For those running web or dev agencies: at the start of a project, how do you get clients to grant access to their domain and DNS, hosting, App Store Connect, Google Play, Stripe and the rest?

A few things I'm curious about:

1. Roughly how long is it from kickoff until you have everything you need?
   
2. What does your process look like? A guide or PDF, a checklist, a screen-share call, a shared password manager, something else?
   
3. Which platform gives you the most trouble?

And when a project ends, do you hand access back or remove yourself, or does it just stay as it is?

Plenty of agencies publish long "how to give us access" guides for this, so I'm curious how well that works in practice. Would love to hear what works for you and what doesn't.

Hey everyone! I’m primarily a developer, and I also freelance, offering website development and brand design. Design is something I really enjoy, so I’ve been building both sides of my practice.

I’m at a point where I feel my work is decent, but I want to improve more deliberately. I can deliver projects, but I’d like to get better at the decisions behind them: typography, layout, visual hierarchy, spacing, interactions, and how all of those come together to create a website that looks good and is easy to use.

Especially with AI becoming part of the workflow, I feel that having the judgment to question its output and make thoughtful design decisions makes a real difference in the final product. I want to develop that judgment further and get better at explaining why a design works.

For those who have been through that transition, what courses, books, or other resources made a meaningful difference? I’m looking for intermediate-to-advanced material that goes beyond beginner tutorials and explains the reasoning and trade-offs behind different approaches. Practical exercises, detailed case studies, or opportunities for critique would be especially helpful.

Budget is a consideration, so I’d appreciate affordable recommendations, though I’m also interested in hearing which paid resources you found worth saving up for.

I’m also posting related questions in r/webdev and r/graphic_design, each focused on its own discipline. For this thread, I’d like to keep the discussion about web design, including UI and usability.

What helped you raise the standard of your work, and how did you put it into practice?

EDIT: thank you for all the great replies. I have read every single comment and almost all of them are very helpful! from what I read, design is job that is unfortunately shrinking. I need to work hard on standing out and being different than other candidates in this position.

I currently have a stable career, so I don’t need to rush to find a job after I graduate. It’s quite different from the creative field, so finding out that you really have to stand out and work hard AFTER obtaining a degree was slightly surprising. (again, due to my lack of thorough research :/)

because of this, I’ll be able to take my time to build a portfolio I’m proud of and improve my design skills.

I may consider switching over to a four year college and working on my bachelors degree in a more broad area (such as communications or business), if possible.

again, thank you!.

————

I have 2 more classes until I complete my associates in web & digital media design. i’ve been browsing junior web design roles and even ux designer ones.

a lot of these positions require a bachelor’s degree with years of experience. I also researched a bit online and lots of people with a significant amount of experience are having trouble finding a job in web design, or similar roles.

I can’t help but feel like I messed up going to school for web design. please be brutally honest, did I fuck up? if so, any recommendations for other careers that are similar that I’d have better luck in?

Hi everyone,

When I was very young, I loved the concept of "strategy browser games" like Travian and OGame, but was so bad at it. I felt overwhelmed by the rules, the interfaces, and would get wrecked by anyone, everytime.

My dream was to build my own game, a simpler one, with my own rules, but I was barely able to create decent HTML pages.

Today I am taking my revenge: with my coding knowledge, a detailed set of rules that I have been thinking about for years and years, Codex to speed-up the prototype, I have finally managed to code my lovely game.

Since LLMs tend to produce overdesigned content that you see everywhere, I tried to stay as close as possible to the "default HTML" theme. I personally find it more immersive, as if you were in fact playing with a novel or a history book, and your mind is the real UI.

Unfortunately the genre is dead now, and this won't go anywhere unless I spend months of real dev on a mobile app, it's mainly a personal proof of concept that I wanted to show you

Started doing this on my last few builds & not going back.

I used to design desktop in Figma, then squish it for mobile at the end. Mobile always felt like the leftover version.

Now I do the 390px hero first. You get like 1 headline, 1 line under it & 1 button before the fold. That's it.

Whatever survives that cut is the actual message. Desktop just gets more room around the same thing instead of extra stuff nobody asked for.

Weird side effect - clients argue way less about copy coz they can see there's no space for the 4th badge..

I've been designing and developing websites for years, and one thing I've always found frustrating is how much of the design inspiration we find online is purely visual.

You see an incredible interaction on Awwwards or Dribbble, but recreating it often takes hours of experimentation.

So I've been building something a little different.

InstaLanding.ai is a free, open-source library that has now grown to 60+ complete landing pages, along with motion components and full design systems.

The focus is on pushing what HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can do visually.

A lot of the pages feature:

• GSAP-powered animations — Scroll-triggered sequences, cinematic transitions, kinetic typography, and complex motion.
• Rive-like interactive elements (without Rive) — Detailed, responsive animations built directly with web technologies.
• Complete landing pages — Not isolated hero sections or static mockups, but fully designed pages.
• Motion components — Reusable animated elements, transitions, and interactive UI patterns.
• Full design systems — Typography, colors, components, layouts, and visual languages that can be adapted to other projects.

One of the biggest decisions I made was to keep everything in single HTML files.

No complicated build process. You can open a file in your browser, inspect the code, modify it, or integrate pieces into your existing workflow.

And with AI coding tools becoming increasingly capable, I've found that giving an agent an actual working design produces much more consistent results than trying to describe a visual style through prompts.

But even without AI, I wanted this to be a useful resource for designers and developers who enjoy studying how interesting interfaces are actually built.

Everything is free, open source, and doesn't require an account.

https://instalanding.ai

I'm especially interested in hearing from other web designers:

Do you think we're moving toward a point where working code becomes a more useful form of design inspiration than static mockups?

Would love to hear what you think of the designs, animations, and overall direction of the project.

What web design trends do you think are newly out of style?

Hello, me and my friend made a little website with a strong design aesthetic, the atmosphere is very spiritualistic (can't post videos but here are photos). The design came from the fact that our project is about personal archiving and transmitting your memories to your family. We thought you guys would enjoy. We even added zen bowl sounds haha, very opinionated but probably better than the reverse!

I would like to have this style for my portfolio website. I MOSTLY like it and I want this exact style, being the profile in the middle, links as icons around it, heading and footing mostly like this.

I don't want any major changes. But I feel like either the font or the sizes, or the spacings, colors, the small things, if they were improved, the whole thing would pop. But I can't get a feel for it.

Any advice?

Earlier when one clicked on a post there wasn't an option to scroll and see related posts right?

So, I am working on making a personal website for myself. This is my interests section, and I am pretty satisfied with the music section, but I don't know how to make the books section look good. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I can use more or less space than the current layout, depending on the ideas.

I don't expect you to manually design something in figma (Though that would be wildly appreciated). Instead, just describe what I should do to make it nice.

Thanks!

So I'm an Embedded Engineer and a mentor, not into web development that much.

I want to make a free website for a readers community which can store used data, books they have, and people can request to borrow the book. There will be naming the philosophy and rules of the community...

Thanks in advance.

I am full stack and i rarely use AI so i dont have this 6th sense to sniff out AI designs sites like you guys can. Like I've heard people complaining about eyebrow subtitles above the titles sections. This is something that does look a bit odd and I can understand why we shouldn't do that.

But sometimes just to go against trends do things that are counter intuitive to our end goal. And i was wondering what does AI do that is actually good design.

New site: jbhlandscape.com

This Dayton, OH landscaping company had a website that was built with godaddy and it had pretty poor performance metrics. I designed the new one in Figma and then built it in Astro. I even set up Sanity as a CMS in case they ever want to update anyting themselves (Usually my clients just reach out to me to update anything for them lol).

The new site is a lot quicker and they've already gotten a few conversions from it and it hasnt even been up for a month.

I'd love to get yall's thoughts if y'all have anything to share :)

Hi, I'm looking for someone to audit my website, but i'm unsure if I should get someone or if there's some kind of automated online tool for it. Seems like the ones with the best reviews are paid, looking to see if there are some powerful free alternatives. There's some I found but not sure if i can list them.

Options welcome! Need auditing for design/seo/geo would be great!

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I have been working freelance with a company for over 15+ years. They let go of their previous graphic designer and brought in a new designer. The designer knows Figma so I assumed they knew web design.

We have been working on the company website for over 2 years now. My original request was to have the site designed in Figma on a Desktop canvas and a mobile canvas. The request was to also have all pages designed so development could streamline vs designing on the development environment.

The site has been one of the slowest going process' I have ever dealt with as the amount of 'changes/revisions' have been astronomical.

Originally the project was quoted a solid price with 3 sets of revisions included. The project then changed to hourly when we realized it was going on much beyond the 3 sets of revisions originally agreed on.

I am on the fence if the revisions are the opinion of the designer or the team they report to. A fair amount seem to be the opinion of the designer as they are insignificant changes such as making icons a touch smaller, change spacing by mere pixels and such. Do not get me wrong I want it to look good, but I don't see how these changes are stopping the site from being soft launched.

I am torn as a part of me isn't complaining about the monthly income coming in, it's not interfering with any other projects. But I have worked with this company for so many years and have a good history with them and I see their success as my success also. And I take a personal stake in the company and the employees there.

I have at one point recommended Framer as I feel "maybe" and this is a big "MAYBE" they could complete the site if the designer had full control over the design as they never seem to be happy and are constantly changing things (images, icons, colours, layout, adding new features, removing others).

They previously declined the idea, but I am tempted to ask again.

I am curious about others views on this as I keep this information to myself for the most part, those who I do talk to about this tell me to be happy and just collect a paycheck. But I feel angry that this company is being treated like a cash cow because someone must have a bad case of the "I will never be happy".

I am curious about others opinions on this.

Before reading through the brief, please check out my portfolio to get a concrete sense of my visual style, execution, and design capabilities:

👉https://vishejeetportfolio.vercel.app/

I specialize in bespoke digital experiences, detailed visual design, custom UI/UX, and expressive interactive elements rather than generic, template-driven layouts. The client reached out specifically because she wants an unconventional, human-made aesthetic that reflects that level of craft.

Background & Project Context

A client who runs an independent print magazine recently sent me an extensive brief for a "one-page website."

While it is technically a single continuous-scroll page, calling it a simple landing page does not represent the scope at all. The density of custom art, section-by-section variation, and interactive motion make this closer to designing a digital art piece:

• Art Direction & Aesthetic: 90s retro advertising meets Y2K collage culture. It’s loud, tactile, asymmetrical, and layered, using bold typographic treatments, cut-out editorial photography, and unexpected compositions. Every section needs a distinct look while remaining part of one cohesive brand.
• Strict "No AI" Requirement: The brief strictly bans all AI-generated art, stock imagery, or generic placeholders. Every visual asset—stickers, starbursts, doodles, badges, callouts, and potential mascots/caricatures—must be completely handcrafted by me.
• Page Structure & Scope:
  1. Hero: Big visual anchor, logo treatment, the magazine's tagline and an immediate path to the purchase section.
  2. About: Narrative section covering the magazine’s creative ethos.
  3. What’s Inside the Mag: An editorial spread preview displaying interior pages, snippets, and highlights.
  4. Monthly Buy Section: Needs two fully designed states — (1) Sales Open with an active buy button/checkout, and (2) Sales Closed with an engaging holding state that funnels traffic into the newsletter.
  5. Newsletter Sign-up: Custom value pitch, form design, and a distinct success/confirmation state.
  6. Contact Section: General inquiries form and/or direct email link.
  7. Navigation: Persistent anchor menu for section jumping.
• Motion, 3D & Interactions (from client video references):
  • Cursor-reactive movement on stickers and floating badges.
  • Scroll-triggered parallax and dynamic transitions between sections.
  • Draggable interactive carousel for previewing spreads.
  • Real 3D elements (such as an interactive flipping magazine or 3D cards).
  • Video backgrounds with lightweight fallback states for mobile.
• Responsive Breakpoints & Developer Handoff: Complete layouts across Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile, along with a full handoff pack (design tokens, clean SVG exports, alt-text documentation, and a guide for updating the monthly sale info).

My Original Pricing (Design Only)

Initially, I looked at this strictly as a UI/UX and visual design project (supplying a production-ready Figma handoff pack for an external developer). My original pricing was:

• Tier 1: ₹55,000
• Tier 2: ₹75,000
• Tier 3: ₹95,000

The Pivot: Offering Design + Development (Shopify Integration)

The original plan was to hand over design files so a developer could build it without guessing. However, I’ve been looking into handling the implementation myself using modern front-end workflows, Figma development capabilities, and Shopify’s e-commerce integrations.

Positioning this as a complete turnkey solution (Design + Build) could save the client the hassle of finding a developer who might struggle to implement the subtle motion physics and collage layouts correctly.

• Where I’m confident: Building the responsive front-end, implementing CSS/scroll-triggered animations, hooking up newsletter APIs, and configuring the Shopify integration (handling the monthly open/closed drop states).
• Where I’m cautious: Building complex WebGL/Three.js 3D interactions (like real-time physics or custom 3D page flips) that run smoothly on budget mobile devices requires specialized technical expertise. While tools like Spline make 3D embeds more accessible, high-performance custom canvas work is a different beast.

Taking on implementation changes the value equation significantly, which is why I want to reconsider how to package and price this.

Help Me Structure & Price Three Tiers

I want to present three logical tiers that give the client clear choices based on scope and technical complexity, rather than just pulling numbers out of thin air. Here is how I’m dividing the work:

Tier 1: Essential / Core

• Scope: Full responsive UI/UX for all 7 sections across Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile, including both states (Sales Open & Sales Closed) for the purchase section.
• Artwork: Essential hand-crafted asset pack (10–15 unique stickers, doodles, starbursts, photo cut-outs — 100% human-made).
• Interactions: Standard hover micro-interactions, smooth anchor scrolling, and a responsive swipe carousel.
• Exclusions: Custom 3D elements, cursor-reactive physics, and heavy video backgrounds.

Tier 2: Interactive Motion (The Sweet Spot)

• Scope: Everything in Tier 1, plus full interactive prototyping and richer layout choreography.
• Artwork: Expanded custom art suite (20+ bespoke assets, editorial textures, and 1 custom mascot/caricature).
• Interactions: Cursor-reactive sticker floating/tilting, scroll-triggered section transitions, parallax depth, and optimized video background integration.
• Tech/Implementation (if included): Front-end build, Shopify checkout integration, monthly sales state logic, and mobile performance optimization.
• Exclusions: Complex custom WebGL coding.

Tier 3: Full Sensory 3D & Flagship Experience

• Scope: The complete, uncompromising vision matching the client's reference videos.
• Artwork: Full bespoke illustration and collage library, unlimited custom elements, and dedicated brand graphics.
• Interactions & 3D: Interactive 3D magazine/card flipping, magnetic cursor effects, layered motion choreography, and advanced scene transitions.
• Tech/Implementation (if included): Full custom build, 3D integration, Shopify e-commerce drop setup, cross-browser performance testing, and initial post-launch maintenance for the first monthly drop.

The Real Value of Custom Work

This isn't a drag-and-drop template site. Every illustration is hand-drawn, every section has its own asymmetrical personality, and designing for two different e-commerce states requires deliberate UX planning.

Delivering a fully functional, live-on-Shopify site that is tested and ready to handle monthly sales drops is a vastly different service than handing over a static design file. I want to make sure the pricing reflects that reality without either underselling my labor or pricing myself out of a project I really want to do.

Questions for the Community:

1. Design-only sanity check: Given the sheer volume of bespoke, non-AI artwork and responsive UI detailing, were my original numbers (₹55,000 / ₹75,000 / ₹95,000) reasonable, or was I undercharging even for design alone?
2. What should each of the three tiers cost? How would you price Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 in INR (or USD equivalent):
   • As Design-only packages?
   • As Design + Development / Shopify packages?
3. How much additional value does implementation add? What is the going rate or fair markup for taking a complex, motion-heavy design and implementing it on Shopify?
4. Solo build vs. Dev partnership: For someone confident in UI/UX and intermediate front-end tools, is it smart to tackle the development of Tier 2 solo, or should I partner with an experienced developer and bake their fee into the quote?
5. Contract & scope protection: What boundaries should I set around the "monthly sales drop maintenance," revision rounds, and mobile performance expectations to prevent scope creep?

I’d love to hear from freelancers, agency owners, and developers who have priced and delivered projects with this kind of visual and interactive complexity. Thanks in advance!

Hello fellow designers,

I'm currently making an ecommerce website on wordpress.

Let's say I have 2 custom fonts, one I added in my site files and called it through CSS, and one google font I added in my function.php.

Problem is, they "flash" (from serif / sansserif basic font, to the fonts I want) for a split second before showing the right fonts.

Do you guys have any tips to make it so the fonts are loaded first and my text doesn't use normal serif / sansserif fonts ?

Thanks in advance.

I wanted to get the opinion of people who have been in the industry for the past 6 years. I started learning web design with the Vako Udemy Figma/Webflow course (I think some of you might find it familiar). From there, I went on to learn more deeply about UI/UX, SEO, basic copywriting, and marketing in general.

With the AI revolution, I started using it for copywriting and to brainstorm sitemap structures, but never in the design process itself. I still love following my traditional workflow: creating the sitemap, then the mood board (I started skipping wireframes for faster client delivery), building the design in Figma, and then moving to build it in a website builder, either Webflow or WordPress (using Elementor or Bricks). Afterward, I use AI to write SEO meta tags, meta titles, and alt text.

Lately, though, I see people generating the whole process in a couple of minutes using AI. And I am not talking about AI slop websites; I am talking about recent tools that produce sites looking as if they were created by designers like us, which only need minor modifications to match the ones I spend hours and hours building.

Should I put my ego aside and start exploring how to implement AI in my work to save time and effort? Or should I stick with the classic process, which takes extra time, but at least the work is truly mine, I have control over everything, and I avoid feeling "brain-rotted" by AI?

I have been stuck in this dilemma for a while now. While I don't depend completely on web design, as it's just a side hustle, I feel stuck and don't know if my perspective is right, or if it's just my ego reacting to the feeling that everything I spent years learning has lost most of its meaning.

I would love to hear how you have been coping with this.