If there’s one thing all small businesses have in common, it’s that they all face pretty rough neck to neck competition and to set a bar which sets them apart, they generally have a handful of differentiators, which include pricing, quality, customer service, or something else entirely. A concrete graphic design provides branding consistency across every visual, customer-facing spectrum of a business. This way, customers have the same experience visiting a company’s website that they have while reading its brochure. A slick website is nice, but a slick website that converts a customer’s preference though its catchy appearance is even nicer.
When you are handing your company’s design work to a graphic designer, agency or crowd sourcing platform, it is only smart that you make sure you get your money’s worth. Therefore, here we have curated for you 7 essential tips that you should keep in mind while shortlisting graphic designers for hire.
1. Checking out the competitors to rule out the mainstream:
Before hiring a graphic designer to work for your website make sure to check out how your competitors’ websites are designed. Not to copy their designs but to know what’s in the trend currently and how well the target audiences are responding to it, so that you can brief your graphic designer to come up with unique designs that are more suitable for your company by ruling out the mainstream designs that are already in use in the market while incorporating the trendy bits. Shortlist the graphic designers for hire only when you are satisfied that his/her work will bring out the results that you desire.
2. Be clear about what you want and what you don’t in your website:
Although it’s not necessarily important to have a crystal clear vision of the graphic design itself, that’s your graphic designer’s job. What is imperative for you is that you have a clear idea about what you want and what you do not. What is the purpose that you want it to serve? Do you want to catch the attention of your target clients through overtly loud advertisement graphics or through more subtle and soothing cues? Do you want your website graphics to get you more web traffic or do you want more people to walk into your retail stores? Make sure you have very lucid answers and ideas about these few extremely important questions before you shortlist the graphic designers for hire so that you can pen down an informed and clear brief for the graphic designers.
3. Make time for some background research:
Before hiring a graphic designer take some time out to run some background research on the shortlisted candidates by going through their portfolios and previous work samples carefully. It is a bonus if you can even gather information about their work ethics so as to maintain an amicable environment within the employees. Compare and then carefully select from their individual styles the style that you think will serve your company the best, based on the ideas that you already have about how you want your website to look.
4. Go for versatile designers:
Versatility is to key to ace most the sectors of the creative industry, therefore one of the most important qualities that you must look for in your shortlisted candidates is flexibility, not just in the designs but also in the designing skills of the designer. You should always be on the lookout for graphic designers who can handle and effectively work on multiple categories of design items. It is only wise to work with designers who can cater to all kinds of design needs of your company such as logos, brochures, business cards, signage design, etc.
5. Demand multiple concepts, schemes and ideas:
You should make sure and particularly insist your shortlisted graphic designer to offer a plethora of concepts and ideas before signing any deal. Have a conversation with your prospective designer about their policy of providing with multiple concepts to ensure you are at the receiving end of the very best iteration of their work. They must be able to provide you with a considerable amount of unique design schemes to choose from.
6. Check out crowd sourcing platforms:
One of the easiest ways to find a graphic designer to satisfy the graphic design needs of your business is heading towards crowd sourcing websites. Some crowd sourcing platforms work on the system of bidding, which helps if your primary focus is the budget, while on some all you need to do is launch your own graphic design competition, where you won’t need to check their resume or interview them personally for choosing the one who is best suited for your project as dozens of designers will respond to your contest by submitting their design concepts for you to choose from which are already designed according to your needs.
7. Use your personal professional network:
If you are in the industry it is only obvious for you to have connections and contacts with various other professionals and since every professional knows someone else in the market it is a smart move to ask them for recommendations on the best graphic designers that they have worked with. Using personal contacts and connection makes the whole process precise as well as the relationship with your graphic designer a lot more reliable.
The aforementioned tips are sure to help you effectively find the most suitable graphic designer for your business if followed intricately and cleverly. Finding the perfect graphic designer for your business is extremely important as design isn’t just about making things look pretty; an effective design should entice and persuade, thereby adding to the growth of the company by helping the business become both, recognizable and memorable.
Kyra is a Hiring Director at Alliance Recruitment Agency – Best Agency To Top executive management recruiters. She specializes in helping with international recruiting, staffing, HR services and Careers advice service for overseas and international businesses.