Customers who have been around for a while may remember EditMe's directory of Recommended Designers. The purpose for creating it was to provide EditMe customers with a way to find designers that fit their budget and whose portfolio matched their goals. After a while I decided this was a distraction (I'm not in the designer match-making business) so I canned it. But the idea behind that directory has stayed with me and I've often thought about building it out as a separate web site.

Why would EditMe be recommending designers to our customers when we provide professional services? Because EditMe doesn't provide artistic web design services. We'll do fairly heavy customizations of the design templates EditMe comes with, but all-out design just isn't our gig, so we happily pass that work onto the experts. Of course, EditMe does take the output from the designer you hire (or, as the case may be, we hire on your behalf) and integrate it flawlessly into your EditMe site. 100% design customization is one of the capabilities that sets EditMe apart from the competition.

There is no shortage of Designer Directories on the web. But few, if any of them, provide the three things clients want to know about a designer before going any further:

1. What does their portfolio look like? Unlike books and their covers, you should, at least in part, judge a designer by their portfolio. It's amazing to me how many freelance designers list themselves on web directories with no portfolio or web site of any kind. Sorry, but if you can't get around to designing your own web site, why would I hire you to design mine?

2. How much do they charge? Designers, like fine artists, vary drastically in cost. The reason is the same. Great artists and designers are in demand, considerably more so than good designers.

3. Where are they located? Finally, design is an intimate process. Clients usually want to meet with their designer in person (and often-times the opposite is also true). So location matters. Most web directories embrace the web-worker ethos and eschew a focus on physical location.

Enter Haystack:

Finally, somebody else had this idea and ran with it. The smart folks at 37Signals have built Haystack - a new matchmaking service for web designers and clients. Their post announcing the project was so specifically what I've thought was needed in this space for years that I had to share it with all my customers. So here it is, folks, EditMe's new and much improved recommended designers directory... go find it yourself at haystack.com!