With the competition for attention standing out from the crowd requires more of a bullhorn than a whisper. Starting with a beautiful brand and marketing materials can be a differentiating aspect and here are 7 of the best ways I have found to hire an outstanding freelance graphic designer.
| Source | Popularity | Review | Process |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toptal | A Little Low Key | 8/10 | Selective |
| Good for Local | 6/10 | Self-Managed | |
| Behance | Well-Known | 9/10 | Curated Options |
| Dribbble | Well-Known | 9/10 | Mostly Full-Time |
| Creative Circle | Medium | 7/10 | Very Flexible |
| AngelList | Big in Startups | 9/10 | Easy to Apply |
| YouTube | Massive | 10/10 | Search for Success |
| Google Search | Massive | 19/10 | Try SERP 2 |
Visual communication is one of the most vital aspects of a brand’s success story. The only way to win that battle is by having team members, whether outsourced or in-house, who specialize in building beautiful brands and marketing materials.
It is so important that your graphic design elements be well-crafted, beautiful, and crystal-clear. Looking impressive gives your chance to make a positive impact on new visitors and reinforces your value to existing customers and clientele.
Why is Graphic Design so important to profits?
The beauty of high quality graphic design is that it now dictates the perceived value of every single brand. This is a good thing because the visual design of your brand is something fluid that you can always change and find ways to make it work better. Since graphic design affects each market in every industry, you can begin to predict how your design projects should go based on previous examples that audiences are accustomed to seeing.
For example, words like “flat” and concepts such as “minimal design” have become everyday lingo even among non-designers. Marketing consultants and trusted freelancers are rolling out top-quality work on websites, presentations, and brochures that display a mature level of creative that makes the best of the client image. Design Gurus and stepping up their game and consistently delivering modern and interesting visual design because, now it’s what audiences expect and respond to.
Is the cost of good graphic design really worth it?
As a business, there is no turning back from the requirement of looking trustworthy and reliable. No matter how great your product is, if it does not live up to the aesthetic expectations of your targeted consumers, your awesomeness will go unseen, unheard, and undiscovered.
Thankfully, the solution is simple, make a great product and then make that product LOOK as good as it truly is. How? By hiring an expert graphic design provider in the form of a contractor, freelancer, or marketing agency.
Where should my brand start when re-designing our marketing materials?
From exterior packaging to the design of your website, every digital and physical touch point (encounter) that a potential customer can make with you should be glaringly gorgeous.
Google offers several articles on how to find and hire freelance designers and marketing agencies. There are also design service marketplaces such as Freelancer.com, Upwork, Guru, and others along those lines. Also other ways of finding someone to help you make your brand and approachable and in this article over seven way to help you get the job done beautifully and stress-free.
How can I be sure I actually need to make the investment of hiring a freelancer?
Do you have a backlog of wishlist items you and your team have not been able to complete? Would you be confident and excited to share your latest marketing piece with your entrepreneur role model? Do you currently feel in your heart that your brand is portraying itself to the best of it’s your ability?
Those are the questions to ask yourself when trying to decide if the cost will be worth it.
Standing out from the crowd requires more of a bullhorn than a whisper.
One of the major benefits of working with a freelancer is that they can come in, help you with something very specific, and then be on their way, leaving with basically no overhead and no long-term employer responsibilities.
Are there a lot of options for finding GOOD and Talented Freelancers?
Not all contract graphic designers are eager for the 9 to 5 work regime.
As artists and outside-of-the-box thinkers, it makes since that they would want more freedom and flexibility in their lives.
Some freelancers work another job and manage projects on the side, others want the opportunity to develop their skills and network, and others simply love the freedom that comes along with the freelancer lifestyle. Plus, in cases where the freelance designer has an excellent portfolio, it is highly likely that they will make more money as a contract employee rather than going full-time.
Over 700,000 freelancers have joined the work force in America just in the last year and Upwork has reported a 22% annual increase in clients with spending balances of over $10,000. Heck, there’s even a Freelancer’s Union!
How do I find the good Freelance Graphic Designers?
According to LinkedIn, there are over 53 million freelancers currently in the United States.
With those kind of numbers in play, finding the right freelancer for the job can be challenging if you don’t know where to look.
We are all familiar with resources such as Upwork and Fiverr.com which sometimes have a reputation that may not be what you are looking for.
So in this article I am going to introduce to you some other places where you might be able to find someone who can create impactful graphic designs, presentations, and website that has a solid grasp on many aspects of graphic design and can produce the materials you need to accomplish the task of promoting your products, services, and brand image in ways that are both creative, engaging, and profitable for your business.
TopTal
Up first, Toptal.
Toptal is an excellent platform for honest and transparent client-freelancer communications and is literally the most discretionary contract recruitment company on the planet. The specialize in expert product designers, software developers, UX Engineers, Visual Designers, and Project Managers.
They tout themselves as hiring only the top 3 percent of Freelances IN THE WORLD and have an excellent chain of online reviews (BTW – guess who made that illustrious list of 3%ers).
With big tech changes coming onto the scene that require an elevated level of skill, things like the Blockchain, augmented reality, AI, voice search, and increasing caution for secure information transfer, a platform like Toptal can have an advantage over others because of the perceived notion that an increase in cost means an increase in value.
Did you know that LinkedIn has a portion of its recruitment capabilities devoted solely to connecting freelancers with clients in need? Profinder is a separate portal with registered freelancers who receive notifications when a client list an open job request.
Clients are sent the first five candidates who respond to their inquiry and from their the two sides discuss the needs and decide whether or not to make it a partnership.
Behance
Behance is not only an aggregate source of creative beings, the site also hosts almost daily live broadcasts of training and challenge streams for viewers through their website and on YouTube.
They teach designers how to use emerging software and even review portfolios, making suggestions for improvement. The Behance job board is a worldwide database of job listings created by users specifically looking for graphic design freelancers.
Dribbble
Dribbble is an enthusiastic community of high-end designers who share, improve upon, and motivate one another’s work. This exclusive platform requires an invitation from an existing member in order to gain admission, sort of like a graphic designer country club.
The site offers glimpses of works in progress and full final project views to browse for inspiration and, potentially, on-boarding to a company team.
Creative Circle
Being an employment agency gives some employers a greater sense of confidence in the talent they believe will turn out from this option.
As a freelancer, going about finding project through this route also provides peace of mind regarding billing, communication, and even access to employee benefits.
Having security on both sides of the client-freelancer relationship can create a very harmonious partnership.
Creative Circle has offices all over the country and have a pool of candidates for a range of projects outside of graphic design.
AngelList
YouTube
Not a top-of-mind resource, YouTubers who are experts in their field created hundreds of videos every week teaching entry level designers, and even experts who want to learn something new, just how to navigate the process of developing beautiful graphic designs.
Content creators are all over the web every day creating educational tutorials for the hopeful graphic designer. These YouTubers are experts in their fields and some of them have outrageous followings. Watching a video created by your potential contract hire will give you an idea of: their personality, problem solving ability, how they deal with challenges, how they communicate with others, and, of course, how good they are at what they do.
The only risk for you with this avenue is that, dependable on their level of popularity and skill, you’re probably going to have to expand the budget in order to bring them on.
Google Search
The most obvious starting point when trying to find a freelancer for most of us is Google Search.
The only issue with that is the fact that we are looking for graphic designers, not Marketing Agencies who bought ad space and not companies who have a dedicated SEO department. You’re looking for a regular, awesome Jane (or Joe). So, when you decide to do a search online, most likely the best options will be in the results AFTER you scroll through all of the options listed above in advertising spaces.
So keep that in mind and skip ahead a bit in the list of search return results. Read the descriptions and see who stands out to you
How to choose a freelance graphic designer
When making your selection, you want to find a freelancer who not only knows the software but who also has an eye for design and a positive level of respect for their customers and their craft.
This type of individual will give the best working experience and, if their portfolio is a match, they also deliver an expert final product that accomplishes your messaging objectives and makes your brand, product, or service look AMAZING!
Here are a few tips on what to look for when selecting a freelance designer for hire:
- A stellar portfolio with work that looks modern
- Confirmation that it is your designer who created the portfolio projects
- Someone willing to give you an overview of what you need based on what you’ve communicated, but who is not willing to go beyond the point of a short snippet of advice prior to initiating a contract or agreement
- Choose a freelance designer who is willing to say they will do their best but avoid those who in-authentically promise the moon
- Design process that they had vetted and found to be the most effective way to develop results
- If possible, a freelancer with any type marketing psychology can be invaluable
- And, most importantly, if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.
Why would I need to work with presentation expert, I mean, it’s PowerPoint
Let’s be honest, you could absolutely create a PowerPoint presentation yourself. It may take quite a bit of time, it might not be as impressive as a professional’s work, but you do have the ability to put something together that is good enough to use in terms of functionality.
Despite the fact that most presentations lack the luster to hold an audience past the first six minutes, each day millions of users either give or receive and despite random naysayers, the presentation tool is still the best way to combine images, video, and voice to quickly communicate a message, particularly to a large audience.
Hiring an expert freelancer in the area is something you would utilize to take your presentation to the next level and to make sure the content supporting your messaging is a stellar rendition of where word you will say. Since it will be used as a backdrop for big events, important corporate-wide announcements, and even client proposals, don’t you want it to be the best possible version of good?
A good, professional designer with a lot of experience, who has worked in a range of industries, and possibly has a degree in marketing or communications can do more than just make your PowerPoint look good. They will also be able to make suggestions regarding your content and your approach to your audience that you may not recognize without them.
The considerable advantage of hiring a freelance design expert instead of taking the do-it-yourself route is also in the amount of time you will save and, if you’ve made a good selection, the final result produced by the designer should be a drastically improved rendition of what you alone would have produced.
This means you save some time as well as a few headaches and when you step out in front of your audience you’ll have greater confidence in what you are presenting to them and, thus, you will naturally do a better job of being convincing and showing the passion behind what you are presenting. That passion will be transferred to your audience and increase your chance of getting the audience to agree with your message and make moves to implement the call-to-action you are going to deliver toward the end.
Can’t I do ANY graphic design work myself
Sure! Why don’t you grab that butter knife over there and perform open heart surgery on yourself while you’re at it.
We’re talking about leveling up your brand here. Besides, do you really have time to learn a new trade AND be amazing at it right away?
But sometimes necessity calls for innovation so if you must go at it alone, there is no need to go the whole road of creating marketing material designs all by yourself.
If you are in place where you feel like DIY’ing it is the best option, you search the web for some pretty great template designs that will help you get started. From brochures and PowerPoint presentations to UI Design Kits for mobile apps, there are tons of resources that can provide you with beautiful, outstanding graphic design templates. You can view my list of the top seven template shops for great-looking graphic design elements for some ideas to help you get started. If you’re in the market for presentation design, you can also visit my very own template store to see if you can find something that suits your needs.
No matter what path you decide to take, the important thing is that you place ‘pretty’ at the forefront of your brand’s visual design elements and find a solution that is not just “good enough” but that is utterly grand and exceeds all expectations you ever had for how you would be presenting your brand to the world. Happy building!