By Rachel Won / 6 Jan 2020 / Tags: Entrepreneur Journey

There are many grades of designers, what you are paying for are the clarity of the designer’s mind, experience and skillsets. You have to pay for the designs if you want quality design work. STOP asking free designs from designers as they need to pay for their bills as well.

When you go and visit your doctor, did you ask him to give you free medicine and consultation?

If you don’t, then please don’t ask your designer to do free work. Designers are professional as well. We have proper design education and certifications as well. We need to constantly upgrading ourselves and skillsets.

As I mentioned earlier, there are many grades of designers out there. Are you able to identify and pick the right designer for your project?

As we are designers, we create our own portfolios are our sales kits to attract the type of customers that we want. Each designer is unique and they have our own design style, design skillsets and we will respond to you differently. BTW, Interior designer IS NOT graphic designer lol 😀

Let me identify 3 main groups:
1) Newbie Designer
2) Experienced Designer
3) Expert Designer

1. Newbie Designer
Newbie Designers are the ones, who just graduate from school or they have 1-2 years of working experience. They can design but they are not competent yet. They will give you special offers, lower their price just to get the deals because they want to build their portfolio to impress their next client. The quality of the work may be raw and not up to the industry standards, you need to work many more times with them to get what you want. Probably you won’t find them the 2nd time.

2. Experienced Designer
Experienced Designers are able to design well; their design knowledge and skills have strengthened as they have many years of experience. However, they may just design what you want, nothing more or nothing less. They may not be able to value-add unless they try to understand your business. They know how to charge you at market price. You can expect 3-5 times of changes to get what you want. It is a more like a transnational relationship.

3. Expert Designer
Expert Designers are very knowledgeable; they know industry standards and their stuff very well. They are constantly value-adding the prospects and clients. They give right advice and sometimes show the clients the right way to do things. You need to pay them a premium price for the value that they give. They will go extra mile for you and making sure the projects run well at the end of the day. You trust them, building a long-term relationship and they become your friend.

It is your call to decide what kind of designers you want to work with and it is also the designer’s choice to decide what kind of projects, to go into his/her clientele list.

You need to know what you are paying for when you talk to a designer. When your expectations are not met, the outcome is going to be ugly. Choose wisely.

Every industry has black sheep. Some inexperienced designers use some other experienced designers’ portfolio and claim to be his/hers.

How do you identify the right kind of designer?
•   They care for your project by asking you lots of questions.
•  They give advice from their own personal experiences.
•  They share what kind of design projects they have done in details and give you clear answers on what did they do, their learning journey and how they value-add their customers.
•  They follow-up with you.
•  They make you feel that they are interested in your project and want to value-add in the project.

There is nothing wrong to choose a newbie designer as you might not have the budget or you don’t know what exactly you want, it is more for experimenting reason. When you are serious/value about your business or your business is growing, it is more advisable to get an experienced or expert designer to help you. They know what they are doing. They can save you time and money in a long run.

Tada, I hope you will be able to find the suitable designer that you want to work with for your next branding, websites/app that relates to your brand. All the best to your project’s success 😊 Next post, I will share how to identify the right client for you.

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