Where to find a Graphic Designer
You’re running your business, as usual, and you come to a point where you need the help of a graphic designer to get a job done. If you’ve never worked with a designer and don’t already know one it can be overwhelming not knowing where to start. Don’t fret, I’m going to walk you through a few of my favorite places to find graphic designers.
Let’s Talk About Where to Look for a Designer
I’m only going over a few places where you can find designers, but remember these aren’t the only options you have, these are just my favorite.
Instagram is an amazing place to find talented designers, artists, and small business owners! But you might have to do some digging to find what you’re looking for. It’s all about searching the hashtags here, but not everyone uses them efficiently. Let’s say you were looking for a graphic designer in the Detroit area, I’d recommend starting by searching through the following hashtags to start: #detroitdesigner, #detroitgraphicdesigner, #detroitfreelancedesigner, #detroitdesignstudio etc. Start clicking through the images and “hearting” posts you like the style of. You might also find success visiting some designers profiles and visiting their portfolios if they link them in their bio.
As you’re searching through the hashtags and visiting profiles, pay attention to who else is interacting with those accounts and visit their profiles too. Often there are networks of designers following each other and engaging on each other's posts. Keep clicking through until you find someone you want to work with. There is so much untapped talent out there, I’ve found so many talented artists and designers through Instagram alone.
If you’re a designer, artist, or small business owner and you want to use Instagram to grow your audience and attract clients/customers then you’ve gotta make use of hashtags! I have a blog post about this in the works if you’re interested you can do a quick Google search to pick up a few social media marketing tricks. It’s all about making yourself most searchable to your target audience.
Your local AIGA chapter is another gold mine of talent. It’s the professional association for design and there are local chapters all across the U.S. Go to the chapter directory to find your local chapter. There are chapters for major cities, student groups, and more. Once you get to your local chapters page you want to navigate to either the member portfolios page or the member directory. The directory is made up of designers, educators, web developers, art directors, printers, illustrators, photographers, artists, and students.
Depending on how your local chapters’ directory is formatted, you’ll be able to click directly on a designers’ portfolio, or social links. If that isn’t an option, copy and paste a designer’s name into your search engine; you may need to provide additional information to get the result you are looking for, such as a city name or job title (i.e. Eva D. Smith Detroit designer). For all the creatives out there reading this, I cannot recommend joining the AIGA enough. Not only does the Detroit chapter put together some AMAZING programming, we’re always looking for ways to best support the Detroit design community. You may have noticed I said “we,” and that’s because I’m an AIGA Detroit board member. So if you’re interested in learning more or you want to work together on a project, hit me up!
Universities are another great place to find young and emerging designers. If you need a designers help with party invitations or event posters, then I highly recommend working with a student. My first big girl job was an opportunity through the design program at Wayne State University, and it’s still one of the best jobs I’ve ever had.
If you’re going this route, you’ll want to do a little research on which local colleges have design programs. If you search something like “design colleges near me” you should get some usable results. After you find a couple design colleges, you can contact a faculty member with project details and your budget. Let them know if you want to see portfolios or work samples in advance, what the hiring process will be like, and how you’re going to pay. It may not seem like a big deal, but this kind of freelance project can be monumental for a junior designer’s career. You’re helping them develop their design and communication skills, and they’re working on a project that they can add to their portfolio, and that helps them get even more freelance opportunities.
Why is it important to hire local?
I could go on and on about this one, but I’ll keep it as brief as I can. The most important factor in hiring a local designer is that they know the area, they grew up there; they understand the culture and the consumer demographics; they have insight that an outsourced designer could never get. A Metro-Detroit designer already understands the difference between Bloomfield Hills customers and Ferndale customers, see what I mean?
You’re also supporting a local small business or up-and-coming designer. If you were a local small business, wouldn’t you appreciate it if your customers chose you over the big chain? You’re supporting the local economy rather than lining the pockets of big companies. And you’ll also be avoiding the fees that those “five dollar logo” websites charge you for using their service.
Here’s the kicker, those big websites that allow you to edit templates, hire designers through or generate logos? You don’t always own the work created there and you could pay to use the service itself, making the process more expensive. This is problematic for a lot of reasons, but one of my gripes with this is that you aren’t getting a custom, unique design. If you’re spending your hard earned money on a design you want it to be something original and made specifically for your use-case.
