Ask HN: Developers, how did you find a designer to make your product look great?

Any developers out there who went from terrible looking product to awesome by getting a designer?

Developers make functional stuff that often looks terrible or very average.

And people say “you really need a designer to make that look great”.

But how do you even do that?

I imagine it would be hard for a non developer to find a great developer. Seems like a non designer has the same challenge finding a designer.

I don’t want to go bottom of the market but I also don’t have the money to match corporate design rates, so I also have no idea what to pay.

Did you go from ugly to beautiful and how did you do it, curious to know.