We Need a Graphic Designer

One of the ironies of blogging is that when you’re busy doing the most interesting stuff, you have the least time to blog about it. We’ve been feeling very overwhelmed recently and we owe everyone some updates on various projects. And I swear we’ll do that soon. But first, we’re trying to address one of the big problems that’s been keeping us overwhelmed and out of our element at times– lack of a designer on our core team.

Downhill Battle outgrew it’s homegrown design abilities long ago, and yet we’ve still struggled along ourselves because we haven’t had any money to pay a serious designer (also, we’re very picky). This has been incredibly stressful for all of us as we stretch way beyond our natural design abilities, which pulls us away from the things that we’re good at.

But now we’re finally getting a little bit more established and we have a little bit of money to try to bring a graphic designer onto the team in a semi-permanent role (this would also include work for participatorypolitics.org). When I say a little bit of money, I mean it– we have roughly $500 – $1000 to spend on design per month, and we’re hoping for someone who can do a decent amount of work. That’s actually a lot of money by standards around here, we’ve been living very cheaply and we’re in this for the love. We can also pay project by project if that works better for you, but we need a reliable go-to person that can do a series of things in a row.

We’d love to have someone who can work half-time, but this can vary depending on how fast you are and how much stuff we have to do at the moment. Most important to us is finding someone who does creative work that we like, who believes in the cause, and who can be consistent and reliable.

Skill-wise, we want someone who has a good, independent (not trendy), design sense, and is very flexible and professional (in the good sense of the word). We need to be able to make clear and usable sites like mozilla and basecamp as well as more interesting, artsy sites. Experience making XHTML / CSS table-less designs is very important, though we can handle some of the coding side ourselves, if necessary.

And here’s my heartfelt pitch to all those talented designers out there that could be making a lot more money doing commercial work: There’s a real chance right now to swing culture in an independent, grassroots, ground-up direction. That chance might not last long, and we don’t want to miss it. Downhill Battle is in a pretty unique position to have an impact on what happens. Having a really solid designer on the team would help us take it to the next level. We have some very cool projects coming up, it’s really exciting for all of us to be a part of it, and I think it will be for you too, whoever you are… plus, I think we’re pretty fun to telecommute with.

So if you’re interested, please send a resume or portfolio or a list of links to: npr|at|downhillbattle.org. And if you have questions about money, time, or anything else, don’t hesitate to send them along.

UPDATE: We’re not accepting any more portfolios. Thanks and more info soon.