I was expecting people to not like the new design but it's been surprising to hear how many people prefer the old design and logo. I think the new one is way better, and it's not even close. Not perfect, but certainly an improvement.
But I would definitely hire a freelancer to do some visual clean up time to time.
As site content is updated, I can already see evidence of site feel reverting back to 'mom and pop', 'maintained by webmaster' look in some sections / pages.
I also feel your pain. I've had a bad experience with a top python/django agency that turned out to have a CEO "incubating" several startups to compete with Amazon, while also running an agency. I got bad vibes early but kept pressing on, and learned my lesson the hard way.
I don't mean literally $4/hr, but just any developer whose distinguishing feature is being cheaper than most other developers.
I thought that was Fiverr's brand.
>There are some really good (free) AI logo generators out there you can use to generate logos very similar (perhaps even better) than this. In recent years I've used them almost exclusively to generate some initial logo ideas then either made minor alterations myself (where needed), or paid someone a little to do it for me.
I've tried AI logo generators and didn't like the results. Last time I tried was 3-4 years ago, so maybe they've gotten better.
>Similar things can be said for web templates. There are some really good customisable templates for simple sites like yours out there today. I don't know why you'd pay someone for something so simple, especially when the design is so generic and forgettable (no offense).
Even with a template, there's still a lot of work. Someone has to sift through all the templates to find a good one. Then I still have to pay developers to adapt my existing content to the new theme. And in my experience, template code tends to be pretty bad. Tons of inline style rules so that the page looks good in exactly that configuration, but it's not flexible.
If I had to do it again, I'd still rather work with a freelancer than search for a template and adapt it to my site.