I want a designer to tell me the truth about five websites.
A one-page brief. What I have, what I'm worried about, and what I'd like back.
Keegan Sullivan · Greenville, SC · keegan@sullivancreative.co
Goal: nothing I ship should look vibe coded or cheap.
I'm not looking for a redesign. I'm looking for a trained eye, an honest first impression, and a short set of rules I can keep.Where I'm coming from
I run a small photo and video studio, a marketing agency, and a few software products, and I build most of the web work myself with AI coding tools. That gets a lot shipped. It also means I can no longer see my own sites the way a stranger does, because I know how every one of them was made.
My worry is specific. There is a look that AI-built sites converge on, and a second, older look that just reads as cheap. I don't want either on anything with my name behind it. I'd rather hear it now, from someone who does this for a living, than find out from a client who quietly went elsewhere.
The five properties
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Handledhandledagency.coMarketing agency for small businesses. The one that most needs to look like a professional shop, because it sells that.
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Sullivan Creative Co.sullivancreative.coPhoto and video studio. Weddings, brands, families. The photography should carry it; tell me if the site gets in the way.
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Phramedphramed.coSaaS for photographers: client galleries, a shoot-day planner, booking and payments. $19 a month. Competitors are Pixieset and Pic-Time.
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Batchbatch.handledagency.coPre-order system for small food businesses: bakeries, food trucks, weekend specials. Sits under the Handled name, but judge it as a product page, not an agency page.
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AshTagashtagapp.comA cigar journal, consumer and mobile-first. The app screens matter as much as the marketing page here.
Two different problems, scored separately
"This was vibe coded"
- The default fonts (Inter, Geist, Space Grotesk) or the default "tasteful" fonts (Instrument Serif, Fraunces) chosen for no reason
- Purple gradients, glass, glow, or the newer cream-and-serif uniform
- A kicker label above every heading
- Centered hero, three icon cards, a call to action, repeat
- Cards with a colored left border; icon tiles; stat rows
- Copy that could sell anything
"This looks cheap"
- Spacing and radius drift, things a few pixels off
- Flat type hierarchy, headings barely bigger than body
- Default focus rings, no press states, hover that does nothing
- Stock or generated imagery where real work should be
- Mobile layouts that shrink instead of re-flowing
- Footers, forms and empty states nobody finished
A site can have one, both, or neither. I want to know which, per property, with the pattern named. "Feels AI" doesn't help me. "Kicker label on 12 of 13 headings" does.
How I'd like you to look
The ten-second test comes first, and blind
Before you inspect anything, open each site cold and write one line: what you'd guess built it, who you think it's for, and whether you'd hand it a credit card. Write that down before you scroll. Once you start inspecting you can't un-know, and that first line is the most valuable thing in the whole engagement.
Three surfaces each, two widths
Home, one inner page of your choosing, and one logged-in or app screen where there is one. At 390 wide and at 1440. Homepages are always the best-dressed page, so please don't stop there.
Three references per property
Two direct competitors and one site you'd consider the bar for that category. Tell me where mine sits between them.
One question across all five
Do these look like one studio made them, or five different tools? Two of them are my brands and three are products, so they don't need to match. They should look like they share a taste.
What I'd like back
- A scorecard per property.
The blind first-impression line, then the two scores, vibe coded and cheap, each out of ten, with the patterns named.
- The top five fixes per property, ranked.
Specific enough that I can act on each one the same day: the element, the value, the reason. Before-and-after mockups for the top two only. No full redesigns.
- One page of house rules.
Fonts, grounds, a radius scale, when a kicker is allowed, what a card is for, what a button must do when pressed. I will paste this into the instructions my tools build from, so the next thing I ship doesn't slide back. This is the deliverable that compounds.
What I'm not asking for
A redesign proposal, a mood board, a brand refresh, or "modernize the look." If you think one of the five needs to be rebuilt from scratch, say so in one sentence and we'll talk about it as a separate job. This engagement is diagnosis and rules.
Working together
Fixed fee, agreed up front. I'm in Eastern time and build in short bursts around a day job, so async works well and I answer fast. Please be blunt. If something is a six out of ten, I want to hear six, and why.