Why Hire Local?

Well, it’s 2024 and it’s just as quick to call your neighbor a block over as it is to call the Philippines.

So, the question raises itself: why hire local?

We cost more. We’re American, so you know we’re entitled. We don’t wake up any earlier than you do, or stay up any later than you do. We’re the local web designer.

I’ll tell you a story. It’s about a small business owner who went on Upwork to find someone to build her a website for her animal training practice.

This person, we’ll call her Rudy, was no good with computers. She was great with dogs. She could train the toughest pups and the most oblivious owners. But computers? No way Jose.

Business was a little slow - which is why she wanted a new website. But Rudy didn’t want to invest any real money in something like design. She heard it was cheaper to source from another country. So she did.

On Upwork, Rudy wrote a description of her project and then opened it up to bidding. That’s how she found a designer based in Manila. The designer charged one-quarter what the local web designer charged.

So Rudy booked the designer in Manila. She sent over her collateral - a few past puppy success stories, a biography of her business, a text for the logo, a general flow-chart of where things should go.

It took the designer in Manila only a few days of work to finish the prototype.

When it came back, Rudy had a website.

But there was a problem.

The website was incredibly unsophisticated.

The pages were awash in pastels, complete with a love for curly fonts and heart-shaped dots. Editing it was difficult, and getting detailed instructions from an ocean away was hard. The logo had a dog that was the color of day-old compost, playing in a field that color of day-old dirt.

No one in Oakland would ever feel inspired to work with someone who had a website that looked like this.

So Rudy went back to the web designer in Manila. She asked for changes.

The web designer in Manila sent changes.

They weren’t the right changes.

Rudy tried to re-write what she wanted. She spent a couple hours researching logos and finding ones she wanted to emulate.

She sent these to the web designer in Manila.

The web designer in Manila sent changes.

Still, they weren’t the right changes.

There was a cultural disconnect. What Rudy wanted, the web designer in Manila couldn’t really imagine. The web designer in Manila had never been to Oakland. The web designer in Manila hadn’t watched people walking their dogs on Lakeshore, and hadn’t met new puppy parents on the local trails. The web designer in Manila hadn’t seen what cute, or trust-worthy, or soulful looked like to dog owners in Oakland.

So Rudy tried one more time - but just for the logo. To make it a little more believable.

This time, the logo came back with a dog the color of a neon tangerine popsicle, and a field the color of a wine bottle.

The web designer in Manila said the dog was a golden lab. Rudy thought it might have wandered out of Chernobyl.

Already, between the design scouting, the logo edits, the Googling, the website audit and the feedback loop, Rudy had sunk about 25 hours into this project.

She couldn’t keep doing this. She had dogs to train.

So Rudy came to me.

I completed her project with a 3 day turnaround. We talked for about 40 minutes before I started. It turns out she’d trained a dog I had fostered through Hopalong. I knew folks that were looking for a dog trainer. I passed them along.

And I made a logo. It was sweet and spoke to her mission. It played off Oakland tastes. She wanted a slight tweak which I did in real time on the phone with her. Then it was done.

Rudy liked the new design so much, she asked for more ways to use it.

And so I created merchandise tie-ins so she and her employees could wear polo shirts with the logo on the front, and print business cards, and cute stickers, and maybe special tote bags or dog toys down the line.

It helped her get her name out there. It worked.

It would’ve saved a lot of time to come to me first. And time is the one thing that’s worth more than money. Even for something like design.