Contact Web DesignerIn a previous blog post, I talked about the benefits of hiring someone to help you with some of your technical tasks, whether it’s a web designer to help build your website or a graphic designer to create an ad or a banner for your blog. If you can get the right someone to help you do tasks that you don’t have time for or have the adequate skill for, they’ll more than pay for themselves in time and frustration. But how do you find such a person? There’s several ways you can do so:

1. Know exactly what you want to get accomplished- One of the things that can cost you time and money when you’re hiring a graphic designer is that you contact them before you have a clear idea of what you want to get accomplished. A lot of artists think that if they just hire an expert, they’ll be able to tell them what to do. While an expert designer can build and wonderful looking website, but they can’t necessarily tell you what the business goals of your website should be. They can tell you that a dark blue background will look more soothing and professional than a bright patterned background, but they can’t tell you what art pieces you should sell on your site…or whether you should sell on your website.

Decisions like what the purpose of your website should be, what the goals of your ad promotion should be, or what kind of feeling you want your blog banner to convey has to come from you. You’re the business owner and you know better than anyone else in the world what you’re trying to accomplish with your business overall. You can’t outsource the vision for your business to a designer or any other person.

2. Get recommendations- The best way to find a graphic artist or web designer is to get recommendations from someone that you really trust that has hired them before. Friends, colleagues, family members, or mentors that have websites or has had the occasion to use the services of a graphic designer will be more than happy to recommend a good one if they were pleased with their work.

3. Do your homework- Even if you find a designer that was previously vetted by a friend, family member, or mentor, you still need to do your homework. That means that you want to check out the designers’ previous work. You want to ask them questions about projects that they’ve worked on before. You also want to get an idea of how much they charge and how busy they are.

4. Start small- If you’re working with someone new, try starting off with a small project…like designing a blog header or an online ad. This will give you a chance to see how this person works and if you can trust them to do bigger jobs like redesigning a brochure or building your website. You also want to make sure that whatever project you start them off on is not a mission critical rush job. Rush jobs put an extra level of pressure that you don’t need to deal with when you evaluating a new designer…plus you’ll likely get charged more on rush jobs.

5. Look towards the long term- One mistake that a lot of people make is trying to find someone for just right now. They look for the cheapest person they can find that can get the job done as quickly as they can and the relationship pretty much ends after the project is done, for better or for worse. I’ve been on both sides of the client/designer relationship and I can tell you that you’ll get a better quality and value for your work if you approach the hiring of your designer as the beginning of a long term relationship rather than as a one-shot deal. Remember that designers are small business people too and a repeat client is always a higher value to them than a one-time client. If the designer gets the sense that they can expect more jobs from you in the future, then they’ll be more likely to do great work. And the benefit for you is that you’ll have someone that you can turn to in future to help you out when you happen to blow up something on your website or when you have that rush job that you don’t have time to accomplish.

Also, look for someone who’s fairly flexible that has a wide range of skills that you may be useful to you in the future. A graphic designer that’s also well versed in designing for the web and building websites is a lot more useful that someone who strictly designs for print or vice versa.

So what do you think? What are your tips for finding a great graphic or web designer. Leave your tips and stories in the comments section!

P.S. Some time back, I did a telephone interview on how to find a web designer with marketing expert, Connie Green. You can listen to an excerpt of the interview here.