Looking for a Sign Mockup specialist

[Robert Lambie]

There is an abundance of Freelance graphic designers out there, but important factors in employing one are:

• Are they any good?
  My experience in interviewing graphic designers, face-to-face, is that the vast majority have gone through college or whatever courses are available and if they pass, they now look on themselves as qualified, so they want the going rate for a qualified designer… in actual fact, most are Crap! There is a big difference in designing signs, shop fronts, van graphics and artic truck size wraps, to a business card or A4 leaflet. 😏
  The real issue is that they have zero “real-world experience” and want to take many hours to come up with bad-to-average sign layouts.
• Deciding on who to use.
  Around 8 years ago, I had over 180 applicants for one graphic designer job. I was not interviewing that lot! 🤨
  What I did was…
  * Bulk email them all a list of different design tasks. I gave six!
  Many do not entertain it and do not respond. Great, you have eliminated the lazy!
  * Based on those that did, select the best of the bunch and give them some questions on the designs and how or why they did what they did.
  Many will not bother to reply because they have been winging it or have pinched ideas and designs online. Great, you have eliminated fake and dishonest!
  * Those you have remaining, give them another design task, but also for them to explain what software they used and why they gave the design in response to your design task?
  Again, this will filter down the volume to only those hungry for the job.
  * In the end event, I whittled it down to about 12, then brought those in for an interview, and I started two of them, when I only had plans for one. Luckily for me, I had to dismiss one of them after 4 months for having a terrible attitude toward customers.
• How busy are they?
  If they are freelance, you are just one of many customers. Where in the queue are you when a customer is waiting on their next design revision?
• How quickly do they work? EG…
  GUY A charges £1 an hour.
  GUY B charges £2 per hour.
  But GUY A takes 6 hours to complete the same job as GUY B completes in 2 hours.
• Are you the middleman between them and the client, or do they work directly representing your company?
• Will they work in tandem with you, but as a freelancer, and be paid directly by your customer?
• Costs: Do they charge by the hour, by the artwork revision, or in groups of artwork tasks?
• Are they paid on completion of providing their artwork, or when you have provided the end product?

If dealing directly with your client, as your company representative,

Is their dialogue and interaction as professional as their design work?
Will they try and curb design processes to keep within a budget and time, to get the job moved to manufacturing?

The list goes on…

For me and my company, subbing graphic design work to a freelancer just isn’t practical. But it might work well for others.