Small to medium businesses are continually looking at ways to tighten the belt and save both time and money. Traditionally, small business owners were limited to two options when branding their business – either create a logo, business card and other collateral yourself or hire a design agency to do it for you.
There are obviously pros and cons to both options, but by far the negatives outweigh the benefits. So, in 2014 how can a new small business get the visual presence it both wants and needs without a DYI job or an excessively expensive and cumbersome design agency?
The answer?
Crowdsourcing design through a pool of highly experience freelance graphic design professionals from around the globe!
There are many benefits of freelance graphic design jobs - some obvious and some not so obvious. Maybe these points will convince you that crowdsourcing your business design via DesignCrowd is not only better and faster – but also more creative.
Speed
The top benefit for freelance logo design is the time it takes to receive both initial design concepts and the final design. Within hours of posting a brief, the freelance graphic design community on DesignCrowd will start to submit design concepts for you to peruse. Compare this to an agency, where it could takes days or weeks for the numerous gears and cogs to turn and initial concept to be ready.
Cost
How much do you want to spend for your new businesses graphic design? You'll need a logo, a business card, a website and possibly even hard copy material such as flyers of brochures. Getting all these designed starts to add up when you use a traditional design agency and realistically, small business owners don't have the skills or inclination to start creating all this material themselves.
Opting for the crowdsourcing option using the freelance design professionals on DesignCrowd means you can set your own budget for each project you create. You can spend as little as $130 on a business card design or as much as you want. The good news is, crowdsourcing offers tangible value for money – the more you spend, the more designs you get and the more choice you have.
Review designers
Before any design project, it's always a good idea to review previous work from the freelancer. When you go to a design agency, there is no doubt they will hand pick the best work the agency has done and give you the sales spiel. By using DesignCrowd, you automatically have access to all the designs a designer has submitted previously – simply jump onto their profile page in our designer directory and pick a designer you like – you can invite them to your project, there and then.
Freedom
This isn't freedom for you, but rather freedom for the designer – which of course is good for you. Designers in creative agencies are limited by agency mentality, protocol and bureaucracy – they get feedback from senior levels, which in the end define the final graphic design outcome.
By working with a freelance graphic designer on DesignCrowd you know the designer can follow your brief and use their creative flair to develop a design that not only meets your needs, but is also inspiring, beautiful and memorable. They can work with you to create something that really resembles your business and won't railroad you into something that in the end, you feel uncomfortable with.
Designer/Customer Communication
Let's take the hassle out of the brief and feedback. Everyone knows the biggest pain in the design process for both customers and designers is the feedback rounds. DesignCrowd helps to manage this process by proving a seamless system which lets you provide feedback and design reviews directly to designers (rather than through some kind of project manager) – this means changes are made more quickly and there is nothing lost in translation between you, the project manager and designer.
Ongoing relationships
So, you launch a project on DesignCrowd for a price you are comfortable with, you receive your first designs within hours and have provided feedback and chosen a winner within a week or so. Now, the designer that you worked with was great – they were attentive, polite, super talented and on the other side of the planet.
DesignCrowd provides the ability to form relationships with a pool of professional designers from around the globe that otherwise would be inaccessible. Once these relationships are formed, the designers get to know your business, your needs and the quality of work only improves. Many of our customers have provided reviews and testimonials which showcase not only the simplicity of the platform, but the willingness of our design community to provide the highest level of design service.
Written by Clancy Clarke on Thursday, May 15, 2014
Clancy is the Organic Search manager at DesignCrowd. Clancy has over 7 years of online marketing experience and a passion for analytics. Get in touch via Google+.
