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How To Hire A Graphic Designer For Your Business

by Alice Jackson Tweet - in Graphic Designers

Hire A Graphic Designer

Last updated on December 16th, 2022

You landed on this page searching for tips to hire a graphic designer; this apparently means you know the value of a graphic designer for your business. So, there’s no point in elaborating the fact that graphic designs are the visual communication mediators with your potential customers. You already know the importance of a good graphic designer in building your brand reputation and conveying your business message effectively to your target audience.

The task of hiring a graphic designer may feel intimidating especially when you don’t have the knowledge about the graphic designing profession. But trust me, hiring a graphic designer is not like hunting a unicorn. It is a simple process just like hiring any other professionals if you know exactly what to do and what to look for in a graphic designer.

Here we are giving some quick tips to help you hire a graphic designer that suits best for your company and its graphic requirement. Hiring a graphic designer may broadly be classified into two stages – Preparing yourself for the designer and choosing the best designer for yourself.

Preparing Yourself For The Designer

Hiring any professional, graphic designer, in this case, is not a one-sided affair. It is not only you who chooses the designer; the graphic designer too would have the option to choose to work with you or not. Before making your choice, you need to prepare yourself so that the designer whom you select willingly decides to work with you. If you are not well prepared, the chances are high that the designer you like, turns down your proposal.

Graphic designer

The Steps Involved In Preparing Yourself Are Explained Briefly

01. Have A Clear Picture Of Your Expectations In Your Mind

This might not sound obvious if you were expecting us to tell you the traits of a good designer. But, this is the most important part of the process. Before even telling someone that you are looking for a graphic designer you need to be very clear about your expectations and goals. You can’t convey your idea to anyone if you yourself don’t know what goal you want to achieve by having graphics designed for your business.

Clear Picture

First, you need to understand your business and its requirements. You should know where your company stands today. And, must have a goal where you want your company to be after investing in the graphic designs for it.

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02. Set A Budget For Your Graphic Design Investment

Once you have decided your goal, you need to have an estimate about the money you are ready to invest for attaining your goal. This is one of the most important filters that will help you choose the graphic designer that suits your taste and standard.

To hire a graphic designer who burns your company’s pocket is equally bad if not worse than having no designer at all. In both the cases, growth of the business will be hindered leading to subsequent losses.

Graphic Design Investment

You should have a clear idea about the amount that you can spare for investing in company’s marketing strategies including the graphic designing.

03. Create An Explanatory Design Brief

There’s no use of having a clear picture of expectation in your mind or creating a budget if you can’t pen down all your graphic design service needs in the form of a design brief. The previous two steps were mere planning; execution of plan begins with the creation of a design brief. The design brief is a document that contains all the details about your company, its target audience and your expectations of graphic design along with the estimated budget.

Design Brief

Be genuine while briefing about your vision, mission, goals and target audience too. Any designer will need these details for creating a design that reflects your company and attracts your target audience at the same time.

professional-logo

04. Create An Attractive Advertisement For Hiring A Graphic Designer

After you have successfully drafted your design brief, it’s time to announce that you need a graphic designer and are well prepared to hire one. The advertisement you create should have all the details a designer would want to know before approaching you. You don’t have to post your design brief as an advertisement, but some details need to go there. Be specific about your needs and don’t try to attract all varieties of graphic designers.

Hire a Graphic Designer

If you are targeting any crowdsource website like Designhill, they have their own norms of advertising. But if you choose to post the advertisement on your social media platforms you’ll have to make it attractive on your own. In any of the case, your advertisement should have the potentiality to attract the level of designers you require for your company.

05. Choosing The Best Designer For Yourself

Once your advertisement is out in the market, you’ll start getting applications from many designers willing to work with you. With the growing demand, the number of graphic designers has increased many-folds thus saturating the market. This clearly means you’ll have to work really hard for choosing the one among many who is the best match for your company.

Best Designer

Here are the things you’ll need to look for choosing the best designer for your company.

06. Have A Nice Look At Their Portfolio

There are some who warns against relying too much on a portfolio, but most in the market agree that portfolio gives the best estimation of a professional’s level of skills. You can discard almost 25-30% of applications based solely on the portfolio.

If a designer does not have an online portfolio, this may be a clear indication that he or she is not internet friendly and this is not a good sign for a profession that requires constant updation.

Portfolio

When you are looking at a portfolio for hiring a graphic designer, pay attention to the style and design too instead of reading only the content. Graphic designing is a creative work, and if you don’t see any creativity in the portfolio of a candidate, there’s no point taking him to further levels of selection.

07. Cross Check Client’s Testimonial

Previous client’s testimonials are a substantial evidence of a professional’s competency and work ethics. But don’t read the testimonials and believe it blindly because sometimes they are not actually reliable. With growing numbers of professionals like graphic designers and start-up businesses, testimonials are becoming fishy.

There are many out there who exchange testimonials with each other writing exactly what the other wants. Look closely and cross-check the testimonials wherever possible.

client Testimonial

You can ask the designer for the designs he made for the previous client as a sample to verify the experience and competency shown by testimonial and portfolio.

08. Consider Forwarding A Paid Trial Project

This step is applicable when you are left with a few numbers of candidates who are all of almost equal competency. When you have filtered out those, who do not suit your taste or requirement you are left with a few who all seem perfect for your requirements.

The best way to choose the one is to create a dummy project. This will give you the most accurate information about the candidate’s skills and creativity.

Paid Trial Project

Be sure to pay the candidates for this trial project. This will show the candidates your professionalism thus keeping them all interested to work with you at present as well as in the future.

What Are The Skills To See In A Professional Graphic Designer?

After knowing the procedure of how to hire a graphic designer, you must be interested in knowing some key skills to look for in a designer.

Professional Graphic Designer

So, here is a list of key skills without which no designer can prove to be a good designer for any business.

01.Creativity –

This is the most important trait that can make a graphic designer successful in his career. Before asking a candidate about degrees, you should try to figure out his level of creativity. It matters more than any experience or college degree. The famous swoosh of Nike was designed by a student as the first ever design of her career!

02.Working Knowledge About Designing Software –

Gone are the days when designers only needed a command over pen and pencil. Today all graphics need to be designed digitally, so it is imperative for a graphic designer to have knowledge about software like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

03.Knowledge About Typography –

Almost every graphic needs some texts. You cannot afford to handle your company’s graphics designing project to someone who randomly chooses any font like Arial, Candara, Jokeman and so on. A graphic designer must have knowledge of typography.

04.Understanding About Colors And Light Therapy –

Lights and colors play a vital role in any graphic. A single wrong choice of color can snatch away all attractions from a beautifully designed graphic. A good designer must have the understanding to use lights and colors to enhance his design.

05. Knowledge About Layout –

For any graphic design, layout is considered the core tool. If a person does not have the knowledge about layout, then he cannot design graphics that can be used practically. Any design drawn in illustrator or created by Photoshop does not automatically become a logo or any other graphic design.

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Conclusion

Once you go through the whole process involved in hiring while simultaneously checking for the key skills, you will get the person who suits best for your company’s requirement. What are you going to do once you finalize who is going to be your graphic designer? The first thing you need to do after contracting with the designer of your choice is – handing over your explanatory design brief! You did so much brainstorming and created that document only for this person… isn’t it true?

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Alice Jackson is a business consultant, blogger, social media enthusiast, online market analyst, amateur designer and an avid author at Designhill. She has written on several topics including social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, startup strategies and e-commerce. When she’s not writing, she loves spending her time reading romantic novels, Connect with her on Twitter: @jackson_alice1

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