Just as the Topic Name says:

What do you look for in a web designer?

Web design is neither a web or a sign...

Discuss.

I'd help ya out but seeing how thats like the 1 thing i wont have to look 4

I look for creativity and originality in previous designs first and formaost, as well as raw technical skill with common tools. Anyone can slap out a 3 column fluid layout with a horizontal nav system, but it's the little creative parts of the design that really do it for me. Things like effective use of whitespace in designs, and a natural and comfortable flow to the information being displayed.

Photoshop/Fireworks skills alone do not a good designer make...I'm testament to that. I'm pretty handy with both tools, but I am NOT a designer. So there has to be some natural ability there as well.

A good understanding of human interaction and behavior is key as well. After all, we're ultimately building glorified UI's right?

Try this at your next designer interview...ask the interviewee the following "What are the two directions that English speaking users read?"

Most will stare at you, some will give you "Left to right" - but one who is on the ball will give you "Left to right and top to bottom" - it sounds simple and maybe a little silly, but it should give you a little insight as to how attuned to human behavior your candidate is.

first thing is too look at one of their sites and view their code and if its frontpage RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

Really there is a ton of thing i would look for from layout and design to color harmony to font selection to browser compatability to using xhtml instead of html.
Having it be a cssp site and looking nice isnt a requirement because a lot of ppl cant afford that, so like some of my sites have a combo, not because I can't do it but I wont do it for free.

Don't laugh, or perhaps you should, you wouldn't imagine how many serious sites are actually using FrontPage.

isnt that sad?!!

ok heres a good question to ask a web developer:
What tools do you use? And check those tools to make sure they are quality, maybe they are not and they do good work with them but thats rare.

Would you take your bmw to a shop where they only use cheap or free tools? I wouldn't............

But just because the dev'r uses good tools doesn't mean it will be a good site but the chances are better.

If they use something like frontpage you will already know your site won't be cross browser compatible, will be slow loading, will be rendered useless by programs like norton who view the code as malcious (imagine that), it won't pass w3c validation and will be easily hacked if anyone wants to. Thats a small list with a frontpage site but you get the idea and that developer should be avoided.

I would be more impressed by someone who uses notepad and can actually remember how to provide a good end product without a crutch.

Problem is with some of these fancy IDE's is someone can claim to know what they are doing and not know a thing. Sure it may look pretty but like you said is it cross browser compatible.

What is your least favorite browser? That's a good question. If they say NS 4 and they would like to kill AOL users, then they are probably someone who knows a little something. I remember the good old days when flash wasn't around and fancy things on web sites meant coding 3 set of Javascript to get a web site to work somewhat the same for all user's. Oh except for IE MAC users, which you pretty much had to just give up on.

thats true but say you do find an oldtimer who does use notepad, which is great BUT will probably mean it will take them longer to code the site which results in a higher cost to you. And too a point it means that they won't try new things which can be a great thing for you! Like on our cfm boards the old dogs wont even try flash forms or even cfform which makes validating a breeze without adding 200 lines of javascript to the top of the page.

I guess you can find things wrong with anyone but as i go (believe this or not) my clients like that I listen to them, work closely with them and give them honest advise and direction and I give them a good bang for their buck and dont try to screw them on the lil things and of course i am funny and charming lol.

Also depends on what you are willing to pay for, don't think if you want to pay below average prices that you will get an above average site, if you want quality then pay for it.

I've seen some excellent, professional sites with clean code that were done with FrontPage. From what I've seen, a skilled website designer can use it to create a good page.

That said, the vast vast majority of FP sites is total unadulterated garbage. This is the problem with FP. Anyone with the money to buy it (or the facilities to steal it) can slap up a page that will work. They're so thrilled with their success that they nail up a shingle and call themselves website designers.

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This is where OUR real problems begin. They create websites for unwary business owners for $350. Then after a couple of years, designing websites isn't fun anymore, so they move on to a different hobby and the business owner calls us, because their website is terribly out of date and they're starting to realize how pathetic it was to begin with. They call us and ask us how much to redesign their site. In their mind, they understand that it will probably cost lots more. Like $500 or maybe even $600!! Then when we give them a quote of $2500, they think we're nuts. They have an incorrect but long-lasting perception of what a custom-designed website is worth, and there will be no altering that.
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Personally, I use Homesite. I find it gives me good information, warning me of invalid or obsolete tags, but allowing me to code by hand, which I like.

totally! It's amazing how ppl want a 10k website for $200, they just have no clue how it works and fp is to blame!! haha

I have seen a few "somewhat" clean sites in fp but it was just images not any real processing or css work.

I encourage people to look for the emphasis on not only the design aspect, but also someone that understands the purpose of the site and who is going to be able to apply business skills to the site. One of those skills would be promotion of the site. It's nice to have a pretty picture, but you don't hang it in the closet.