Graphic design is indispensable for any business to create its logo, website, or other marketing materials. However, small businesses and early-stage startups may need help finding affordable, high-quality designs. Due to time and resource constraints, established companies may need help refining their graphic designs. That’s where outsourcing comes into play.
According to a study, 80% of small businesses plan to outsource business functions in 2022, an increase from 2021, when 9 out of 10 small businesses had the same plan.
When outsourcing graphic designs, an accurate strategy can help achieve better results with a professional touch. This blog will guide you to the Right Way to Outsource Graphic Design in 2023. It will also discuss the importance of outsourcing Graphic Design with essential tips.
Continue reading the blog to find the necessary information that can help take your business to the next level. In this post, I’ll discuss the following:
- What Is Graphic Design Outsourcing?
- Way to Outsource Graphic Design
- Consider Things While Outsourcing Graphic Design
- Why Outsource Graphic Designers?
- Drawbacks of Outsourcing Graphic Design
- When to Outsource Graphic Design
- Graphic Design Tasks You Can Outsource
- Who Outsource Graphic Design?
What Is Graphic Design Outsourcing?
As Graphic design requires time, skill and assets, any company can outsource graphic design from a marketing agency if they need more funds or space for an in-house design team. The marketing agency will provide creative and skilled designers for the company.
Graphic Design Outsourcing refers to employing external designers to manage a business’s design tasks, including logo creation, designing packages, websites, brochures, social media presentations, etc. It saves the business time and resources, efficiently meets deadlines that upscale business growth and establishes a strong brand image.
It’s a win-win solution without an extra workforce for a company that lacks sufficient skills or force.
Way to Outsource Graphic Design
When a company outsources graphic design, it benefits both the designer and the company. This blog section will cover step-by-step way to outsource graphic design effectively. Following this guideline, you can find practical, high-quality, cost-effective, and flexible options that fit your budget. Let’s dive into the details-
Step-1: Plan for Branding
Before you look for graphic design outsourcing companies, you should know your requirements for your brand. Otherwise, you will find yourself ending up running down the rabbit hole.
To represent your brand excellently, you must compile a temporary folder with all the necessary details, such as your logo, brand colors, font styles, and design components. You should share this folder with designers to ensure they have all the necessary information. Remember, designers are not mind readers. So, if you have any preferred design example, share it to ensure efficient and effective results. It will prevent any unnecessary time wastage. Feel free to look for examples on Pinterest, Instagram, Behance, or ArtStatio since they can inspire you to improve your final design.
Step-2: Budget Estimation
Once you plan for branding, it’s time to design a budget. Explore the industry’s current rates to steer the market better. Contact graphic design service providers to determine your work’s cost and set an affordable budget. Prioritize the quality over price while budgeting. Additionally, decide if you will pay for the project based on a contract, a fixed rate, hourly, or by the project.
Step-3: Select Subscription or On-Demand Service
After setting the budget, you must select whether you will outsource the graphic design on a subscription or on-demand basis. If you need to design regularly, you can pick the subscription option, where you will enjoy unlimited designs for a monthly fee. Otherwise, you can select the on-demand option to design occasionally, where you will pay when you need the design.
Step-4: Appoint Graphics Designer
After completing the three steps, it’s essential to carefully evaluate potential graphic designers, whether freelancers or an agency like Cut Out Image, to ensure you appoint the right one for your project. Review their previous work to determine if it aligns with your needs, and consider seeking references, reading reviews, or requesting a free trial to make an informed decision. Once you’ve finalized a graphic designer, send your official documents with Non-disclosure agreements to protect your data.
Step-5: Share Your Vision
Once you finalize the agency or freelancer, it’s essential to communicate your vision clearly with the designer to ensure accurate results. Share the detailed folder with the preferred design example you mapped out in the first step. Feel free to inform the designer if you don’t have any design examples. It’s integral to answer all the designer’s questions to define your needs as clearly as possible. The better they understand your requirements, the better design they can provide.
Step-6: Communicate Regularly
You must build strong communication between you and the designer to get the best output. Regular communication is key to ensuring a seamless workflow. So stay in touch with the designer throughout the process leading up to the final outcome.
Step-7: Review the Designs and Share Feedback
The design varies based on person and style. So it’s vital to review the design draft carefully provided by the designer. Outsourcing is a collaborative process, so communicate whether the design meets your expectations. To get the perfect design, give the designer specific feedback to guide them. Regarding feedback, Cut Out Image provides unlimited revision options until you are satisfied.
Step-8: Approve the Final Design
Once you have reviewed and are satisfied with the design output, approve it to finalize. However, if you want to make changes, provide feedback for the designer to implement. Once the changes have been made and you are satisfied with the design, approve it as the final version.
Consider Things While Outsourcing Graphic Design
Outsourcing Graphic Design can be a wise business choice, as it can save both time and effort. However, it is essential to consider certain factors when outsourcing this type of work. Let’s learn about those factors:
- Identify Goals and Expectations: The precondition for a successful project is to know the goal and expectations clearly. So, you must identify the objectives you want to achieve and communicate them clearly to the designer. The designer will incorporate them to ensure the result meets your needs and expectations.
- Review Previous Work: Almost every designer maintains an online portfolio showcasing their work and clients. It’s essential to check their portfolio before hiring them to understand if the designer can fit your requirements. Take your time to review their previous work since each designer has a unique style.
- Check Availability: When selecting an outsourced designer, it’s important to consider their availability and accessibility for short- and long-term projects. Be sure to inquire about their ability to meet deadlines and availability for future work if you continue working with them. Staying informed on these factors can help ensure a successful working relationship.
- Ask for a Free Trial: To find a good Graphic Design service provider, thoroughly research taking your time. Once you have a list of potential providers, consider offering them a free trial to evaluate their proficiency. Assign a simple task to each provider to quickly assess their skills and ideas. It will help you short-list the options and make a wise decision.
- Communicate Brand Values: Do you want to reflect brand value in design? If you aim to convey your brand value through design, you must communicate your brand values and message clearly to the design team. It will help them understand your brand and create a design that aligns with it.
Why Outsource Graphic Designers?
There are a lot of Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) For Graphic Design in the design world. Still, a company may find outsourcing design the best option in various scenarios. Let’s know why you should outsource Graphic Design.
- Penny-wise: Small and startup businesses usually try to save as much money as possible when allocating resources. Outsourcing graphic design work can save considerable money compared to hiring permanent in-house designers and paying for office space, machines, software tools, electricity, training, and other related expenses. Additionally, outsourcing allows them to set a specific budget for each project. Therefore, outsourcing graphic design can often be a more cost-effective option than doing it in-house.
- Access to skills: The graphic design world has numerous design types, including branding, advertising, illustration, web design, and more. A designer who works in-house may be skilled in some of these areas to address daily needs. However, outsourcing for specific and unique design needs can offer substantial advantages.
- Top-notch Design: Successful business branding demands high-quality design work. By outsourcing graphic design, you can ensure that you receive top-notch designs from experienced designers who have extensive knowledge of various software and techniques needed to create creative designs. You can trust their expertise to complete your project correctly with exceptional design.
- Time-saving: Almost every established business believes that time is the most precious asset for any business. A company should minimize distractions and concentrate on the most valuable tasks. Outsourcing minor or repetitive design tasks from a qualified professional can be a great way to save time and money. By doing so, businesses can focus on profitable work that will significantly boost their bottom line.
- Flexibility: By outsourcing, you can tailor your staffing requirements to match your workload. For short-term projects, hiring freelancers is a good option, while for more long-term projects, agencies like Cut Out Image can provide superior solutions.
Drawbacks of Outsourcing Graphic Design
Although outsourcing graphic design has benefits, there are also some potential drawbacks. Here are a few to keep in mind when hiring an external graphic designer through outsourcing:
01. Hidden Charges:
Sometimes, a designer or design agency doesn’t provide a precise quote that includes all costs, which results in a surprising hidden charge. To prevent this, you should thoroughly review the quote to ensure all charges are fully disclosed.
02. Apprehend Tricky Contracts:
If you are foreign to legal terms or the design industry, understand the legal obligations of working with a designer or design agency. Otherwise, complicated contracts can confuse payment terms or ownership rights. It’s necessary to fully understand the contract and ask for clarification to avoid misconceptions or legal problems.
03. Post-design Delivery Support:
One potential drawback of outsourcing graphic design is the absence of post-design delivery support. It creates issues in changing, updating the designs, or fixing other issues that arise in the future. To prevent it, you should ask about their process of handling any problems that may arise post-delivery.
04. Insufficient Understanding of the Brand:
A freelancer or design agency can have limited knowledge of your brand and values due to its work with multiple brands. If the designer or design agency doesn’t understand correctly, they can not reflect the brand in the design. That’s why provide sufficient information regarding the brand, values, target audience, marketing goals, etc.
When to Outsource Graphic Design
Businesses require effective graphic design to boost marketing growth and engage customers with appealing graphics. Therefore, the demand for graphic designers is rising rapidly. But when do you need to outsource the graphing design? If any of the following apply to you, it may be wise to consider outsourcing:
- You run a small business or have a startup with a small team. You may find that your team lacks the necessary skills in graphic design. Moreover, as we learned above, the graphic design world is vast; therefore, it’s impossible for a single team to know all the techniques.
- You are running an advertising agency and want to increase your production to attract more clients. Consider outsourcing graphic design to increase your production.
- You want to increase your graphic business and increase the client base. But not interested in increasing in-house designers since it is costlier than outsourcing.
- You have a short-term project. Hiring a permanent designer won’t bring benefits to you. Therefore to complete this one-off project, you need to outsource graphic design.
- You have an in-house graphic design team now overloaded with backlog projects. In such a situation, it may be more efficient to outsource graphic design work rather than hiring additional designers.
Graphic Design Tasks You Can Outsource
The graphic world is vast, and each design task requires different skill sets with expertise. Although an in-house team may have some of these skills, outsourcing can assist in completing the task. You can outsource any graphic design tasks to professionals with the necessary skill sets and expertise according to your graphic design tasks requirement. Here are some examples of graphic design tasks that you can outsource:
- Logo Design: For a logo to be effective, it must be accurate and easily recognizable. It should incorporate images, words, shapes, and colors that reflect the business. Consider outsourcing the logo design process to ensure the best possible result.
- Business Materials: Business Cards, Letterheads, and Envelopes are the usual business materials that almost every business uses to differentiate itself. You can outsource the production of these materials for your business.
- Banners, Billboards, and Posters: Businesses use billboards, banners, and posters to attract customers and increase sales. An experienced graphic designer can create attractive and practical billboards, banners, or posters for the client.
- Website Design: Website design is vital for businesses to post basic information and operation hours. It’s best to work with a designer for website design containing a logo and logical layout with the correct font, color, and image in harmony.
- Packaging: Businesses use packaging distinguished from their competition for promotion purposes. Businesses can outsource designers to design attractive packages for products or services.
Who Outsource Graphic Design?
Many misinterpret that only the companies unable to afford an in-house team outsource their graphic design needs. But startups or established businesses also outsource graphic design. Here are some examples of companies that regularly outsource their graphic design:
- Advertising Agency: The advertising agency always works on making ads for various platforms, including online, offline, and digital media such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, print, TV, etc. These ads undergo A/B testing handled by multiple design teams to ensure the best results. The agency often outsources these teams.
- Marketing Firms: Marketing firms promote business products or services through visual materials like packaging, brochures, and websites. These items are crucial in building a brand and customer relationship. Since the firm constantly works on design tasks, they often get overloaded and outsource to simplify their processes.
- Web Development Agency: The website features a variety of designs and illustrations, and the process of creating web design differs from traditional design. In this case, the Web development agency outsources the graphic design team for the more complex design.
- Established Companies and Startups: Established companies are often overloaded with a lot on their plate. They often hire external graphic design companies to alleviate some of this workload. On the other hand, startups typically require an internal resource team to support their growth but may still outsource graphic design to aid their expansion.
- Small Business Owners: Many DIY or Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) For Graphic Design exist. But they are not sufficient to create unique artwork. Often they make amateur designs. Therefore, small business owners outsource graphic design.
Final Words
Graphic Design Outsourcing is a game-changer for startups or small businesses to succeed, which extends graphic design resources while reducing budget. In the blog, I have shared all the possible details of graphic design outsourcing and the way to outsource graphic design with helpful tips. Hopefully, the details in this blog will help you outsource graphic design and improve your business. I wish you the best for your next graphic design project!
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