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10 questions you should ask yourself before selecting a graphic design firm
- Is the design firm local?
Local, in the age of the internet, is as far away from you as your nearest computer. Computers and the “Information Super Highway” have revolutionized the design and print industries so much so that they are unrecognizable from their predecessors. Having said that, it can be very beneficial to be physically local to your designer too.
If you want to sit down next to your designer and go through some ideas in person it is easy to do this if you are local. Your designer can also come to you if you prefer that. If you are in Slough and your designer is in Romania you can not just drop in without great expense to yourself. Lets face it, you are unlikely to do this unless you are spending millions of pounds and the designer is the best and most recognized in a particular field. This scenario will not affect most people.
The internet can also hide a multitude of sins. A website can look very flashy and give the appearance of being a big design studio. The web designer may have “borrowed” designs from other companies to populate their portfolio. They may have false pictures of their personnel with impressive write-ups on each. They may have a photo of a big office with their logo on the sign. This can of course all be fake and placed on the site to give you a confident feeling that you are dealing with a real company. The company may well be real, it’s just not so easy to tell if you can’t just drop by.
If you deal with a design firm on the internet you need to do a certain amount of due diligence prior to parting with your money. Check their testimonials. Make sure these are real companies. Have they got contact information on their site? Do they publish a phone number? Does it ring? Does anyone answer it? How is it answered? Do they publish a real company ID number? You can check this at Companies House. What about a VAT number? If they are a real company they are legally required to display their VAT registration on their website. Google the company name, see if anyone has had bad experiences with the business. (If you find bad press but it is only one or two, this may not be a great indicator because it may well be a smear from a rival or one unhappy customer in several thousand). The top spot in the search engine is not a recommendation that the company holding the spot is the best in their field. It is just an indication that they know more than their rivals about getting to the top of the search engines. Design skill and business ethics are not measured by the placement number in a particular search engine.
Working with a company over the internet can be very rewarding too, on a number of levels. Your time is precious and the less time spent visiting people or being visited by people the better. If you can write and commit to text a vision from your mind then you will be able to save a lot of time. Make sure you write clearly though because a designer will need to translate your vision into a design.
You can also phone your design team and speak direct with them. This can be a lot easier than writing but again can cause problems if the designer has not written down your direction clearly. They may forget vital instructions or misunderstand points you have made. Speaking can be better than writing but if you are good at writing this can be better than speaking.
The cost savings can also be significant too. You would expect to pay someone less on the net than you would working with them locally in person. Costs are reduced significantly.
If you work with a local business you can also check their credentials. You can see if they are members of any professional groups like the Chamber of Commerce. If things go wrong for you it is easier to get a resolution from a company that practices good business ethics. This is not always possible to find out if working with a business over the net.
In summary, if you work with a local company over the net you have the best of both worlds. When considering local and what it means, local businesses are UK based for UK companies. It may be possible to save a few quid buying from outside of the UK but those cost savings can evaporate instantly if things go wrong. You could well be working in false economies. British designers are amongst the best trained in the world and highly educated. They also understand the British culture and in the creative arts it is very important that the designer can connect with your target market.
- Does the designer speak your language?
This may seem like an obvious thing to ensure when dealing with someone for procuring graphic design services. You will of course make sure that your designer speaks your language. How stupid to suggest otherwise.
You might think you are working with a native English speaker because the website is written so well. The emails you get from the company are also coherent. Bad news could well be lurking around the corner for you in spite of these positives. For instance, the designer of the website may not be the same outfit you are using for your design. They may have outsourced this work to a freelance web designer. The emails you get may not be from a designer at all but from someone who has no design experience. The emails could even be auto responders, written once and delivered thousands of times. It’s hard to tell isn’t it? Many internet based design firms outsource their work to Eastern Europe or Asia. The benefit here is that the cost of living is far lower and the wages paid are very low indeed. As long as the firm has someone that can communicate with the actual designers, it can be seamless to you, the customer.
If your design firm uses cheap outsourced labour, the work can still be of a very high standard. This is so with the highly educated Asian countries like India or some of the more progressive Eastern European countries. The problems begin though when trying to make an outsourced designer understand a cultural image. Or trying to get them to have a connection through the design with your target market. If these things are not bad enough you could also find yourself in a legal wrangle should the freelance designer “borrow” some ideas for your design from someone else. It’s easy for the designer to cut and run leaving you high and dry with someone else’s design and a trademark battle.
Not all UK designers are out of your price range. Some are very competitive specializing in small to medium sized businesses and the work is second to none.
Make sure your designer speaks your language, it may well save you money and heartache in the long run.
- What is your budget?
If you have a bottomless pit of money, ignore this point and move on to the next one. Most people do not fall into this category though and need to spend their money wisely so please read on.
If you choose a designer that charges you by the hour it is very hard to estimate what the final cost will be for the work undertaken. For the designer this is the best way to work because they get to write the cheques as they see them. You can be charged for a phone call or for making a late change or even changing stuff that was missed at the proof reading stage. The costs can soon mount with no end in view. Pretty scary when you think about it. It can of course also work in your favour. If the designer is fast and 100% accurate and understands exactly what you are talking about first time and makes no errors at all the cost could well be low. Experience tells us though that this is more miss than hit. Most of us are mere mortals. It is unlikely you will find such a perfect human specimen and if you do please let me have their number.
So working with a designer on an hourly rate might sound like a bargain but do remember that you pay for every error they make. You also have no control over their speed. Don’t worry though because more and more, designers are pricing their services differently.
Fixed price graphic design is a godsend to a small business. You know up front what something is going to cost you and you can budget for the work accordingly. Small businesses manage their funds much tighter than large companies and government bodies responsible for spending our money. Small companies get more for their money because they must to survive. If you know what something is going to cost, you can also measure the return on investment. Again, this is very important to a small business in a highly competitive market.
Fixed prices for standard products like logo design, brochure design, stationery design and other common marketing materials has made accessibility to these services much easier. In the past, only companies with an impressive marketing budget could afford such necessities. Not anymore. Fixed price graphic design work makes it easy for a company to set a budget for marketing materials and stick to it. Companies can build these costs into their business plans and really measure the return on investment.
When looking for a design studio or designer to work with, make sure they quote you a fixed fee.
- Are you on a deadline?
Most graphic designers know the importance of deadlines on the success of a clients project. Some don’t! If you are on a deadline you need to make sure your designer understands how important it is to you that they complete the work in the agreed timescale.
Ensure your designer is on the same page as you are because any misunderstanding can lead to the failure of your project due to a missed deadline. Deadlines are not approximations. They are finite and if missed mean the failure of the project. For instance, you may have a deadline to meet by providing an advertisement layout for a magazine that will publish on a Friday. They may need the artwork in the correct format supplied to them on the previous Wednesday prior to the Friday publish date. If your designer does not deliver your artwork to you until Thursday, a day before, you are dead in the water. You have missed your deadline and you may well still be required to pay for the ad space that you bought in the magazine. That’s a double whammy.
Your graphic designer needs to make it clear to you how long it will take them to provide you with your initial design choices. They also need to make it clear to you how long it will take them to make changes for you. Some of the timing is in your hands because you will need to respond back to the designer in a timely fashion. If you leave things to the last minute and the designer has already explained that it takes them 2 days to make changes, the fault for missing the deadline rests with you. So be aware that you have some of the responsibility in meeting the deadline.
If all goes as promised, the designer delivers on time and you respond on time you will be able to meet your deadlines. If you need a faster service than the designer normally provides, just ask them. It may be possible for the designer to make your project a higher priority than their other work. Some designers will charge you extra for this service and others will not. Find a designer that works to the timescales you are comfortable with. Although your designer may give you the impression that you are their only customer, if they are any good at what they do you will not be. This means your work is in a schedule and may not be in progress at the exact times you think it is. If you need to change your deadline, let the designer know at the first instance possible. This will give you the maximum chance of beating your deadline.
In summary, make sure you understand the timescales that the design studio works to. If you need better support, ask for it. Don’t let yourself be the cause of missed deadlines by getting feedback to your designer too late. Late can cost you dearly.
- Will you have to pay royalties to your designer to use your design?
Many design agencies (not all) make money from their clients long term by charging royalties for the use of a design in certain media or situations. A royalty is a payment to the designer that allows you to use the original work designed by the designer. A royalty payment can be paid on a use by use basis or as a yearly retainer to the designer. This effectively locks you into the designers services for the lifetime of the design. In respect to logo design this can literally be a lifetime.
Another way of charging you extra without calling it a royalty is for the designer to retain the master source file of your design. If you need the master file for any other design work and you want to use a different designer, you will have to pay the designer to hand over the source file. Kind of like a ransom. This protects the designers business because they know that if you want to use a different designer it will cost you a lot of money. They have affectively locked you into their services for life. Of course you can pay the piper and release yourself by paying a one off fee for the source file.
If royalties are being charged then you will need to negotiate with the designer an agreeable sum to release you from the royalties payments. This may well prove to be more expense than it is worth.
If you do not want the restraint of being locked into your designer for life, you need to find a design studio that does not retain any of the rights to the work they produce and do not charge you royalties for the use of your design. You may need to speak to the designer and ask them about this because their terms of business may not be as clear as you think they are.
Establish if your designer retains rights to the design. If they do then you are locked in to them. If they hand over the rights to you then you are 50% of the way there. To be 100% free from a lock in by a designer, you must be able to get the source file to the work that was created for you. Most designers will charge you extra for this but there are a few good design firms that don’t. If you find a designer that does not charge for the source file, does not charge a royalty on the usage of the design and hands over to you all the rights to the design then you have found a designer that does not lock you in to their service. This is the type of design studio that makes it easy for you to do business with short term as well as long term. This kind of flexibility is usually important to small businesses.
- Is the work guaranteed?
Many design firms do not offer a guarantee on their work because the work is of an artistic nature. Design is very subjective and what looks great to a designer may not actually appeal to you or your target market. Once your project is delivered to you, of course you will own the work providing it is royalty free. It is only natural that if you accept the work as finished that the project up to that point is finished and delivered. You have signed it off.
What if the designer has started your project and you hate the work they have done? What happens then? Well, to be frank most companies will try to solve the problem you have with the work to a point and will then start trying to charge you extra to add more designers or to start again. This of course is not ideal if you are a small business on a tight budget. It makes using a graphic designer high risk. Designers don’t mind because they get their money no matter what they turn out. It is you that loses out.
There is a growing band of design studios that are removing the risk from the customer and putting it on themselves. These design studios are so confident in the service that they offer that they take all the risk in doing business. They offer their customers 100% of their money back if they are not wowed by the completed design. All the risk of time invested in providing the design is taken by the designer because if they don’t deliver what they say they will deliver then they don’t make a penny. That is confidence and you will stand a much greater chance of success in working with a design studio that takes this kind of calculated risk.
Be warned that not all 100% money back guarantees are equal. Read the small print when a money back guarantee is offered to you. Some design firms will offer it but then sneakily charge you a handling fee or an admin fee. Once this is deducted from the initial payment you made, there might not be too much money to get back. When looking at money back guarantees, make sure you get back every penny you paid out. Otherwise, what’s the point, you are back to taking the risks.
- Are there hidden charges?
Hidden charges are rife in the graphic design industry. A product can be offered to you at a fixed fee and can look very attractive. Be warned though, many designers supplement these low prices by add-ons that are not very clear to you at the time of purchase. Lets take an example of say a logo design for your new business.
You find a company online that will design your logo for £200 plus VAT. It is a fixed fee. Everything looks above board and the price is very attractive. You are hooked. You sign up and pay your money.
The designer produces three designs for you to look at. You don’t like any of them. Just not for you. The designer goes back to the drawing board and produces another set of designs for you. This time though only 2. You now feel pressurized to select one the designs. If you do not select one, the designer will charge you £100 for a new redraw. Bang. Your first extra charge. It is on the website, but it is in the small print. More fool you for not looking the designer says. So you choose a design to move forward with and you mention you want some changes to the design. The designer carries out the changes. You go back and forth with the designer a couple more times, a colour change here or a tweak there. You ask for some additional changes. Of course you can, that will be £50 per new revision cycle. Bosh.. you have been hit up again. You are now at £150 extra on top of the original £200 spent. 75% more than you expected. If you are a big business this is not such a big amount of money but if you are a small company, this extra £150 is an unnecessary and unwelcome expense.
Always look out for a designer that will work with you to get you the design of your dreams without charging you extra for it. There are designers out there, few and far between, but they are there, that will give you an unlimited number of designs and changes without charging you a penny more for the work. They treat it as a part of doing business and rightly so. Their prices are transparent and so are their business ethics.
In summary, you should look to work with a design studio that does not charge you extra on top of the price that has been agreed regardless of the number of changes needed to get to a final product. This is normally called unlimited revisions.
- Does the designer recycle rejected or failed projects?
This is not easy to find out because as a customer you are not to know what the design firm has been working on in the past. It is however very important to ask and to get an honest answer.
The reason this is important is because if a design has been rejected by a client in the past, it has already been aired. It may not of been rejected once but many times. Several people, hundreds even could have already seen the design you are considering for a marketing push or for a company logo or brochure. The more people that have seen this image in a negative light, the less of an impact the design will have in the market. This is even truer in a niche market that is very competitive.
It is not unusual for a designer to retain the rights to any and all of the concepts that have been presented to you but this does not mean that they should use these designs for other customers if you reject them. Of course it is very tempting to do this because a lot of work has already been put in but for you this is not good. You want a piece of work that has been designed specifically for you. Has been conceived of well thought out concepts based on your market and requirements. It needs to be unique. Any piece of art that has been recycled is not unique and as such should not be passed off as unique.
In summary, you should ask your designer if they recycle jobs that have been rejected or not used for other clients. If they do, stay away. They might be evasive on this point because they don’t want to answer the question but push for them to give you an honest answer. Most people will be able to feel if the designer is being honest about this.
- How will payment be made?
Why is this important you may well be thinking. It is important because security is more important now than it has ever been. With the increase in identity theft and phishing for your bank account details, your personal information has become a valuable commodity to villains. Thieves are out there lurking and waiting to get at you and your money. Pretty scaremongering tactics you might think but internet crime is growing faster and getting more sophisticated than any other crime. Don’t do business with any company on the internet unless they have earned your trust.
It is not easy to trust a company that sells a service on the internet if you have never heard about them before. The offer may well seem too good to be true. It might be a genuine offer but then again it might not.
Some things you need to look out for are as follows:
Do they have verifiable contact details on their website?
Do they have a phone number?
Do they take calls during the working day?
Do they have company registration and VAT details on their website?
Do they belong to any safe shopper schemes, like for instance “Hacker Safe” or McAfee Site Advisor?
Do they have an SSL certificate protecting their order system? GeoTrust for instance.
Do they belong to any trade associations? For instance the Chamber of Commerce.
Do they use reputable payment processors? Paypal or Worldpay are market leaders in online payment processing but there are other reputable companies too.
Can you pay by UK cheque? Business cheque and personal cheque are good options because they must pay the money into a bank account.
Be careful of companies that take your credit card information themselves before sending you off to a secure payment system like Worldpay or Paypal. These businesses may well be trustworthy but if they get hacked, you might find your credit card information gets stolen. After all, they are designers not computer security or banking experts. Stick to design studios that use proper third party payment processors like Worldpay or Paypal. You can be confident that your payment is completely secure.
10. Should you have a single point of contact?
Your project manager knows everything about your project. Once you have spoken with your dedicated project manager, your project should progress smoothly. Design firms that look after their clients this way have much better relationships with their clients because they are available for them and know the clients projects inside out.
A project manager is a skilled customer support person who has been highly trained in graphic design and will often hold a degree in a marketing or a design related subject. A project manager should be a seamless interface between you and the design team. If you are working with a company that has just one designer, you will not be getting maximum creativity.
It is important that your project is worked on in the initial concept stages by several designers. This will allow for maximum choice, various design styles and maximum creativity. It is not to be underestimated how important this is for you because if you end up working with just one designer you will only ever see one perspective. If you don’t like the style the designer has it may well be too late to cut loose and find a new designer.
When looking to work with a design studio you should ask how many designers will be involved on your initial design choices. Never settle for just one. Also, you need to make sure that a project manager will be there for you when it comes to discussing your ideas and changes. This will make your project progress smoothly and much faster than if you are trying to speak to several designers yourself.
You should be able to tell very fast when speaking to a design company whether or not they work in a manner that suits you best or suits them best. You are of course looking for a firm that will work the way you want them to. You will get much more for your money this way.
In summary, always look for a design firm that is committed to customer care and provides you with a dedicated, single point of contact. In addition to this you need to work only with graphic design businesses that use more than one designer on every single design project. If you settle for less than this you are being short changed.
This article is copyright of Graphic Design Ltd (www.logoquality.com). Author Simon McArdle is the Managing Director. Please write to logo@logoquality.com to ask permission to use this article in part or in full. |
