For sure it's better to work with contract, especially if you're a good designer. Moreover a good web design company will help you to improve your skills even more. Here's a story of one web designer http://www.internetadvertisingcompany.us/2018/04/06/how-to-improve-the-designer-and-how-the-agency-helped-me/ where he tells how he started to work in agency and how it helped him further. Maybe it'll be interesting to you.

I also like most of your examples. You can find some more examples here https://fuselabcreative.com/services/ux/ I like the works of these guys.

As for me as I'm not very good at design and I think that Logo is very important to any company it's better to hire someone to make it. Personally I asked for help one good Illustrator who worked in web design for a long time dieppastudio.com Maybe you'll need a help too. Anyway it's even just interesting to look through her works.

Very unusual article, it's interesting that all most important inventions look like this to your mind :) It took place someday, but as for me I'm happy that for now website design changed a lot. I like UX design for example like this one: https://fuselabcreative.com/the-role-of-graphic-designers-in-the-healthcare-industry/ It's much more attractive and good-looking than most of other styles.