I met my designer in 7th grade P.E. class. We were both into Pokemon at the time, and hit it off.

Almost 10 years later, he's my go-to guy for anything and everything design related.

http://www.artificestudios.com/

It was kinda the same deal with me. We became friends when we coded an Earthbound fansite together. One day, he decided that CpE was too hard for him and got a degree in graphical design. We're working on a major project involving the same fansite!

http://reidesign.us

I worked for a small branding and marketing agency and became friends with five or six designers, all very talented in their own right. Referrals are bar none, the best way. Ask your friends small local companies you know and appreciate the design work.

Upvoted and bookmarked. :-)

+1

I've sucessfully used 99designs.com a few times and it's worked out great each time. With each new design need, I go back to the designers that won our prior contests.

been designing 99designs for about 2 weeks know and im becoming increasingly frustrated. this blog here http://www.graphicpush.com/99designs-bullshit-20 about sums up all my grievences. what is really depressing is when clients refuse to leave any feedback on a design you spent 5 hours on, merely awarding you one star an not telling you what they dislike about it so you can make changes. you can end up feeling like a whore in a line-up.

i click on some users' folios and i see that even the best of them might have entered 200 contests to have only 5 wins. in short, the only people this is a win for are the founders making off with a cool $40 for each contest started.

I used 99designs for the logo of my latest project and I'm very happy with it. I put up a content and set the prize to $150 (+$39 that 99designs charges) and I started getting logo submissions within hours. By the end of the 7 day contest period I had received 30 submissions from which several were really nice. I highly recommend it for logo designs.

I chose to put the contest for the logo, and then work off-line with the winner to do the rest of the design work.

I've always wanted to use that service but never had the chance to do it. I would love to hear a bit more about your experience.

I've used this service once and had a great experience. I needed a logo, had little/flexible requirements, and offered $300. Once my partner and I decided on a design we liked, we checked out the designer's profile and saw all the contests he won in the past, all his submissions, etc. They were all quality - the real deal and not just another guy with a pirated copy of Photoshop. We then contacted him with some minor requests and he made the changes within hours of our email. This process continued for the duration of the contest and it was nothing but a good and easy experience. End result - we got a great logo we love.

Feedback is key to this process! And definitely check out the designer's profile and his other submissions. It's a good way to see their style and if it matches your tastes. Also a good way to see if they just submit a generic logo and just modify the text for each contest they enter.

Ditto. Fancy doing a blog post and submitting it? Admittedly, I'd still tend towards using a designer that we know, but when trying to hook something up on the cheap as a stop-gap it seems like it might be a good solution.

http://www.crowdspring.com - better than 99designs because they give you legal agreements that are enforceable. Oh, and there's no $40 posting fee. Crowdspring (I refuse to do their moronic capitalization) takes their money on the back-end, so unless you get 25+ submissions, you can walk and pay nothing.

I like crowdspring a lot, letting me see what various designers propose gives me a good sense of their style.

Great link, thanks.

My portfolio and some past work:

http://www.rosefu.net http://www.retributionclan.com http://www.gameurb.com http://www.rotary.org

It all looks good, but it's not stellar work. I think there's something to be said for design that pops out and sticks in your mind.

Was going to type that site too, as I have used it many times!

Also, searching stumbleupon ... search graphic designer ... have come across some great folks!

I used elance.com to find a map designer for Planaroo.com. Prices were all over the map (excuse the pun), but I chose one of the more experienced and more expensive designers and was very happy with the results. I have no connection to elance.

i dint need to find the professional to get my work done and not have to waste time for searching professional because i have come across the new site where we can submit our site and hire professional to get your work done .www.marketraise.com

What's your budget? Would help to know.

I know a two people in the $50-80 per hr range that are pretty solid. I know another one that's more expensive.

Shoot me an email.

Here is a good place, I'd need specifics but I'm a UI guy and looking for people to work with, hit up the email in my profile...

I'm a web designer, startup founder and Hacker News ...uh addict.

Drop me an email and I can probably help you out.

this looks cool: http://collabfinder.com/

usually, i find people through mutual professional experience.

Thanks for the link -- seems interesting but is a little light on data to help me find someone (portfolio's ...etc)

digital point forums has some decent people. I used them at first, but now I use 99designs since you get a lot more choices

Photoshop CS3