[waboremo]

I definitely agree with these two major pain points. It relates to some of my personal experience as well, you would have to effectively solo an entire design markup just to potentially get key FOSS members on board with design changes.

You have the same problem when trying to show an early mockup to a paying client, they keep picking at things that aren't going to be that way in the final, so you wind up rarely involving them until you have a really solid draft ready. It's a tradeoff you actively make because you're getting paid to make those micro-decisions for them.

It's unfortunate because I feel FOSS could work wonderfully with design, so much of what makes design great also makes FOSS amazing, but the bridge just isn't there.

[DrewADesign]

Yeah... the big difference with paying clients is that they know there's a need, and they know they can't do it themselves (even if they incorrectly think they know enough to judge why.) Working with FOSS is essentially cold-calling clients having done a design proposal upfront.