Article Written By: M. Cusack
Getting fantastic results in any area of business is as much about choosing the right partner as about having any innate knowledge yourself. As a supermarket owner, you can know plenty about what goes into a fantastic cake, but you'll still depend on your baked goods supplier to implement strong quality control procedures, keep their equipment to food safety standards and deliver their products at the time they said they would. The same is true of logo design or, indeed, any graphic design your business needs done, from business card design to posters to billboards to signage. It is far more important to know what to expect, than to know much about it yourself. Here are the top five tips every business needs! Choose Based on the Graphic Designer's Overall PresentationSometimes when choosing a supplier, you can safely forgive a poorly presented website or a lacklustre personal appearance, if they can deliver the goods. However, choosing a firm is not one of those times! If they're good, they'll apply their own knowledge to every aspect of their company's presentation. And remember that every graphic design team has a 'style' that they excel in. If their personal style looks well, but absolutely what you wouldn't want for yourself, think again before hiring. Look at Portfolio Quality, Not QuantityOften, having an enormous portfolio says more about the company's pricing than the quality of their work. The lower-end firms make your logo or business card design a hit-and-miss affair, do you really want that for your business? Do They Ask Good Questions?Nobody in this world can read your mind, and graphic design outsourcing is not the time where you'll want people to start trying! If the firm doesn't ask lots of relevant (sometimes even seemingly pointless!) questions, chances are you'll get something that they think looks good, not something you like. Client Testimonial QualityHave a good look through their client testimonials, and remember that it is possible to damn a company with faint praise. Testimonials that seem a little underwhelming might indicate that they will leave you a little underwhelmed. Know Your DeliverablesAt the time of ordering most companies think only about the physical product being delivered to their stores. However, 'life happens' in business, and it happens often! You may need to change a staff name in your design. You might want to switch out a logo down the track. You might realise over time that your design was based on inappropriate colours. You might want to use it in an big format (like, billboard size). In all of these cases, the actual deliverables of a graphic design project will matter to your company in the future. Your deliverables could include: - The design itself in PDF format- Vector versions of logos- The photos used - The names of the Pantone colours used in your logo- A branding scheme that guides how future graphic design elements should be createdOriginal design files are rarely included in deliverables, but this may be negotiated at the project's inception with a willing firm. The Yellow Pages and Google are great starting places for graphic design firm research, but your choice should involve much more than this.
This Article Has Been Published on Mon, 16 May 2011 and Read 227 Times