Tips to Pick the Right Freelance Graphic Designer for Your Project

Brand visual identity is more than just pretty visuals used to fill empty space — it’s the first thing that people see when they come across your business. Think about your favourite brand or companies that you admire. Their logos elicit an emotional response, whether it's trust, doubt, joy, indifference, or something else altogether.?

How you present yourself determines the types of clients, partners, and even future employees that you attract. That’s why it’s so important to get the right graphic designer who can bring your vision to life.?

Hiring a freelance graphic designer can be a quick and affordable way to achieve this, but choosing the right person while deadlines are looming can be hard, especially when you’re not well-versed in design yourself. The good news is, you don’t have to be, here are methods that any business leader can use to grant themselves the best chance of finding the right person.?

Why choose freelance designers over an in-house design team?

Freelance graphic designers hold a few advantages over their in-house counterparts. For one, freelancers in general tend to have varied project experience accumulated from working with clients across different industries.?

Conventional wisdom tells us that hiring someone with more experience in a particular field is usually the safer bet, but freelancers can tap upon their wealth of experience and offer you the fresh perspective of an outsider. If you find that you’ve been toying with ideas for awhile now but nothing seems to be clicking, hiring a freelancer might just help you get out of that creative rut.

Moreover, freelancers have greater freedom over their schedule, making them perfect candidates for projects with urgent deadlines. As long as you can convince them to work for you with the right incentives, they’ll be more than willing to rearrange their schedule to accommodate your pressing needs.?

Freelance graphic designers are also incredibly cost-effective, as they operate on a pay-per-project basis rather than a monthly salary. On the flipside, hiring an in-house designer who turns out to be a wrong fit can quickly turn into a financial nightmare if you’re running on a tight budget.

3 tips on hiring the best freelance graphic designer

Learn how to screen a portfolio the right way

Portfolio screening is a skill in and of itself. Too often, hiring managers will flip through an artist’s portfolio and make a decision based on whether they ‘feel’ that the person is a right fit. That’s way too subjective, especially when it comes to major business decisions such as branding!?

To do portfolio screening right, you’ll want to head in with a clear direction of what you’re looking out for. First, identify whether their specialisation fits your project. There are many types of designers in the field, including (but not limited to) logo designers, web designers, packaging designers, and more. When comparing portfolios, shortlist designers who have worked with collaterals that are similar to what your project will demand.

Their portfolio should contain collaterals that align with your project requirements. For example, if you’re looking to design a website, hiring someone who sends in a portfolio dominated by physical ads might not always be the best decision.

Next, try to identify if they possess the skills that they claim to have. Even if you’re not a graphic designer yourself, understanding the most popular tools and their basic functions can give you an idea of how competent a person actually is.

Finally, assess whether their design style aligns with your project. While their work may not reflect the exact vision you have in mind (they were commissioned by other clients, after all), paying attention to individual components of design such as their use of colour, texture, space, and typography can give you an idea of whether or not they are capable of seeing your project to completion.

1. Align expectations on communication, processes and deadlines early?

Finding the person with the right skill is important, but not the be-all-and-end-all. Misalignment in working styles can create tension and conflict that only leads to unproductivity, even if the person you hire technically has all the tools you need.?

This is where interviews come in handy. Now more convenient than ever thanks to video conferencing, interviews can ensure that you and your freelancer are on the same page so that the both of you can hit the ground running. Sometimes, all it takes is just five minutes, so don’t skip this step.?

Logistics

Take the opportunity to set expectations on milestones, deadlines, and how often you’ll be meeting to reconvene. Don’t forget to settle details such as payment and the number of revisions that you’re entitled to as well. While contracts are not always necessary, these details should at least be written out in email so that both sides can anchor themselves on previous agreements should conflicts arise in the future.

Communication

As with any creative work, design can involve a lot of tedious back and forth. Having a baseline agreement on things like technical terms, brand guidelines, and resources can save both parties a lot of pain and confusion further down the road. If your graphic designer seeks clarification on your brand’s vision, try to give them as much detail as possible. Remember, it’s always better to over-communicate than under-communicate, because over-communicating gives people more than enough actionable feedback to work with.

Ensure that they understand who they’re designing for: Your audience

A good designer knows who they are designing for. Not themselves, not you, but your audience. Good designers will go out of their way to ensure that their work resonates with the audience, even if it means pushing back against their clients. If you happen to hire a freelance graphic designer who can justify their creative decisions by explaining how it will affect the audience, hold onto them for dear life! Understand that they are not trying to be difficult, but simply exercising their expertise by adopting a user-centric approach.?

Investing time to hire the right graphic designer will always pay off. It will be the difference that determines whether or not the final product takes or breath away, or simply leaves you shrugging your shoulders in disappointment.?

Thinking of outsourcing the hiring process?

CreativesAtWork does the portfolio reviews and reference checks for you so that you can focus on day-to-day business operations without spending hours trying to find the right person for the job. Only dedicated freelancers who have driven results for and inspired confidence within their clients are added to our +1,500 talent pool.?

Contact us at CreativesAtWork with your budget, timeline, and requirements, and we’ll personally select the best-fit freelancer from our team to yours.