How you should choose your designer

These days graphic designers and website designers are so many its hard to figure out who you should use to do your various projects, be they brochure design, logo design or even website design projects.

The aim of this article is to help introduce rationale into the decision, some factors to consider when hiring a designer for your business. And that, is where we will start.

This is a business; yes – i often need to remind my customers that this is their business they are thinking of building a website for… i then ask, how much work that you need done do you outsource, followed by how much of it is outsourced to inexperienced, untrained, unprofessionals?

Very often, the answer to that is we outsource quite a lot, but even our garbage is collected by a company we vetted to ensure they properly dealt with paper waste – we don’t want our private documents blowing around.

So, here is a question, if the guy collecting your trash has to prove to you that he can properly dispose of your trash and that shredded material with your logo will not end up on highways, why would you entrust, the one place people will look for your logo, to someone who hasn’t gone through the same checks?

Lets move on to the key factors that should affect your decision:

Experience
Experience means evidence of scope of ability in various aspects. That means you should ask your potential designer what projects he or she has worked on. Be careful not reveal the reason behind your question, just ask it.

In the answer to this question keep an ear out for the differences in the projects that are mentioned to you. Does every site have the same basic features? what differentiates them? Also listen out for how well your designer can explain what it is that makes each site unique, how well s/he makes you understand complex features.

This research can also be done by looking at a portfolio before hand so that you can visit the sites and see for yourself how they work.

Expertise
We have different people doing different things, designers, programmers, copy writers and client service. This allows us to give you the very best of all worlds depending on what you need.

When you are working with an individual its hard to believe that they have mastered all the skills, from design, programming, animation and content generation.

Taste
It is important that the designer you are working with has the same taste as you, to often you work with a designer who is developing a truly beautiful site, but just not for you, maybe your taste is bolder, quieter, more typographic or less, the list goes on… I would recommend you search fro a designer whose work you like.

An easy way to do this is browse a designer’s portfolio, if the majority of work you find pleasant is to your liking you have found the designer for you… I say this because a designer would only put his best work on his portfolio and this is often synonymous with least client interference – hence the designer’s style comes out, and s/he is happy with it.

Communication
How many times will you say the same thing differently, louder, write it or whatever before it gets done? We encourage you to actively test your designers through questions or requesting a brief back in order to make sure you are working the right people. Making sure you all understand each other ensures you save time and frustration.

Or you can just stop worrying about who to hire and hire us!! 🙂