Hi friends, this is Jules and welcome to the pool party.
I'm really excited to share this episode with you today.
It is a topic I hold very near and dear to my heart and it's something that I have been
talking to other people about lately, whether they're designers or they're starting their
own company, firms, and want to hire designers.
And this episode is going to be on how to work with designers.
We've been talking about branding, design, how to create an artist's persona, launch
yourself as a DIY artist, entrepreneur, etc.
I have done a variety of all of these things and helped many people create their branding,
websites, and outreach for any of these particular tasks and let me tell you, it's a lot.
And it's fun, it definitely is fun, but it is work.
And ultimately, I believe this is why being a designer is such an important skill to have.
There's a lot of different design roles out there.
And ultimately, when you're taking on the task of creating your own project and directing
it, you're eventually going to need to hire designers.
So today we're going to talk about the capacity in which you can hire designers, when to do
it, where to find designers, and the experiences I've had working with agencies both as a
designer and as someone who has hired agencies.
I might also tell you some of my thoughts I have on Fiverr.
Is it good or is it not?
So let's go ahead and dive in and get into the broader topic of hiring other designers
and the capacity in which designers could work for you.
So if you're hiring a designer, we're going to assume that you have projects already.
There are a few ways you can hire designers and we're going to talk about the types of
contracts first because these are going to come in handy later when we discuss types
of tasks you might need to hire a designer for.
So there are a few capacities.
There's freelance, contract, part-time, and full-time.
Depending on who you are and what kind of business you have, that'll mostly determine
the capacity with which you can work with a designer.
The other thing to consider is how much money you're making, essentially what kind of design
work you have, and how consistent you can be in delivering design work to a designer.
If you are just starting out, let's say that you need a project-based branding or you have
a little extra design work that you could pass off to a designer, chances are you want
to work with someone freelance.
And in a freelance position, this person essentially signs on with you for a contract.
And there are two ways to do this.
You could hire someone hourly or project-based.
The average, I would say, pay rates for a brand spanking new designer.
A lot of projects start at $25 an hour.
And you can kind of do an estimate of how many hours you think your project will take.
For newer designers, sometimes projects take them a bit longer.
And so I would factor that in, maybe add like an extra 10 hours in there.
And when you're going with your more experienced mid-weight designers, rates usually start
at 60 and go upwards of $100.
Depending on who you're working with and what kind of skills they have, you're also
going to be paying even more of a premium.
Now I mentioned earlier that you can hire for hourly or project-based work.
And I would say definitely figure out what kind of project you have first.
Sometimes it's easier to hire people project-based, and I'd say that if someone has typical
experience with a certain project, they have success completing a project outlined like
you have, they've done it many times before, it might be pretty safe to hire them on a
project basis.
And also consider how long that project is going to be.
For hourly, if your project is even smaller, I'd say hourly makes a lot of sense because
you can kind of cap your budget as well.
So if you only have a certain amount of money, let's say that you want to get it started,
you can start your project hourly.
Now talking about part-time and full-time, if you have way more budget to regularly work
with a designer, you're going to want to consider part-time and full-time employment.
I don't really have too much to say about these two because many agencies, startups,
small businesses do hire part-time and full-time designers, and the variety of roles that they're
hiring for are quite a lot.
And I would say that if you feel like you need to hire part-time or full-time, ideally
you have consistent work coming in that you can pass off to a designer, and ultimately
you can afford their salary, you have enough runway for yourself to pay them, and you have
income or at least some sort of capital.
So we've been mainly focusing on the DIYers as we talk about this branding, this whole
branding genre in this task, so we're going to focus mostly on freelance contracts and
part-time throughout this episode.
Onto the next topic, I think it'll be particularly helpful to delve into this discussion of when
to hire a designer.
So when do you hire a designer?
I mentioned this before, but you definitely want to make sure that you have regular design
work coming in, and I'll give you an example of times that I've hired designers in the
past.
I've hired designers in the past even as a designer when I had so much design work
coming in that I couldn't possibly do the amount of design work that I had in a day
by myself, and then I needed to hire an assistant.
Hiring a designer also works if you are building a business and the majority of your day-to-day
tasks, the ones that bring in money, that bring in revenue, are what are on your plate
and you simply don't have the time to do the branding or the projects, and then you
might need to hire a designer.
So I think these are probably the two examples I see most often when people are hiring for
designers, and there might be a lot of different scenarios that fall outside of this, but I
highly recommend a few things before you hire your designer.
You want to know what deliverables you will need, you want to create a project brief,
and then also find examples you like in order to show your designer the work that you want
to create.
And ideally, I have some branding exercises in this podcast.
You can listen to the big episode on brand values and coming up with branding.
It's good to know a sense of style that you like.
If you've been making revenue and you're totally starting from scratch on the branding
front, it might be a good idea to hire a branding person to get this done for you, but seriously
I said this many times, I really, truly do not recommend this unless you are making revenue
and you can justify the cost.
If this is not the case and you're starting out and you just want branding to look official,
I highly recommend you do an exercise on services and projects that you could offer for other
people and try to get started without a cohesive branding, because I've said this many times,
but branding is simply a representation of what you do, is ultimately not the work you
will do unless you are a brand designer, in which case my assumption might be that you
could put together a pretty simple brand package in order to start working.
So here are some mistakes I see made when people hire designers.
Thanks to websites like Upwork and Fiverr, there are many people out there who offer
one-off services for projects or hourly rates for designers.
Sometimes I see folks hire designers and they don't necessarily know what they want to create.
And then from there, I think the issue with that is you're placing a lot of room for interpretation
on the table.
It gives the designer this burden of figuring out what you need and that's okay if you're
paying them an hourly rate.
However, it's also not ideal for you if you're limited on cash and you could just spend some
time, some of your time figuring out what you want and doing a bit of research.
It's also going to help you be a bit smarter in working with your designers and you wouldn't
believe that if people who end up hiring a designer for marketing materials or a website
and then they just don't have a project brief put together, therefore the designer spends
quite a bit of time, weeks sometimes, working on a very vague description of a project someone
gave them, but then once they get to a meeting to discuss a project and show what they've
been working on, there's a misalignment.
And I think this misalignment sometimes causes a lot of anxiety for designers and it also
causes frustration and disappointment in the people who hire designers.
But I do believe that relationships, even working relationships, are a two-way street
and the best way to get into them with success is being prepared beforehand.
Knowing your communication style and how you like to communicate with a designer and having
very clear project deliverables that you would like to see by the end.
So if you're just starting out, I really do not expect you to know how long a project
will take to make or how much high touch you might need with a particular designer.
When you're hiring, it's also going to vary on the experience that your designer has,
how long they've been working, if they're working on other projects, and if you've
worked with this person before.
Some people have a working relationship with designers that they've worked with in other
capacities and due to already having a built relationship with this person, sometimes the
project goes a bit more smoothly and you can clear up expectations easily.
I do have some thoughts, however, on working with friends, especially in a design capacity
as a designer or hiring other designers who are friends.
And I genuinely do not recommend this unless you know someone who has been working for
many years as a designer.
The reason why I think this is the case is because I think that it's hard to have boundaries
in roles where you work with friends.
And I would say this for any type of service unless it's extremely specific, you know what
you're delivering, you're excited about the work you're going to do, and you feel like
you're the best person for the job.
It's because oftentimes, even if you have a great brief put together and you can explain
to your designer clearly what you want them to work on, and even if they have great work,
there's many times where I see people work with their friends and any sort of misalignment
could potentially get in the way of a friendship that turned into a working relationship.
And in my opinion, I don't feel like that's a risk that is necessary to take.
I would suggest even asking your design friends for other recommendations of designers they
know and that one degree of separation is going to help.
Because I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of moving pieces when you work with
a designer and you might like someone's work and style, but a lot of times, sometimes designers
do many different types of artistic work.
And while the sentiment is nice of wanting to hire someone for a project, if that's
not a service they regularly offer, what I see happening is designers are put on the
spot to create a service and if that's not something that they regularly do, it can be
an unnecessary use of time and then quite a gamble.
And so ultimately, that's up to you and I think this can work out in certain capacities,
but I think in today's job market and with the pace that design moves, it's really important
to keep this in mind and consider how you value your friendships when you get into working
with someone.
And you can work with so many designers these days just by getting connected online unless
someone really asks to work with you and they feel like it's a great fit, I would avoid
working with friends.
So let's get a little bit deeper into talking about creating a project brief because I think
creating a project brief is essential and can help to prevent some of this miscommunication
that I have highlighted.
So a project brief, what is a project brief?
A project brief is essentially a document, you can write it anywhere, but it's supposed
to be an outline of what exactly you need from your project, what's expected and what
the goals of the project are.
I will give you some examples of projects you could have a brief for, making a poster,
creating a pitch deck, making a mug, making a website.
Inside your brief, you're essentially going to name the deliverable that you're going
to need created and in this example, we're going to use a poster.
You want to be as specific as possible.
Okay, you need a poster.
What is the poster for?
Is it promoting an event?
What dimensions does the poster need to be?
What type of paper is it going to be printed on?
Where is the poster going to be posted?
What's the goal?
This might sound like overkill, but I would even say give the exact text you need to the
designer with what the poster is going to say and the reason why I encourage you to
do this is because the worst thing you can do is give a designer some vague text of what
you want designed on a poster and then say it will change later and then assume that
the poster is going to look the same or promise you it will not and it's basically like doubling
the work.
Not only is it frustrating, there is a cost to this and it's not just a monetary cost.
I think there is a creative cost in not respecting the design process.
Knowing that you're going to have to redo work later, I think causes many designers in
the industry today to reduce the quality that they give on the first round if they know
that a client is apt for changing their mind.
It kind of degrades this trust or value that I feel that designers kind of inherently have
towards their work and how someone might perceive their work.
And again, I think that cost shows in the final product of the deliverable.
So yes, when you ask someone to design a poster for you, it doesn't matter if it's for a
conference or for your buddy's late night after party, have everything exactly in a
text document as you would need it on the poster and give it to your designer.
So that might include the title of the event, the date, the time, the theme, any subtext,
any showtimes, any social media handles, websites or contacts that you want to include on the
poster.
And don't be afraid to include a lot if there's anything that you truly do not need later
on.
It's much easier to remove than it is to add more.
I'll say that again, it's much easier to remove extra text than it is to add more, especially
when you're designing something like a poster.
I know it might not seem like a lot, but there's some really intricate and cool design you
can do, especially with grid systems and posters, but it only really works if you know that
you have all the information.
There are times where I would really love to design a super cool poster for someone,
but if they're being kind of wishy washy with me and not giving me all the information,
it makes me feel like, okay, they're just going to change it later.
And then I can't really put in my full effort on this first round.
In my opinion, I think that this is really harmful to the design process and a lot of
design work out there would be a lot better if people, again, just had the specific information
that they needed printed and designed beforehand.
And if they had an idea of what kind of brand aesthetic that they wanted to go for.
And again, for things like posters, you don't always need to have your branding totally
done before you give someone a brief for a poster project.
Sometimes posters and events can even have their own branding.
And if you keep the font relatively simple, or if it really makes sense for the event,
I'd say that it's passable.
Not everything really has to be like so matchy matchy.
But if you're a big brand with a defined branding package, I would say yes, absolutely
give that to your designer.
Make sure they have your fonts, your logo, and any other rules about your brand that
they might need to have.
You don't necessarily need to give a full on brand book.
But if for example, there are hard dos and don'ts with your brand, those are worth mentioning.
I think having really specific but rich information before starting a project is really useful
as a designer.
And you don't need to go overkill.
I think that sometimes folks want to give a lot of marketing data when it comes to doing
design deliverables.
But your designer doesn't really need that.
I'd say your marketing person does.
And it's helpful to know what the competition is doing.
But the designer should really just be focusing on communication.
What is the goal of this poster?
What are we trying to do?
What are we trying to communicate about this event?
What is the vibe?
What do we want to get people excited about?
I think it's ultimately going to be most helpful and successful if your designer is just thinking
about how this poster is going to look, if it's communicating what it should, and if
the information that people need in order to attend the event or communicate about it
is on the poster.
That doesn't always mean making logos massive.
There are many times where I design work, whether that's advertisements for social
media or posters, where I hear people ask to make their logo bigger.
And frankly, I think that logos are great, you know, they communicate who you are, what
your brand is, but they don't always take precedent for what should be focused on for
something like an event poster.
So keep this in mind and let your designer have some fun and make simple choices as they
design for you.
And if they're a good designer, they can defend them well, and I'm sure they will convince
you that it's actually a good idea.
So we all have different perspectives, and that's why I think it's important to go in
and giving your designer all the important information and goals and, you know, things
like knowing what kind of paper you're going to print on and the dimensions.
I think these are just basics.
Designers can't set up a document and even start designing if they don't have those things.
And so keep that in mind.
And you would be surprised at the amount of people who expect someone to really just create
something amazing without having the information.
As designers, we're trained many times, like from school, at an early stage as a designer
to get as much information as possible.
And in the world today where people are busy, they're very reticent or unwilling to give
more information and the design ultimately suffers.
It's wasted time, wasted money, and I think it degrades a working relationship that could
just be improved upon by this simple communication and creating a good template for a brief.
And if you know that you're going to need a lot of design work, just make a simple template
on Google Docs.
Make it as simple as possible.
Have the objective at the top, the type of deliverable you'll need, the dimensions, what
kind of product this is going to be printed on.
If you know the printer you're going to use or who's going to print it, put that on there
as well.
And this is going to change depending on what kind of deliverable you're asking for.
But these first few things I mentioned will relatively stay the same unless we're talking
about digital work.
And in that case, you would just mention all the information about the digital work that
you need done.
If that's a website where it's going to be hosted.
If it's a social media ad, where it's going to be posted.
Instagram stories, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook ads.
Sometimes these dimensions change and it's not always easy or good to assume that your
designer will know what the dimensions are.
And again, they could be thinking of something totally different.
A lot of designers work on multiple tasks, multiple projects throughout the day, especially
if they're a working career designer.
And to just assume that your project is the number one top of mind is, I think, frankly
an error in judgment.
And it's one that will show in the finished product.
So again, design is a working relationship and the finished product I think has a lot
to do with respecting the working relationship and what it takes to create a successful design
product.
Next, we'll talk a little bit more about these working relationships and where to find
a designer and how to set up a process of working together.
That's coming up in this next bit.
At this point in the podcast, I wanted to take a break and let you know that this month
I've created several episodes on branding and design.
And if this is the first episode you're listening to, feel free to check out the pool party
and see the episodes I have up on Spotify and on the RSS feed.
I have been seeing a lot of work these days out in the wild that is essentially poorly
designed.
There are a lot of free tools out there these days, especially with AI, where people can
make some pretty twisted dark fantasies.
And while these tools are powerful, the best design is often simple.
And as a designer can tell you, it's still pretty challenging at times to convey all
the information that is needed to be conveyed, even with some of our most powerful tools
like Photoshop and some of the process of design is knowing when to peel back, when
to use restraint.
My hope is that people continue to use tools to empower their work and communicate what
they need to communicate.
But I also see that with more availability of tools, sometimes this communication and
simplicity is lost.
And so my hope in making this series of podcasts is to democratize design education to make
it more widely available so that we can communicate clearly and succinctly and make the world
a more designed and less noisy and garish place.
Sometimes I don't even want to get on social media these days.
I used to really enjoy my little afternoon scrolls, but I feel so turned off by what
I see even in a design sense on top of all the other world things that it is something
that's totally driven me to change my habits and how I consume content.
And that's particularly because I feel a little bit sensitive towards the content I consume
and the type of art I consume.
But I made the personal decision to essentially put my foot down and be more intentional about
what I read, what I see, and how I even develop my own design process.
Because as I've worked as a designer since 2020, things have not slowed down.
They've only picked up and been complicated, I think, by the changing economy, other factors,
new tools.
And designing is still a job that's out there.
People are still hiring and I still continue to work as a designer.
But again, I find that there is a little bit more complexity, a lot more feelings, moods,
and attitudes when it comes to working in the creative industry because people are impacted
by all these current events.
And I think that some sensitivity and respecting the work of artists and designers and people
who decide to take on this work of forging their own path deserves the respect that it
deserves.
And so with this podcast, I hope that you take away what you need for your mission for
your next journey.
And if you are a designer, hopefully it also sparks in your mind what you might improve
in your design process because I feel that many designers, even in an agency or an in-house
setting have come across a lot of challenges that used to not be that big of an issue.
So I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are.
And if you'd like to comment on this episode, let me know your thoughts.
And I'm always happy to hear if you have suggestions for the podcast or if there are
topics that you would like to hear about more.
Alright, back into today's episode, we're going to talk about where to hire a designer
and setting up a process for working with your creative designer or your visual designer.
So I have a few recommendations for finding a designer to work with and this will be in
a freelance or contract project basis.
I'm going to go ahead and just list out the typical ways you can find a designer.
A lot of folks have their work online and in the big mood boarding episode, I mentioned
websites like Behance, Dribble with 3Bs and websites like Arena and Pinterest.
A lot of creative people and designers who make it on their own create templates for
websites like Creative Market and you can also find folks on websites like I Love Creatives.
There are big directories there for people who are multi-hyphenate creatives and these
are creatives who work in photography, social media, marketing, graphic and digital design.
But all of these areas are very specific fields and I will say with just the way the world
is today, many people do actually have really high quality skills in all of these different
areas.
I think by nature of the way work has been over the past four years, I would be surprised
if you found someone who was even mid or early career who didn't have a variety of these
skills and I think sometimes people can be really wary of folks who have a variety of
skills but I'd say take a chance on these people.
These are often times the most hardworking people.
The fact that they have a lot of different skills shows that they've continued to work
despite changing economic factors that sometimes put a demand on more video content or more
writing.
These days the trend is now going back to having more people create content for blogs
and you know at the beginning of this year there were hardly any freelance roles available
for writers and now it's surging again.
Many people are looking for editors and writers and you know I used to not write a lot as
a career or even freelance but I've gotten my first few writing jobs recently just because
the internet is full of chat gbt content and chat gbt does not have a human touch.
I will tell you that.
It doesn't understand subtle humor and it can be really boilerplate in terms of just
being you know like that's a phrase for being like a little bit too literal and the human
touch is honestly a lot easier to get from a human.
Sometimes I see people basically using chat gbt and having to over massage it and so I
still really believe in hiring human creatives for their work.
I think it's going to save you time and while you could essentially I suppose try to automate
I think there is like a high level of distrust in automated work that is created by AI that
is not reviewed by a creative and I promise you people can tell when the work is not reviewed
by someone who is a creative director or has experience working with human audiences.
So on this topic of finding creatives I'm going to give you my thoughts on a few different
platforms.
These are questions I get a lot from some of my friends who are hiring designers and
this first platform is Fiverr.
If you go on the platform Fiverr there's a lot of folks who basically put up project
based work where you could hire someone to make a pitch deck for you maybe an illustration.
I think Fiverr in my opinion is my least favorite platform for finding creatives and getting
creative work.
I've made a Fiverr profile probably even in 2016 way before the pandemic and AI.
I think that Fiverr is definitely oversaturated and you're going to spend a lot of time marketing
yourself on Fiverr.
So as a creative if you're on Fiverr sometimes I also don't really trust the people who get
work on there.
I've purchased work on Fiverr and the cost that you will pay, the amount of money you
will spend for let's say like an illustration will widely vary.
You might find someone who's in Bhutan who will charge you five dollars an hour for an
illustration or someone who's in Chicago who will charge you three hundred dollars.
Honestly I can't really tell you that there's any sort of consistency I would say look at
the reviews but I genuinely don't trust the tastes of people who buy work off of Fiverr.
I think the quality of design is really sporadic, random, sure you could get the job done but
you might be missing something in quality of work.
So I actually see the least high quality work on Fiverr and many of the designers I know
and trust who worked in the industry for a really long time would probably never put
their services on Fiverr just because they are really not wanting to work with people
who think they can kind of just get like a fast casual type of service and high quality
design.
I just don't really think that exists and I think there's a big mismatch you'll find
in expectations and results if you work as a designer on Fiverr and if you are looking
for a designer on Fiverr.
So I would say avoid.
Up next Upwork.
So Upwork is a little bit like Fiverr but somehow I actually trust Upwork more I'll
tell you why.
I know many people actually who are early in their career who have set up agencies thanks
to websites like Upwork they found their first few clients as a social media agency just
looking for people who needed their content managed and social media agencies are pretty
well fleshed out these days.
I would say that it's competitive and not everyone can do it so the folks who do run
social media agencies and find their clients on Upwork usually get them on retainer and
I think if you're just starting out you're going to find a lot more competition among
the designers or people offering their services on Upwork but because of that if you're someone
looking for services on Upwork you can find a variety of low to high range price work.
There are people who have been on Upwork for many years who provide high quality design.
You can take a look at their portfolio.
I think Upwork is a little bit more realistic in pricing.
I don't know why this is exactly but I find that Upwork probably has more volume and whatever
they've done I find that this is just my assumption that Upwork has catered more towards
actually researching what freelancers need and what users who go on the site to look
for people to work with therefore they've created a better process that has allowed
them to take on more clientele on both ends of the pipeline, creatives and people looking
for work and therefore it is a bit more competitive.
So this is a great place to look for designers and you can hire within the United States,
outside the United States, genuinely speaking if you hire outside of the United States you
will probably even pay a lot less.
You can fight me on this if you want but there are really talented designers everywhere all
around the world who are great at using Photoshop and Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop tools and
they might just be starting out.
You can take a look at their portfolio.
These are folks that you could probably coach into working with your level of design and
I'd say if you need a design assistant or someone who is readily available to work on
projects where maybe you need images like cut out in bulk or like a newsletter created
and you feel like you could spend maybe a few hours of your time coaching someone on
how to make your newsletter but then they're consistent and they'll do it every week,
I think Upwork is great for that.
So again this is an open marketplace and I do think it takes some time to find someone
that you work well with.
Hire a bunch of different folks for small projects and see who you work best with and
I think that's what Upwork is great for.
Alright, okay.
Now for some businesses I feel that they need creatives who are all-in-one marketers and
also maybe good at creating ads on Canva, shooting photos.
I know a lot of people think this is a lot to ask for but the reality is if you work
in a major city like LA or New York, chances are you do have all these skills and the market
is extremely competitive.
There are folks who have been in and out of the industry working for years and doing multiple
types of creative, maybe even assistant type of work and I think websites like I Love Creatives
are really great for finding folks who do this type of work and I think it really is
up to you with what kind of person you're looking for.
In this episode we're talking about designers but depending on what your design knowledge
is, if you're looking for someone to make ads for you for example, you might want to
find someone who is more of actually a creative marketer because while you want your ads to
be creative and for people to click through, to be honest, a lot of the times people engage
with ads is not necessarily I would say even like quality of art or design.
I think there is a bit of A-B testing that comes into play where you might actually want
to work with someone who's willing to do a variety of different visual designs and be
able to test them and then figure out what works best.
You don't necessarily need someone who's really good at creating art for that.
You need someone who's willing to engage with the process of A-B testing artwork but also
probably has the creative skills to use something like Canva, maybe Illustrator Photoshop, it
doesn't really matter.
They just need to be able to create ads quickly and then test them.
Now let's say that you're looking for someone to make a website for you.
These days you don't have to be a developer, you just need someone who's good at Shopify
and there are a lot of freelancers out there who even specialize in either of these platforms.
Depending on which platform you want is going to depend on what kind of service or product
you're providing.
A lot of e-commerce shops choose Shopify and the reason for that is because you can
highly customize Shopify and get really granular data on retail sales.
There's also a lot of tools that help I think with shipping.
Whereas Squarespace is more I think agile for people who provide online creative services
who might have a few things going for them in terms of e-commerce but maybe web services,
events, brick and mortar shops.
So if you have a lot more going on I think Squarespace is a great website or platform
to use and then you would want to find a creative who is more versed in Squarespace and all
the different tools that are on there.
Because these days Squarespace is a lot more agile and it kind of operates in a way where
you could edit it yourself but if you're not familiar with all the tools on there you could
even set up like an online community and just have it run a subscription service.
You could even run your subscription service directly through Squarespace and all of these
tools were not available two years ago.
This is relatively new but I'd say that Squarespace is advantageous for this reason.
I personally work with Squarespace and I'm not so into the e-commerce world but a lot
of brands these days build their websites with Shopify.
I see celebrity brands use Shopify and they hire someone who is really good at editing
Shopify sites to the point where you couldn't tell that that's a Shopify site.
So those are a few things to consider and it really depends on who you are and what
kind of online community you're looking to build.
I honestly rarely see folks these days looking to hire people to create print and deliverable
projects for them.
I would love to see that more because frankly the internet is clogged these days and I think
there's such a high demand for high quality creative work.
There's so much noise on the internet that I think there is a big gap in well designed
print products.
I know printing can be relatively expensive but there are ways to make it cheaper.
As a side note, one thing I do encourage is for people to consider hiring graphic designers
for print work.
I think there's kind of a gap in the market for really well designed print work and it
does take longer and you have to be kind of sure about what you're offering in a print
sense or what you want to offer in advertising through a print mailer because once you print
it, it's going to be out there for some time.
But I think due to this slowness and a bit more permanency, I would advocate for hiring
a designer to advertise for you with print and that's just my two cents as a side note.
Alright, up next we're going to talk about setting up a process for working with designers
and this is the last section of this podcast.
So setting up a process.
My rule of thumb is if you've done it, you know how to do it and how to explain it to
the person you're hiring.
You have a process and you can even approve upon it from there.
Sometimes I see people hire design assistants or designers and they haven't done the work,
they don't know what they're asking for.
You kind of have to build a process together from scratch.
I find this to be frustrating as a designer and I think it can kind of degrade trust in
the beginning of a working relationship.
So this is why my advice is at least try to do some of the work first before you hire
someone to do it.
I also think this is kind of a low startup cost way of hiring creatives and I think you're
going to have more trust with the person you work with if you educate yourself and take
the time to understand some of these tools.
But when you're hiring a designer, like I said, you can hire for a project based, hourly.
I highly recommend that you don't try to give your designer more than one project to work
on at a time.
I say come in with a brief.
Earlier, we described what creative briefs are and how to describe your project.
I'd say maybe even work with just one project to start with.
If you have a lower budget, you can work hourly and then cap it and then see if you want to
continue to work with that designer.
It's honestly my biggest recommendation if you're on the lower end of a budget.
If you actually have a lot more budget and you want to work with a designer longer term,
I would still say set really clear expectations on what projects you want, what kind of outcomes
you hope to see, and maybe limit the deliverables in the beginning.
You know, one, two, three projects for the start of three months I think is pretty realistic.
In three months, you could potentially get a website, some branding done, and maybe even
like a print deliverable, like a business card or something else creative that you know,
you kind of allow your designer to tinker on.
And at this point, you might be wondering about, so if you're hiring an agency, let's
talk about that.
Because to be honest, if you're hiring an agency, you will be paying a premium.
Doesn't matter what kind of service you're looking at, at minimum, you're going to pay
5k for a project.
Most people when they're just starting out don't have 5k to spend on a project.
And even if you do have the money to spend, I don't recommend this because agencies are
set up in a way where they have multiple people working on one project.
Maybe that's a project manager, a designer, a social person, an illustrator, they can
contact out all the moving pieces of this project.
And the project manager is probably going to, you know, make sure that the scope and
the budget is in line with what you give them.
But I think because you're spending such a large bulk of money, let's say like $5,000
compared to like 50 an hour, the amount of ability you're going to have in controlling
that process is going to be low.
I think this also kind of exacerbates this dynamic with agencies where sometimes expectations
are quite high for a deliverable.
And then clients want to have a high level of touch because of the premium they're paying.
And this is some clients, other clients, you know, they'll pay money and then they'll
just, you know, they'll get what they get and they're happy with it.
But one of the, a little bit of beef I have with agencies is that I'll tell you this
working within an agency and as someone who has hired an agency, agencies have so many
clients that oftentimes they're not just focused on your one project.
Agencies sometimes overstretch designers and assign client work.
And I think clients kind of get this sense that because there is competition within the
agency to work with the designers, they need to communicate constantly.
And I think what this does is it creates this strain where there's a high level of communication,
but maybe not as much of a high level power of execution to meet the demands of someone
who is asking for creative work.
I see sometimes clients go to agencies and act like it's a fast casual restaurant, not
really knowing the process behind how the work is being created.
And then, you know, asking for changes like last minute on the fly, expecting a good quality
work still.
And I think this is really frustrating for both designers and clients because again,
there's that disconnect where maybe you feel like you want, if you're the customer, of
course you would want a high quality level of design and, you know, something to be adapted
quickly, especially in today's age, where you do need to change quickly sometimes.
But because designers are working with so many clients at the agency, oftentimes there's
just not enough time to get to all the last minute changes.
And I think this puts an incredible amount of strain on designers who are kind of asked
to do a lot of project management and internal creative direction.
And honestly, I feel for designers in the creative agency world these days, because
many agencies are pretty strapped.
They've also gone through their own rounds of layoffs.
And what I see sometimes is that creatives are working just so fast with minimal creative
direction that they're asked to give their creative opinion when there isn't really
bandwidth or sometimes the social grace of giving an opinion of what creative should look like.
And then so there's also a lot of back and forth between clients and partners.
And while this is, I think, to some extent ideal for a creative process, too much of
that eventually creates work that isn't strong.
I think too much compromise creates work that is not super defined.
It's just kind of lukewarm.
And then people get the product that they paid for in the end and they gave the opinion
that they wanted to give.
But because designers are so strapped for time, there's really no benefit to arguing
with clients at times.
Sometimes projects need to end when they need to end.
One thing I saw is a graphic on quality, time, and speed when it comes to receiving a creative
profit, so in How to Make It in the New Music Business by Ari Kirsten, he has this graphic
on what you can expect to pay and how long you'll have to wait for creative work.
And so with this graphic, he says, pick two, and it's a Euler diagram.
There's three circles, fast, good, and cheap, and you can only pick two.
So you're either going to get it fast and good, but it's not going to be cheap, or you
can get it good and cheap, but it's not going to be fast, or you can have it fast and cheap,
but it's not going to be good.
And I think this visual basically explains it all.
Whenever you work with freelancers, agencies, you're going to have to pick two.
You're not going to have it all, so you either have a ton of money and a lot of time, and
I think that's ideal.
You're going to get the best work out there with a ton of time and a ton of money, but
what I see these days is a lot of people don't have a lot of time and they don't have a
lot of money, and what I have a hard time explaining is that, honestly, what you're
going to get is going to be fast, but also not good.
And so you need either time or money to at least get something you need good, to be honest.
I think you should not sacrifice good.
So yeah, those are my two cents.
All right, so that was today's episode on how to work with designers, the capacity that
you can work with designers.
Chances are, if you are a DIYer, I recommend hiring a designer freelance, contract, hourly
or by project.
There are a lot of websites to find folks these days, and many people even advertise
themselves on Instagram, Behance, a lot of these creative websites I mentioned.
I think ultimately, maintaining a good working relationship with a human designer is going
to be one of the best things that you do for your projects, no matter what you're working
on.
I also think that word travels fast in the creative sphere, and if you're good to work
with, that type of creative karma goes a long way.
Designers do talk, and they will mention if someone is easy to work with, and I think
that kind of goes both ways.
And so I think as designers, it's really important for us to keep our work high quality,
to choose projects that we want to work on in order to kind of keep that spirit of good
design out there.
But then I think also if you're hiring designers, it's important to also keep that spirit of
wanting to respect the process of design, know what it takes to get good quality design,
and then keep your expectations realistic.
If your budget is cheap, but you want good work, it's probably going to take a lot of
time, months even.
But if you have a lot of money, but not a lot of time, you can hire for the best creative
work out there.
But hardly do I see that people understand this dynamic, and my hope is just to bring
some realism to this.
I think that working with human designers is one of the best things that you can do
for your projects.
You're getting an ally, you're getting another person who will advocate for the work that
you do when you allow them the creative freedom and respect to build up your work.
And at the end of the day, I think your work becomes larger than you, larger than your
brands when you work with another human being.
So this has been the episode on how to work with designers.
And if you have any questions, if you have your two cents to add, I definitely want to
hear from you.
Again, there's more episodes in this series on branding, working with designers, how to
create your own brand and choose your brand values.
So please check those out.
And if you haven't already, go ahead and follow this podcast.
This is the pool party.
My name is Jules.
And if you have any questions on working with designers, your branding, or if you have any
questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me.
My website is juliaespero.me.
That's J-U-L-I-A-E-S-P-E-R-O.
That's a period, me.
All right, thank you, and I will talk to you next time.