How to Hire

So you need a designer, but don’t know where to start? Well here we go.

Step one. Figure out what you need and what you want. Knowing is half the battle as they say. Once you know what you want and need you can better assess potential designers while helping you get a better idea of where the project should head yourself. But keep in mind the difference between need and want. Being able to tell the designer what you need will help him or her decide if it’s a project they want to take on, and how much it’s going to take.

Some things to figure out are:

• Budget. State how much your willing to spend, and how soon you need it done. This will help weed out designers who don’t have the time, and don’t work for the rates you’ve set for your project. You get what you pay for though, so a $100 identity package won’t get you much.
• What will be on the site, and who are your users. Some user groups respond differently to different design styles, your designer will use this information to better tailor your site to your user demographic.
• How much maintenance you want to do yourself, and how much you want the designer to do over the lifespan of your site.
• How are you going to market the site. Print, Internet, radio?

Step two. Finding a good designer can be a daunting task, with the thousands out there finding the good ones amongst the many mediocre and bad ones seems almost impossible. Referrals are usualy a good start, though you may still get a sub par candidate, good research is a safe bet. Look around, search for designers either locally or online and then examine their work. What kind of clients have they worked for, what kind of services do they offer, what kind of style do they lean towards and is that style a relic of the past. Also, check out some of the more technical aspects of their work, and what kind of qualifications they hold if any. Education isn’t a must in design, plenty of well known names have little in the way of design education other then self taught.

Step three. Interview the designers you’ve narrowed down to. Ask questions, ask about how they work, how they do billing, how much they like design. Who we are impacts our work as designers. Finding out more about the potential designer can give you a peak into their unique way of thinking and personal style or their perspective on the world. A designers fingerprint is in their work, you can even identify who the designer is through their work.

Step four. Contracts, everyone loves legal. Some will chose to forgo contracts if the project is small, other who have been burned by less honest clients will use them religiously despite the size. Read it over and ask more questions about it, some clients are shocked when they discover that most of the time the designer actually retains the rights to the work done and kill the project then and there. But this is standard practice as are other things in the contract too, so ask before you leap.

Step five. Enjoy.