We are in an age where even ramen-lovin' back-end programmers with no design talent (like myself) have no excuse for ugly web designs.
Thomas and I chat about this periodically. For about $15, an hour of browsing ThemeForest, and half a morning with 960.gs and Compass/Sass/whathaveyou, you can make any throwaway app look like it had someone with actual design talent touch it.
That's one I just happened to grab out of a search for "admin". Does it look like something that got Jediguruninja handling from a team of bespoke design consultants? No, but it sure craters the approach to that bridge, for three to four orders of magnitude cheaper.
Thomas and I chat about this periodically. For about $15, an hour of browsing ThemeForest, and half a morning with 960.gs and Compass/Sass/whathaveyou, you can make any throwaway app look like it had someone with actual design talent touch it.
http://themeforest.net/item/simplpan-admin-panel-template/fu...
That's one I just happened to grab out of a search for "admin". Does it look like something that got Jediguruninja handling from a team of bespoke design consultants? No, but it sure craters the approach to that bridge, for three to four orders of magnitude cheaper.