As a form of communication between your business and your audience, graphic design is absolutely vital to your company’s success, especially in this day and age. From business cards, brochures, banners, and stationeries, to websites, logos, and social media content, graphic designers play a big role in your overall marketing campaign. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a solopreneur looking to make waves in your industry, a medium-sized company with big ambitions, or a large multinational corporation with global offices and millions of customers worldwide; graphic design is necessary to ensure brand recognition. Now, here’s something you may not know. A lot of businesses, regardless of their size, outsource graphic design work and projects.
With that said, you may be asking this question, “isn’t it better to hire an in-house graphic designer? Why should I outsource the job to a freelance designer?” Having an in-house graphic designer can indeed be beneficial if you can afford to keep one. However, there is a massive pool of talent you can tap into if you take the outsourcing route, and this can bring big benefits to your business.
This is probably the most well-known reason to consider outsourcing. Due to the lower cost of living, remote workers from developing countries are likely to ask for less money. That means you will end up paying them only a fraction of what their in-house counterparts earn. Besides, if it’s a project-based job, you’ll only pay for the work that was done without worrying about keeping extra staff on hand.
You won’t even have to be concerned about additional expenses like additional office space, equipment, taxes, healthcare costs, and other benefits if you end up with an outsourced graphic designer. Don’t forget that the best graphic design programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite can be expensive. You will have to pay for these tools if you hire an in-house graphic designer.
Since the cost of living in countries like India and the Philippines are relatively low, you can outsource your graphic design projects to freelancers from these two nations. Their ability to read, write, and speak English are quite good, so communication issues shouldn’t be a problem as long as you and your graphic designer are on the same page.
Remember, choosing whether to hire in-house or outsource can greatly impact your company’s expenses.
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If you have an artistic mind, you can always give it a go yourself and use a tool like Canva to design a visually appealing logo or brand image. That is fine if you are just starting out. However, as your business begins to grow and expand, you may be better off focusing your time on revenue-generating activities.
In this situation, you should really consider outsourcing your graphic design projects to save time, especially when those are minor or repetitive tasks. All that’s left for you to do is to give feedback and communicate your ideas.
Entrepreneurs who don’t have a graphic design background shouldn’t even consider developing their own brand identity by themselves. In cases like this, the best solution is to outsource. Why waste your time on things you are not familiar with if you can do something more productive? Time is money, so pass those time-consuming design tasks to a qualified professional who can get it done in no time.
An entrepreneur who has to deal with competition regularly will understand how important it is to create fresh ideas that stay ahead of the curve. So how can an outsourced graphic designer help you come up with new concepts?
For those who already have an in-house graphic designer or are set in their ways, you will be surprised to see how bringing in another pair of eyes can do wonders for a brand. By hiring an outsourced graphic designer, you are bringing in someone who doesn’t work with your product day after day, which means that the person can develop ideas that no one in the company would’ve come up with.
Sometimes embracing a fresh, outside perspective is just what you need to take your business to the next level.
As mentioned earlier, you will have to pay for the graphic design tools if you hire an in-house designer. You can avoid this if you outsource your graphic design projects because the best freelance designers need to have access to the latest graphic design tools and software if they want to keep up with the competition.
As new technologies continue to emerge, it’s great to have someone who knows how to use all the cutting-edge software and hardware available. With the latest tools at his disposal, an outsourced graphic designer can easily create complex and detailed pieces that take time to make on free software.
You can find plenty of professional graphic designers online who have up-to-date knowledge and understanding of the latest graphic design trends and techniques. In today’s increasingly competitive outsourcing markets, these graphic designers will have to stay at the top of their game if they want to land enough work.
One good way to find the best graphic designers available is to hold a design contest. You can do this easily on design contest sites like 99designs, Crowdspring, DesignCrowd, DesignContest, DesignHill, and Freelancer.com.
These contests are pretty straightforward. You post a project and pick your prize amount. This should attract dozens of graphic designers, and yes, most of them probably aren’t that good, especially if the prize money isn’t that high. However, out of all the designs submitted, you should get a few good ones. Once you found the right designer, you can choose him as the winner and award him the price. This will also give you the option to continue working with him on future projects. The good thing about these contests is that in most cases, you don’t need to pay unless someone made a design you like.
At the end of the day, outsourcing is the way to go if you want to avoid the stress and financial strain of maintaining an in-house graphic design department. These outsourced graphic designers can do anything their in-house counterparts can do at a fraction of the cost, and you don’t even have to pay them when they’re not working.
Did the list convince you to outsource your graphic design projects? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
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