Three Pre-Rules To Hiring The Best Graphic Design Company For Your Business
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When you want to brand or rebrand, a ton of questions come to mind. The most important one among all is how to get it all done – do it yourself or hire a professional graphic designer.
Branding is an incredibly important part of building a business and helping it to flourish and grow. It makes you more easily remembered, instantly recognizable to your audience and informs them what to expect when dealing with your business. It encompasses every aspect of customer service, but, vitally, also includes the visual representation of your brand: your look, your personality, and your identity.
If it seems overwhelming, don’t panic. It is true that there are many things to make when designing a brand image or when marketing the brand, but don’t worry. There are agencies and designers out there, ready to turn your business into a brand.
So here are three pre-rules to hiring the best graphic design company, no matter where you are.
Do Your Own Research
Conducting research before starting a business, or when expanding a business, really has a lot to do with the ultimate success of the business itself. To successfully carry out a research, you need to focus on three main areas: the market, the design, and the competition.
Market Research
For a new business, it’s vital to know what you’re getting into, and whether the market can sustain another business. Is there a lot of competition in your area? Your market research can also help you to set parameters for your graphic designer.
Visual Research
Make sure you don’t confuse your target market by using the same visuals that others are using for their identities. Your graphic material should be different from all and it should stand out on its own. Study about colors, images, typography, layout and every possible thing you are planning to use in your designs. Don’t blindly rely on the designer to do everything for you. If needed ask questions or suggest an idea.
Competition Research
When creating any type of graphics for your business, such as a logo design, web design or marketing collateral, make sure you study your competition. You want to outdo them not copy them. This type of research can also include deciphering what does and what doesn’t work for existing companies. Does their popularity suffer because of poor design? What went wrong in their design process — or what went right? Learning from the mistakes and examples of others can help your own graphic design process to happen more smoothly.
All this research will help you derive a solid creative brief that truly helps the designer make exactly what will work.
Know What You Want
The world will not wait for you, so know what you want for your business because you have no time or resources to waste. Before hiring a graphic designer, make sure you have your brand strategy outlined so the process of creation is smooth.
However, a smoother process doesn’t mean that there won’t be any bumps on the road at all, of course. One way to try to avoid them is by knowing what you want in advance and communicating it correctly to the designer so she can create visuals that correspond to your brand, and which will resonate with your customers. Remember, your graphic designer will be in charge of the visuals, not of the brand itself.
It’s also important to have in mind what you’re looking for, in detail, as far as deliverables from your graphic designer. The deliverables must all meet up to the brand’s strategy, but graphic designers offer a variety of services:
- Responsive web design
- Custom logo design
- Business card design
- Product packaging design
- Marketing materials
- Display ad design
You may not need all of those for your company, at least not all at once, but they are definitely products to consider for the effectiveness of an overall brand.
Investigate The Designer
Graphic designers tend to have a particular style, much like any other artist. When hiring a designer, make sure you know what they’ve done already. Have they worked on websites with a graphic style that seems to meet your criteria? Does their style seem at odds with your brand’s personality?
Make sure the designer you want to hire has a portfolio. Don’t pick somebody who has no track record of successful projects. You can bet your luck on a new designer, but be ready to be surprised or shocked. An in-person interview should give you a decent idea as to whether the designer’s style is compatible with your brand or not.
You can also take the opportunity to speak with others who have worked with particular designers to get a better idea of how a designer works. Word of mouth is a good way to filter designers into categories of beginner, average and expert.
While there are different ways businesses approach designers, the three pre-rules will help you make sure that nothing is missed out, and that you assign your project to the “best-fit” graphic design company. Also, make sure you shake hands with a company that can provide you with design printing – this really removes the head-ache of finding another one to do the same.
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