figgy

:: I made up the name.

:: It's one word

:: People here it and wonder what it is - drives them a bit crazy and they just have to find out (or so we always hope)

:: It's easy to say, sounds friendly

:: Easy to spell

:: Timeless/trend-less

Those are the basic tools we used. From there it was a lot of laughter and fun. :)

It's a good decision. You can run any OS you want on OS X and its rock solid stable.

Welcome to the buried on Digg.com. :)

If you want cheap then do it yourself. If you want to make money doing business then and you realize that your logo is th face of your company, then pay someone a standard fee for a quality job.

In the end you won't be sorry.

Hire a designer who has more than a few years experience and it able to deliver not only the Photoshop files but the front-end (standards-compliant code!) to you as well. This means this person is able to code by hand and will understand the implications of his/her design choices when it comes to developing the actual website. Also, you get kind of a "two fer" this way as you don't need to hire a second person to do the front-end code. Another advantage is the capable designer can better communicate with the back-end team.

Pay this person well as you get what you pay for. Web design like many other disciplines in the web field, is a highly lucrative job with new opportunities coming along everyday. It's important for the survival of your own company to make sure you make the hotshot you hired feel satisfied with the salary and your company.

However, if you are just looking for a junior person on the cheap, you can find that but then you get junior, cheap results. It's better to bring in junior people to work under your senior person and build him/her into a senior from there.

"They then iterate till they get it right, and don't get paid till you choose one."

That sucks. I'd hate the be the graphic designer. How can you get good quality from someone who doesn't care about getting paid?

First, use a web designer, not a graphics/print designer. You won't regret it.

You can try sites like CreativeHotLink.com or Craigslist.org