Looking for a Cheap Graphic Designer?

Looking for a cheap Graphic Designer in Madison, Wisconsin? Well, graphic design is probably not the area you want to skimp out on. I mean, we’re talking about your business right?! You should have a professional face to your brand. So, if you’re looking for someone working for $10/hour out of their grandma’s basement, you’ve probably stumbled upon the wrong site. We value the work we do and you may not find us “cheap”… HOWEVER, we are here to tell you a few of our best tips to save money when working with a graphic designer.
 

5 Tips to Saving Money Working with a Graphic Designer

Ready to get started on your new project with your graphic designer? Hooray and good for you for investing in a professional to elevate your brand. Working with a graphic designer is a great way to create a really professional brand
 

Avoid vague descriptions.

Have you had to answer one of those questionnaires where there are a million questions and you’re wondering why it’s important? Well, truth be told, those questions most likely have a purpose. They’re trying to get to know more details. At the start of a project, there’re so many things we as designers need to know to create a design that serves you best. Be sure you’re clear about all the details to avoid back and forth questions, and even worse, having to redesign something that you didn’t specify at the project kickoff.

Minimise revisions.

A. Know what you’re looking for ahead of time. It can be extremely beneficial to have your project going in the right direction from the start. The further you get down in the process, the more work it is to pivot or start fresh. (We know that sometimes this does happen, but we need you as the clients to understand that we can often step back and reanalysis, but this will affect the budget with additional revisions and change of scope.)
B. Do you work with a group or committee that will be reviewing the work? If you’re looking to keep your costs down and also need to a few people to review a project, be sure you’re reviewing together so you can hash out revisions at once. It adds a lot of time and revisions when clients send over a couple revisions at a time. It’s more efficient for us to make 10 revisions at once than to make 2 corrections, 5 times around.

Use the same designer for all your projects.

Working with someone on a consistent basis allows you to get all “extra stuff” out of the way (contracts, emails, estimates, deposits, etc), and lets you focus on the job at hand. You’ll begin to create an impressive workflow and can get to know each other’s style and preferences when it comes to their marketing collateral. Similarly, both parties will get to know standard processes, preferred file setup, communication style, and the brand as a whole. A more effective workflow means a better price for you.

Have the logos you need handy (and vector).

Most importantly, you will need your business’s logo in vector format which you should hopefully have! If not, you might have to have the designer recreate your logo in the format you need (click here for the logos you should have for your business). If your designer needs to recreate any logos, it’s going to cost extra money.
Additionally, some projects might have multiple logos involved, such as event branding where there will be sponsor logos. Save your designer time by having that ready for them. If your designer has to hunt down sponsor logos, this will add time to the clock. Be sure you also have the best quality you can get access to. If you provide a low-res pixeled version you snagged from there twitter account, that probably won’t work and your graphic designer will have to get involved to get something better.

Have your copy and photos ready to go.

We run into this a lot where clients are ready to start a project but they don’t have all their ducks in a row or their copy (the text for the website or marketing piece) finalized. It’s actually quite challenging to design a piece without knowing whether we’re working with one line of text or three paragraphs. This is really critical to efficiency… If we don’t have a basic understanding of what content will be used, we could be designing and redesigning and it can exceed your revision time. (Oh. We should probably mention, basic test edits and swapping pics here and there is not what we’re referring to, it’s the big edits that we’re referring to. That makes a large difference.)
Related topic, if you’re not at the point where you can hire a professional photographer and will be using stock photography. It’s really helpful if you have an idea of the photos you’d like and some keywords for use to search for. Sometimes as designers, we need some examples of what to look for in stock photography. For example, if you are an interior design but only work residentially, we won’t want to include anything that involved commercial spaces (…granted as your graphic designer, we should already know that, but you get my point, right?)
 

—-

 
We hope you found this helpful! Let us know what you think and if you can implement any of these tips with your graphic designer to maximize your cost and save some money. Don’t skimp our for a cheap graphic designer… If you use these tips and think smart about your project, it will help you save $$$ in the end!
If you’re in Madison, WI and are looking for design help, feel free to reach out! Otherwise, just hang on tight to stay tuned for more great tips to come.