Business owner, serial entrepreneur, or social media strategist. By now, you understand the importance of a graphic designer to the success of your enterprise. If you don’t, let’s go over some interesting stats:
94% of all consumers bounce when they reach a website with sub-par graphic design
Over 46% of people who reach a business use the quality of its design and branding to gauge the credibility of said business
For 80% of small business owners who’ve been in the game long enough experience shows that graphic design is a critical component of their business’ success
32% of marketers who use digital media say images and graphic design content are the most potent content marketing channel
I could go on and on, but you probably get the picture – graphic design is important, more so in our rapidly expanding digital-first economy.
Still, many businesses, small and big, don’t float a dedicated graphic design team. If you’re here, you probably fit into this cohort, and by now, you’re wondering how do I get started with my graphic design strategy or, put more practically, how do I get started with my branding and digital-first strategy.
How do I hire a graphic designer that fits my needs, budget, and business timeline? Which I should choose from; in-house, freelance, or agency? I can help you make all of those decisions.
First off, what’s an in-house, freelance, or agency graphic designer?
All are graphic designers in their own right. What sets them apart is where they set up shop.
In-house
An in-house graphic designer is a graphic designer who’s hired full-time by you and on your official company payroll. In-house means they’re in your house (read; business) as full-time employees of your company.
Freelance
A freelance graphic designer is an independent contractor you hire for a specific period under a contract. Most times, when you hire a freelancer, you do so so that they can complete certain laid-out graphic design projects. They’re not full members of your team, and the reality is that they only commit short periods of their time to your project, but more on this later.
Agency graphic designer
If you wanted to hire a graphic designer on a part-time basis, as you would do when hiring a freelancer, but don’t want to go through the whole freelancer onboarding process, you’d contact an agency.
Graphic design agencies (no matter what they tell you) are essentially congregations of freelancers under one umbrella. The best ones have very strict designer requirements, but many are just portmanteaus for hiring the everyday freelance graphic designer.
In-house vs. freelance vs. agency
Just so we’re clear, there’s no one size fits all model for hiring a graphic designer. Your needs determine the best fit, but as a general template, let’s compare all of them and see the strong points of each, starting with:
What are the pros of hiring an in-house designer
Having an in-house graphic designer means they’re all committed to you and your business with little to no side distractions. It’s your personal graphic designer available 9-5 to work on your design strategy.
You get a committed graphic designer
Focus is important when you’re trying to be creative and graphic design is one of the most demanding when it comes to creativity, especially if you’re trying to create a distinctive and immersive brand identity.
An in-house designer ideally has only your design task and strategy to think about, meaning they can focus on just you and your brand to create unique and eye-catching visuals. When the mind is murky, the design is also murky. Most designers will tell you that too many design projects on their hands tends to water down the quality of the end product.
Most in-house designers are seasoned professionals
Graphic designers applying for an in-house role usually have an impressive portfolio and years of experience to back their applications. Most are artists who are not just great at creating visuals but are also well-grounded in the how of conceptualizing and developing a brand.
To put it another way, with most in-house designers, you’re getting the complete package – designer, branding specialist, creative thinker, and usually a dedicated employee.
Your business operates smoothly
No missed deadlines, no poor communication, no unexpected sick leaves, just all-round business professionalism. An in-house designer signs a legally binding contract that dictates what’s expected of them through the business-project lifecycle.
More importantly, they stick to this contract because, ditto what I said about professionalism and also because the stakes are higher. This is their day job, and losing it would mean they’re out of a job. It’s that simple.
What are the cons of hiring an in-house designer?
Given what I’ve said, you’re probably thinking, yeah, this is all I want from a graphic designer, so why don’t I just hire an in-house designer ASAP. Well, you won’t for the major reason many other businesses don’t, and that’s because of the cost.
Cost
In-house means full time, and full time means full pay, usually with benefits and all of that stuff. If you’re a budding entrepreneur, you probably don’t have the budget to pay a graphic designer full. Graphic design and branding, at least for now, is something you’d typically approach on a one-off basis – it’s not something needed daily, every day through your business lifecycle.
So why hire a full-time in-house designer you cannot afford for services you don’t need all the time, right? Yeah, that’s the thought process of most business owners, and that’s why many lean towards freelance or agency graphic designers despite the superior value proposition of the in-house gents (and ladies – a lot of ladies now do graphic design, just so you know). This decision, however, comes with its comeuppance.
What are the pros of hiring an agency for your graphic design needs?
Most graphic design agencies (with very few exceptions) are sweatshops for freelance graphic designers. I’ve already stated this point. Now what you need to know is because these guys work in an agency – where there’s something of a leadership structure – there’s a bit of finetuning compared to the normal freelance designer experience. That finetuning brings about a slew of advantages for you.
All-round professionalism at a level that almost equals the in-house design chief
Let me prefix this point with the fact that it only holds if you’re dealing with a professional and fully established graphic design agency – not some shoddy third world graphic design startup (respect to all my third world brothers, by the way – I’m Nigerian. Please say hi if you’re Nigerian and reading this).
Reputable agencies have a reputation to protect. Their usually well-defined leadership structure also means someones is always accountable for everything that happens in your business dealings with them. Deadlines won’t be missed, customer support is often top tier (again, remember that this is only true for fully established agencies), communication is fluid. You essentially get better all-round reliability compared to the freelance route.
Lesser burden of supervision
with agencies, you don’t have to manage graphic design freelancers (or employees as agencies would like to call them) yourself. That’s up to the agency – all you do is provide your graphic design requirements, timeline, and expected ETA. You pay the money. They handle the details and all of that micromanagement we all know and hate.
Agencies are a la carte
Which means they can adapt or better put provide the extra services you might need as your business grows and your requirement change. So let’s say you start as needing just a logo for your business. As time goes on, you realize you also need an explainer video for one of your best-selling products.
All you need do is contact your sales contact at the agency, and that’d be arranged for you with little to no friction. Your needs can grow from that of small business to full-on multinational company, and most well-established agencies will still be able to keep a hand on things.
Some agencies work as a team
Instead of just one ‘freegencer’ handling your project, you get a team of graphic designers that sit down to collaborate on your project. Obviously, two or more heads are better than one, and with this setup, you get better results, especially as it concerns design ideation and execution of dynamic Projects. But as a side warning, very few agencies do this even though most will claim they do and charge you based on that claim.
What are the cons of hiring an agency for your graphic design needs?
Agencies can be expensive with little to show for it sometimes
Yes, your emails might be replied to promptly, you might get quality customer support and a set of souvenirs while you’re at it, but with many agencies, you’re actually paying through your neck for extras that are not really worth it. Why? At the base level, it’s still a freelance graphic designer or someone who works like a freelance graphic designer handling your project.
The results will be similar to a regular freelancer, only this time you’re paying for all the overhead costs that go into running and managing the agency – rent for a New York office building is not cheap, the CEO probably likes taking weekend trips to Ibiza, and you can bet your quarterly profits that that falls under ‘management expenses.’
Limited flexibility
Okay, I know I said agencies will grovel at your feet, but note that this groveling will only be as specified by the contract terms. Did you agree to only communicate during office hours but now realize that office hours in their time zone is bedtime at yours? Well, look who’s the new night owl.
Most agencies draft detailed contracts and stick by their terms to the latter to keep things straightforward and organized. Unlike your in-house graphic design chief, who might agree to come in for work on a Saturday because you’re launching an important product Monday, most agencies will be unavailable for contact weekends except you agreed to that prior.
We’re done with the two traditional routes to graphics design hiring. Let’s move to the freelance graphic designer or, as many people like to call them, the kings (queens) of the gig economy.
Pros of hiring a freelance graphics designer
Hate or love it, freelance graphics designers are the new emperors in town. In one survey conducted by IBISWorld, more than 90% of all graphic design work is completed by freelancers. That’s not a surprising stat given the nature of the job but are freelance graphic designers the right pick for your business?
Cost
I’ve worked with a few graphic designers whose works were so fantastic that I just wanted to capture and keep them in my basement to keep producing stunning visual ad Infinitum. Sadly, like most businesses out there, I didn’t have the money to keep them tied down full time.
Cost is one of the major reasons businesses dabble with freelance graphic designers. Depending on where you look, you can find graphic designers with hourly rates as low as $5. But don’t take my word for it; simply go through the graphic design pages on Upwork and Fiverr. And contrary to what you may think, extremely cheap doesn’t necessarily translate to extremely bad, but I’ll talk about this separately.
An infinite pool of graphic designers to choose from
Again I’ll refer you to the graphic design pages of Upwork and Fiverr to demonstrate this fact. In today’s business ecosystem, there’s a large pool of graphic freelancers to choose from, and that pool is still growing. On Fiverr alone, there are well over 15,000 graphic design services.
The key thing to take away from this stat is that whatever your budget, taste, preference, or needs are, there’s more than a dozen graphic design freelancers who are a perfect match. The only problem is finding them but more on that shortly.
Extreme flexibility
Like Agencies, freelancers are people-pleasers, but unlike the former who please based on the contract, most freelancers are willing to go the extra mile. Many will stay up late at night to answer your messages, most are comfortable working weekends, and some will even offer unlimited revisions for any particular project.
These are perks you’d normally associate with an in-house graphic designer but remember how much you need to pay an in-house design chief? Yeah, it’s hard to forget.
Given these more than impressive advantages of hiring a freelance graphic designer, why won’t you just hire one right away?
What are the cons of hiring a freelance graphic designer
Usually a much less professional experience
To whom much is given, much is expected. As freelancers give you all that flexibility you never negotiated for, they usually expect some form of laxity on your part as compensation. So it’s possible you won’t get your visuals on the agreed date.
Perhaps you do get it; you might not get satisfying explanations as to why he/she opted for a blue logo background when you requested red and further went on to explain that red is symbolic of how much you love red things or any of that vain stuff.
Freelancers are usually dealing with a barrage of clients at any point in time. They’re their own agencies, so they’ll handle everything from communications to invoicing, customer support, dispute resolution in addition to their actual graphic design jobs themselves. That’s a recipe for confusion. Most never manage to sort it out, and this is usually reflected in the quality of work and service experience delivered to their clients.
There’s a big chance you’re going to get very shoddy work done
One, for the reasons I just outlined, and secondly, because the art of setting up a freelance graphic design shop requires no certification. I bet you could head on to Fiverr or Upwork (but more of the former right now) and create a profile claiming to be the world’s greatest graphic designer unchallenged.
There’s practically no barrier for entry, what with several drag and drop graphic design tools out there, even my grandma could add the graphic designer title to her already stellar CV. Fall for this trap and hire one of these half-baked graphic designers, and you’re almost 100% sure to get low-quality low-level visuals.
Freelancers require a lot of supervision
One Redditor I know once described freelancers as a bunch of attention-deficit cats. I know, I know, it’s a far stretch to call anyone that, but I can relate to his sentiment. Most freelancers require a lot of hand-holding to bring out your project in the perfect form you imagined it and on time.
It’s mostly down to their lack of focus due to taking on so many projects at once and having to run all parts of their business by themselves. Maybe freelancers should start hiring other freelancers to take up the managerial aspects of their business? Hmm, wish they’d think of more of that.
Some do, actually, and that’ll serve as a segue to the next part of this piece – hiring freelancers that care enough to address the freelancer-specific problems.
So which should you choose?
Let’s face it, except you’re a fully established business with a huge operating capital hiring a freelance graphic designer is probably your best bet.
Agencies and in-house graphic designers are alright, but the freelance dudes are cheap. And, if you’ve been paying attention, you’d see that most of the problems with going the freelance graphic designer route is more process-oriented than it is foundational. They’re problems that can be remedied quite easily, I must add.
Freelance designers get a lot of flak for their work, and I’ve you’ve read other blogs before coming here, you’ve probably read to avoid freelancers. Well, I’ll end this by saying what I said at the start of this piece. Your final choice really just comes down to your needs. Are you a fully-fledged business with a sizable operating capital? You’re better off ditching all the headaches of agency or freelancer and sticking with an in-house design crew.
Let’s say you’re an upcoming business owner with some cash to spare and a tight schedule. Top-of-the-line graphic design agencies provide an easy and stress-free way to get your graphic design needs met. But you will pay in full for all the convenience you’re getting – yeah, convenience cause that’s what the extra money gets you, not better quality.
If you’re a budding entrepreneur or business owner looking to bootstrap your company, then I’ll say it without shame. Freelance all the way. Sure, you’ll have to dig deep to find that ever-elusive freelance virtuoso, but the savings in cost, the flexibility you get, and your opportunity to find what’s an almost perfect mix are well worth it.
If you need help finding this type of perfect freelance graphic designer for your business, do well to read my freelance graphics designer hiring guide.
Ciao!
