When you hire a brand designer for your business, you want to make sure you work with someone you click with.
Someone whose work you admire and who you trust to bring your vision to life while also adding some of their designer magic.
Much like hiring a web designer, there are a few things I recommend doing first to make sure you find the brand designer who is right for you. If you’re interested, you can check out the post about hiring a web designer here.
A brand designer needs to understand your unique brand message
When you’ve built and evolved a business over many years you’ve cultivated great skills in serving your customers and clients.
This makes sense as it’s your sole focus. But when you’re in something so deeply it can be hard to take a step back and look at everything you’ve built.
It can be hard to step back and celebrate your wins and look at how far you’ve come, but it can also be hard to figure out how your business is perceived by new people, what their first impressions are.
If you are at a point where you have a feeling that how you’re representing your business isn’t actually a true reflection of the work that you do, you probably already know that your branding and the design you use to showcase your business needs to be looked at and refreshed.
This is where a brand designer comes in. It’s their job to be able to get to know you and your business and how you serve your customers, your ethos, your values and how you operate.
And then encapsulate all of this in a unique brand that you can go on and implement in your business’s marketing and communication.
Hiring a brand designer
Taking the step to hire a brand designer can be kind of daunting. You’re inviting someone in and showcasing what you do and hoping that the work they produce will be a true reflection of your business and will feel really aligned to you and your vision.
So of course you want to work the designer who will put in the time to get to know you get to know your business goals and what you’re looking for. And that they will also make sure that they listen to you and take your feedback on board so you are inherently involved in the design process and can feel ownership and pride of the final results.
To help make the process of hiring a brand designer easier, it’s good to go into those initial consultation calls with designers as prepared as you can be.
That’s why I created the brand style quiz! It gives you a chance to uncover the unique visual and strategic style that will position you as credible and trusted in the eyes of your ideal clients.
Take the quiz to discover the brand style that will attract better clients to your business.
Choose the answer that resonates with you the most
Now onto the brand designer themselves…
Here’s what I recommend to look for when hiring a brand designer.
➔ Check out their reviews
It’s always good to see how previous clients felt about working with a particular designer. Check out the testimonials on their website or even better if they have Google reviews, have a read through those.
It will be very illuminating to see the reviews a designer has on a public platform.
You can see my Google Reviews here.
➔ Design style
Hiring a brand designer whose style resonates with you is so important.
Deep dive into their portfolio to really see if their work would suit your business (you can see my portfolio here). Designers are, of course, excellent at adapting their work to make sure it fulfils the brief a client gives them, but it’s always good to at least like the type of work they have already done.
This will ensure that you’re starting your project in a place where your taste and your designer’s taste overlap. This will make giving feedback to your designer during the project feel a lot easier as you know you are both on the same page.
You won’t be fundamentally unhappy with the designs they show you, you just might need to give the designer a few notes to get the design you’re looking for. This type of collaborative and positive relationship will produce the brand of your dreams!
➔ Using the brand once the project is finished
Another important thing to think of when hiring a brand designer is how they will set you up to use the brand in the future once the project is finished.
I make sure to set up social media and presentation templates in Canva for my clients that can be customised and reused. It’s all well and good having a beautiful brand designed for your business but if you or your team can’t use it in a streamlined way then it’s not going to fulfil it’s potential for your business. So ask your designer how easy will they make it for you to use your brand.
My client Ciara found the social media templates I created for her so helpful. They saved her so much time and headspace. And when she even started working with a social media manager they were really impressed. Read more about Ciara’s experience here.
And of course sometimes, even if your designer provides templates for you, you won’t have time to customise them and use them yourself. In this case, you can usually hire your designer for an hourly or agreed upon rate to continue to create assets and designs that you will need as your business grows.
If this is the route you’re more likely to take, it’s important to make sure you choose a designer who you can see yourself having a long-term relationship with. If you’re going to be working with a designer on an on-going basis, you want them to be someone you trust and someone you like working with.
Am I the right brand designer for you?
I work with ambitious female service providers and I specialise in taking them from being hidden gems in their industries to being high-impact brands.
What I mean by high-impact brand is that they make a strong impression with the right people and ultimately get booked by better quality clients.
If that sounds like you and you’d like to have a chat with me, get in touch.
If you’ve taken the brand style quiz and would like to discuss the results with me, make sure to book a 15 minute strategy call with me. The link will be in the follow up email you receive.
