Flex/BlazeDS Trading application - How to create a professional looking website?

I am a Flex/Java developer, in the process of creating a Financial/Trading website for a start-up company.

The default look and feel of Flex (out of the box) is pretty plain and bland (in terms of the default styles). Can anybody recommend the easiest way for me (as a developer) to make the website look as polished and professional as possible?

What is am looking for开发者_StackOverflow is:

• A professional style/theme to the website
• Use of polished images/icons
• Use of some Flash components for the intro/welcome page.
• The quickest way to get this styling/images/icons done - should I outsource this to an on-line company?

I have been looking at Flash Catalyst as an option but images need to be created first in Photoshop (which as a product I do not know).

Keep in mind that I come from a development background, but am keen/interested in potentially doing some of the artwork myself (all depends on the learning curve etc).

Thanks in advance Mike

ScaleNine is a very good resource of themes and skins for Flex applications.

Hire a designer familiar with Flex.

Flex look can be fully customized, though it takes a lot of efforts (especially for the 1st time).

I would recommend to program everything you've planned at first, knowing that later you will dedicate some time skinning the GUI.