Hi, my name is Tim with TM Media Design, I am one of the creative directors and owner of the design firm.
What I want to talk about today is what I think you should look for when hiring a creative design firm. Now, the first thing that comes to people’s mind is to look at the portfolio and yes, that is definitely a priority. You do want to take a good look at some of the different projects the design firm has produced and usually that is represented on a website. A good design firm should have a website in this day of age to be able to show you different works and different projects they have completed.
Another thing you want to find out is you want to understand and get some details on exactly what their creative process is and find out what happens from start to finish. That is extremely important. You can find a lot of firms that will eat up a lot of your time and money if they don’t have a good creative process setup. They can go basically 30 miles down a road you didn’t want to go 1 mile down on a creative direction; so, you really want to look at that.
Time Lines – you really want to get a feel that the firm is realistic on their time line. All I can say on that is use your common sense. If they say they can do a 60 page magazine in 2 days, chances are they it’s not gonna get done. So use your own common sense on that. Also, you want to find out how their budgeting works – do they seem realistic in their budgeting. Now, a good design firm will ask you basically point blank – what is your budget? And I know a lot of firms, especially companies that have never dealt with a design firm, kinda step back and say “why do you want to know that?”
Well, what they’re trying to find out is #1, they’re trying to find out if you’re realistic in what you’re talking about and if you understand a little bit of the value of some of the work that’s created. So, for instance, you come in and you want a 20 page catalog and you want to spend $50, of course chances are the design firms are going to say “sorry, we can’t touch that.”
So that’s one thing they’re trying to find out. Another thing they’re trying to find out is the level of expectations from the client. Regardless of what the project is, it can be a flier, a large catalog – to try get a feel of the expectations of that project, it’s definitely a good to have an idea of the budget. For instance, there’s a small company (a small accounting firm, a small local service) that needs a brochure, that can fairly be inexpensive. If it’s the same project and it has to be approved by 100 different people in IBM corporate, then that project can take 2 years to complete; so, that’s another reason why they’re asking just to get a level of expectations from the client.
A third thing they’re trying to find out is – there’s probably about 300 different ways to approach a project; so, what they’re trying to find out as well is – chances are the company that’s dealing with the design firm doesn’t have a huge education in graphics or what’s possible and depending on a project there are many ways we can approach it and manipulate the project – so that’s another reason why they might ask about the budget, because they might not be able to do some things or go down a certain direction, but they might be able to present you with another process that would meet your budget.
Last thing is and I think it’s the most important thing is you want to find out how the communication is setup and how the communication is processed between the firm and the client. You want to really make sure that the design firm is really going to take charge and communicating with you effectively and making sure they’re getting all your feedback and information.
That is what you are paying for right there in my mind. Our design firm can have some of the best designers in the world, but if we don’t get on the same page with our client, chances are we’re going to have a large failure on our hands. So you really want to make sure their whole process – and this incorporates with the creative process as well – you really want to find out how about they go about doing business, how they communicate with clients, manage the projects and again go from beginning to end of the project.
And that’s pretty much it. I’ll have some more videos out getting into more details of different topics later on down the road. I hope this was helpful. You can contact us at info [at] tmmediainc.com or you can visit us on the web at www.tmmediainc.com. Thank you very much.
Tags: creative design, dallas graphic design firm, graphic design firm, picking a graphic design firm, what to look for graphic design
