Freelance designers is usually a highly effective asset to your design workforce. Whether or not you’re an entrepreneur simply getting began with design work on your startup, or the advertising and marketing director of a longtime firm, belief us: you should utilize freelance designers in your workforce.

We are saying this from expertise. Our crew at 99designs consists of a small, in-home workforce and a broader community of freelancers from our web site. This combine affords us construction and administration on one aspect, and suppleness and contemporary inventive stream on the opposite.

Why use freelance designers?
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First issues first: what’s the distinction between a full time designer and a contract one? If we have been to boil it down to at least one phrase, it’s compensation. A full time employee will get a wage with advantages and works on a typical forty-hour week schedule, whereas a freelancer will get compensated on a per-challenge foundation and has flexibility in figuring out work schedule and placement. This makes freelancers cheaper to make use of, as they solely receives a commission for productive work—no downtime or paid day without work.
Freelancers are additionally an excellent alternative when the stream of design work is uneven and also you want flexibility. In case you’re a advertising supervisor and are already working with an in-home crew, you possibly can leverage freelancers to increase the capabilities of the staff in peak workloads. And in case you’re an entrepreneur, you may get freelance designers to work across the clock for you when you may have a dozen of design deliverables inside a brief-time span.
One other advantage of working with freelancers is that they bring about their contemporary design aesthetics into the combo. Should you really feel such as you’re caught in a rut, there’s nothing higher than a brand new pair of eyes to deal with a undertaking and produce one thing out of the atypical.
Freelancers sound nice, you could assume. So, what’s the catch? Properly, it might be harder to handle and coordinate their work. Don’t fret, although; we’re right here to point out you the step-by-step of making your excellent freelance design staff.

Creating your dream freelance workforce in 6 steps.
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1. Construct the proper crew primarily based on current and future wants.

Earlier than hiring your workforce—whether or not in-home, freelance, or a mixture—it's essential scope out the objectives and key deliverables of the design crew within the quick, medium and lengthy-time period.
Subsequent, assess the precedence stage, complexity stage and repeatability of the duties and deliverables you outlined. On this course of you'll uncover the appropriate place for freelancers in your staff.

Freelance a small design staff

When you’re an entrepreneur simply getting began, or a one-individual, a number of-hat-carrying small-enterprise celebrity, you might discover that one or two freelancers can function your complete design group. On this case, you (or an worker) ought to act because the inventive director, to make sure that the work they do is on-model.
One nice method to discover the precise designers is to host a design contest on your logo or product packaging. You may then select to proceed working along with your successful designer (and perhaps even among the different finalists!) through one-to-one tasks.

Use freelance designers to complement your in-home staff

For those who’re operating a big division, it may be much less clear make use of freelancers successfully.
99designs has provide you with a hybrid mannequin that enables us to take advantage of each our in-home inventive crew and the freelance designers on our platform. Be at liberty to steal our concepts! Or, if you wish to make it even simpler on your self, try 99designs Professional, which is able to construct your freelance design group for you and assist handle it!
Our in-home group consists of a senior and junior artwork director, who work on administration duties—excessive-degree technique, model steerage and processes—in addition to on excessive-complexity, excessive-precedence initiatives, which want extra rigorous undertaking administration efforts and will embody many inner conferences.
We additionally work with the freelance designers on our platform via each design contests and tasks.
When we've got a mission that requires many concepts, or is versatile in its deliverables, we are going to run a contest. It’s an effective way to generate concepts that we could by no means have considered. For instance, as part of our “Design is International” marketing campaign final 12 months, we gave away desktop and cellular backgrounds with artistic quotes. Our contest yielded all kinds of wonderful entries and a number of winners:We additionally work with designers in a single-to-one initiatives. Typically we'll search via portfolios to seek out somebody who has a selected design fashion for a one-off challenge. There are additionally designers we work with over and over, who're acquainted with our model pointers. We use these designers to do issues like design advertising and marketing collateral and create photographs for our weblog. We preserve the perfect of those designers on retainer to make sure we will use them on excessive-precedence, final minute initiatives.

2. Vet freelancers properly.

When you perceive who your splendid hires are, the following step is, properly, hiring them.
The portfolio is your place to begin to judge if the designer is an effective match on your wants. Earlier than you dive into it, it’s all the time a good suggestion to stipulate the important thing visible particulars and expectations, so you possibly can refer again to your necessities as you take a look at portfolios.
The method shouldn’t cease on the portfolio. Significantly if the objective is to work with the freelancer within the lengthy-time period, you additionally have to assess the massive image. Past design expertise, additionally essential are communication talents, reliability, comfortable abilities and tradition-match. You possibly can create a scorecard of all of the traits which can be vital to you, and have your self (and your staff) consider every potential designer accordingly, in an goal, comparable approach.
Taking the time to guage and actually get to know your freelance designers is useful not just for deciding whether or not to work with them or not, but additionally for understanding their type and limitations so you possibly can assign initiatives accurately. For example, you shouldn’t give a typesetting or e-mail venture to an illustrator except they ask particularly for it or you've got time on our aspect. Know your designer’s strengths and use that power.

three. Arrange a communication construction that works.

When you carry your designers onboard, you should make sure that they've entry to all the important thing documentation and instruments to provide their work. Take into consideration each design instruments (Sketch, Photoshop and many others.) and productiveness and communication ones (Slack, video conferencing software program and many others.) Grant them entry the place potential, or work out alternate options.
Quite a lot of the time, working with freelancers implies that they’re working remotely and there are doable time-zone variations. Ensure that to consider time-lags and pay attention to when your freelancer will or will be unable to speak. It’s all the time a good suggestion to determine upfront contact-factors in between the beginning and the handover of the undertaking, so you'll be able to share suggestions and steer them in the best path.
Higher but, you should use the time-zone variations to your benefit. When my crew at day100 was working with Berlin-based mostly freelancers, we used the 6-hour time zone distinction (the tip of their workdays was roughly the start of ours) to principally work across the clock. Utilizing communication platforms like Slack additionally makes retaining in contact with distant groups considerably quicker and smoother.

four. Give them particulars. And extra particulars.

Designers will not be thoughts-readers. It's your job to offer all of them the data to familiarize them with the model and with the necessities of the mission they’re engaged on. So don’t be shy when sharing suggestions! Your freelancer will respect clear communication, and, in the event that they’re not assembly your requisitions from the beginning, they now have the possibility to make it proper.
Upfront, ensure that to share along with your freelancers the model fashion information in order that they perceive the fundamentals of your model. Don’t overlook that the three C’s: cohesiveness, consistency and readability, are key to constructing a profitable, acknowledged model. When you get too many cooks within the kitchen with out a lot course, you might find yourself with an inconsistent model that's not reflecting one distinctive message to your purchasers. The model tips, coupled with visible examples of do’s and don’t’s, helps to mitigate the freelancers’ preliminary lack of understanding of your model.
Relating to every deliverable, a detailed transient is a should. That is the doc that freelancers will probably be referring again to continually as their “cheat sheet”, so don’t underestimate it. When doubtful about whether or not you’re giving your freelancers sufficient particulars in regards to the mission, extra is best. Ideally, create a structured template containing components like description, targets, examples, due dates and many others., which you'll be able to reuse for every temporary.

5. Talk about the $$$.

You undoubtedly don’t need to go away the pricing dialog to the tip of the mission. Make it possible for that is coated in your first chat with the freelancer. To find out the value, contemplate completely different information factors, for instance ask them what they consider is truthful, do your market analysis, and calculate what number of hours of labor the challenge might take. When you focus on and agree on a determine with them, put all the pieces right into a contract — this protects either side. If the scope or size of the undertaking modifications down the road, make sure that you additionally think about and focus on how this impacts the beforehand agreed pricing.

6. Belief them.

When you’ve performed all the above accurately, fretting over the work won't do anybody any good. Belief the designer; in spite of everything, there was a purpose that you just determined to work with them within the first place. Relying on the criticality of the undertaking, it’s clever to have a plan B in case issues go south.

Able to create a contract staff? Go for it.

If you happen to’re an entrepreneur simply getting began, the wisest strategy it to take the design course of incrementally. Maybe you'll be able to run a contest on 99designs to supply the primary design deliverable reminiscent of a brand. In case you actually like a designer from that challenge, you may transfer from contests to 1:1 designers. Ideally, these designers could have a broad, multidisciplinary background, and subsequently be a beneficial asset for a broad vary of design tasks you'll face in your startup’s development.
In the event you’re a advertising supervisor, think about augmenting your staff with a contract community. This is not going to solely clean out the workload and provide the additional bandwidth when your staff is totally occupied, but in addition it could simply deliver your complete division to a brand new stage of experimentation and creativity.