Local/small businesses will at some point need to look at hiring a designer for their marketing. This could be a graphic designer for printed materials like brochures, business cards, etc OR web designer to design their website.
If you are a business owner that has knowledge in this industry that is great you probably know most of this. However, for those who don’t below are some points you need to remember that could help you when hiring a designer for your marketing.
1. Be specific: Details reduce misunderstandings
When discussing the service you require with the designer. Make sure you are prepared to discuss what it is that you expect as the end product at the end of the transaction. This will help the designer provide you with a service that best suits your needs. This also allows you to make sure the designer knows what you expect to get for your money.
2. Working Files and File Types
I see this happen a lot, where businesses don’t actually have different file types of a design they had someone create. Different file types are used for different marketing outlets example – logos:
- .EPS (used for print and can be a good source to create different file types)
- .PNG (usually used for websites)
- .JPEG (website content and online marketing)
- Font-type (if font license is included with your service)
You may also want to make sure you ask for the working files of a design you purchased. This will allow you to edit minor changes or reuse a card design for example again in the future. However, this may come at an extra cost so discuss this with your designer.
3. CMS websites – “Managed by you”
These days most websites are developed on a Content Management System (CMS). This allows people to most of the time manage their website content without web developers help with very minor training.
CMS website comes at a higher cost than standard static HTML website as they are more sophisticated to develop. However, on some occasions, some designers will produce a CMS website for a client that is totally unmanageable without knowing any coding knowledge and can only be maintained by them. This allows them to charge for every minor change.
Make sure when asking for this service is that you are able to manage the website and make simple changes (i.e content, images, add new products, add new pages, etc.) without having to contact the designer/developer. At the very least you should be provided with a 30min – 1hr training session on using your website.
4. Design work cannot be done great, fast & cheap at the same time:
When looking at hiring a designer, you must know what aspects are important for that particular project. For example, does the project need to fast and at a limited budget then you risk the project to come out at a very low quality. See a visualisation of this in the Venn diagram below.
As you can see in the diagram it is highly unlikely that you will be able to get high-quality work fast and at a cheap price. Make sure you have made a choice regarding a project before thinking of hiring a designer.
The above tips should help you understand a little bit of the design trade before you jump into hiring a designer. Feel free to ask a question on the comment if you have any specific questions about the topic and I would be happy to do my best to answer it.