some money for you. So this is what I am doing to tackle the situation.

First I let her understand how much a site like this would normally cost. This gives her an idea of what she is getting with this site. Once that is clear, people usually back off a little bit and begin to understand that just because you are doing the site for free does not mean that in reality the site cost 0 dollars to produce.

Secondly, I have to set certain times aside where I can focus on designing this site. If I begin to randomly work on the site whenever the urge hits me (or when she asks how things are going) then it will never get done. Also, over time I will start to ask myself why did I even agree to do such a thing (because she is your best friend dimwit).

Finally, be honest with the person. If you haven't touched their site in weeks, let them know that and explain why. However, if you had been following the second step this would never have happened. So in reality I find myself writing this entry for me and not for you people out in web land.

It's cool to do stuff for friends and many times you owe them anyways. However, if you plan on doing some work for them, be it paid or pro bono, then by all means take the job seriously, because more than likely they are already doing that.

Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/138

Comments

#1

Another problem with doing work for free is that if they don't have any money invested in the project, they aren't always as likely to take it as seriously themselves. I've done free work for people in the past and have spent more time dragging information for the site out of the people than time spent actually designing the site. It helps if you tell them what it would normally cost so they know you aren't just doing it for fun in your free time, but even charging them a hundred bucks, or just having them pay for the domain and some hosting will usually get them a little more interested in the project and get you some info together so you can finish the site in a timely manner and get on with the paying jobs.

Derek Rose (http://www.twotallsocks.com/)

#2

you could always ask for simple compensations such as dinners, movie tickets, cds, etc.

huphtur (http://www.huphtur.nl)

#3

Just to clarify, she is paying some of the expenses such as domain name and hosting. And this is what she wants her future to be, so getting information definitely hasn't been a problem :)

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#4

I don't do design for free. I will help people with specific tasks like putting up their website, marking up some content, or adding some images to a page. What I do might be costly if they had to hire someone, but the difference is that I only do things that I can accomplish quickly. This means the design will likely be limited to some simple css, and I won't be doing any cross-browser testing, copy editing, or laborious tweaking.

I may love web design, but I keep the focus as professional as possible. That's what pays the bills, and more importantly, increases my business sense.

Gabe (http://www.websaviour.com/)

#5

I saw the title of this post and went, "uh oh!"

Designing for friends and family is usually not worth the effort. This extends beyond Web design to pretty much anything.

People just don't seem to place the same value on projects they don't pay for.

Unless your a glutton for punishment or have a lot of free time -- I'd avoid free work for friends and family at all costs.

Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)

#6

Hmm. I'm in the "web design for friends for free" category.

But then again, I just love it so very much, I'm constantly looking for more to do. I often push myself on to my friends. Which I shouldn't, because I have no free time.

I also love the freedom I get when designing for friends' sites. Sure, they have their own expectations and demands that a regular client does, but they are usually much more willing for youself to express your creativity then a client is.

Plus, I expect that they would pay me back in their own way. Such as I setup a friend's website and he drew me a pretty picture that I wanted. And is on call for more drawings.

And bad web design offends me. Deeply. I don't like my friends to offend me.

But I am young and immature and perhaps one day I'll start beating up my friends if they look at my website wrong. Because that would amuse me. One day.

Thanks for the tips, Scrivviepooh. They are helpful!

Alanna (http://www.virginmoistness.com)

#7

I dunno. I do web stuff (not just design necessarily) for friends on occasion, but it's often an exchange of some kind. Artist's website = one nice oil painting... lawyer's email system for a couple years of cease-and-desist notices on her letterhead as needed. Model's website for "special favors" err... ok, so the last one's just wishful thinking. :-)

It's always clear that it's lower priority than other things and I'll only work on it when I'm in the mood to, and that the mood is occasionally susceptible to both bribery and flattery.

The initial design usually works out fine. Ongoing changes and maintenance are the real knot... have to make sure you get that worked out before hand... how much and how often you'll be expected to do that. If it goes from feeling like a favor to a friend to feeling like an obligation that they're holding over you, it can really sour things. I know I've caught myself a half second away from telling people to bugger off because I wasn't their slave a few times in the past.

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#8

"And bad web design offends me. Deeply. I don't like my friends to offend me."

::grin:: I agree!

And Scrivs! When did you enable HTML links? sheesh, I've been pasting in URLs ever since I tried and one and it didn't work.

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#9

I think I did last week some time. I think I might start another blog just to keep up with the updates on this one ;)

Alanna: Any time you need my help, you know how to get a hold of me :P

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#10

I only design for friends if it's their business. I keep it on that level because it's the easiest way to keep it serious between both myself and them. Family is a different story, but they are understanding when I'm too busy with paid work to help them out. Luckily, my little brother is pretty decent at Web design for a 16 year old. I just need to catch him up with CSS and maybe the workload won't all be on me ;).

Vinnie Garcia (http://blog.vinniegarcia.com/)

#11

Oddly enough, I'm going through this same situation. I'm designing a website for a friend (actually former stepbrother) who is in a band. Their original site at www.triteband.com looks downright horrible. I offered to redesign it for them for free, since I have good memories growing up as a kid with this guy.

Unfortunately I haven't pointed out to them how much it'd cost them for me to design the site for them, maybe I ought to do that. Right now they're demanding the original logo, which looks bad and throws my whole design off, and I'm trying to get that across to them. They won't budge. So it comes down to what's more important, the client being happy, or the visitors being happy?

I went through this problem with my dad's website, and that is much worse, because he figure since I'm his son, that he knows more than I do when it comes to typography, placement, and so on. It's frustrating sometimes.

Matt Burris (http://www.goodblimey.com/)

#12

I find myself in a very different situation than most people here. I used to work as a web developer with my own small company. About 3 years ago I started working for someone else - primarily as a computer teacher. Now I'm the marketing manager for a manufacturing company. The choice to help a friend comes down to things like: can I deliver it? Do I have really have the time?

I find that since my principal focus is business, not the web, that helping friends is just one way of networking. It can lead into other very interesting things sometimes. But let's be honest: it's the freedom a day-job can give you. And even then, to give up precious spare-time... sometimes there has to be something worthwile to sweeten the deal. It's not unreasonable.

Justin (http://bluealpha.com)

#13

If I ever (rarely) design a site for free for a friend, I make sure that the work is strictly on my schedule and I make them do all the things that I would ask any client to do, such as filling out a site questionnaire, providing content in a suitable format, etc.

But overall, I don't like to do this kind of thing for many of the reasons given above. Although a good trade, like a dirtbike or something usually gets me in the mood.

submunition (http://www.submunition.com)

Keep track of comments to all entries with the Comments Feed