Choosing a good designer - What to look for?
De BISAWiki
Let’s face it, it’s never going to be an easy task looking for a good designer. There are a lot of affordable graphic designers that are readily available but more often than not, they are out for good references. This market can be quite confusing. The question is – what is the correct graphic design?
Anyone can work with PhotoShop but does this make him or her a good designer? There are all sorts of graphic design qualifications that can be obtained – this, too, doesn’t necessarily mean you are a good designer. Design is being, an object, an organism……an entity.
The customer will submit an outline of ideas of which, a good designer must be creative with. There’s no point in being over creative, designs also need to be put into context. While all this needs to be taken onboard, most importantly, a good designer will have to cope with financial and time constraints. A good designer would have mastered all of these areas.
Customers have control of how their own business works. The customer can always get caught up too much in the thought process, as they are heavily involved in the project. That’s why it’s always good to have someone with fresh eyes to see things that the customer may have over-looked.
“Innovation” is a word commonly used by a lot of companies – either in brochures, magazines or on websites. There’s a difference between being innovative and creative. Being creative means getting the best of the given outlines/constraints. Being innovative means thinking above and beyond the given limitations/boundaries. A good designer will know what vital questions to ask customers. A bond and trust needs to develop between the designer and the customer. Once this has been establish, then together the boundaries can be broken.
A good designer of course needs inspiration, creativity and motivation is also the key. Most importantly a good designer needs to be in touch with what’s going on around. In-tune to what is evolving – this will need to be passed on to the customer who may not be aware. This happens a lot.
A good designer needs to take into account a customer’s strategy, and market position. The design needs to generate sales, revenue and get the point across to their target market. Choose wisely, choose carefully is my advice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Keith McGregor is a partner of Strawberrysoup, a web design agency with offices in Chichester and Bournemouth. Strawberrysoup specialise in creative web design, content managed websites, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and graphic design
