How to Hire a Freelance Designer?
Being accessible online as a business is essential. As a result, many businesses hire freelance designers to create their websites, mobile apps and other branding material. By doing this, businesses can get access to highly skilled and experienced talent and save costs on hiring in-house.
However, when businesses look into hiring freelance designers, they have to know exactly what to look out for. There are many different designers specializing in unique fields. Some of these include:
UX designers
UI UX freelance designer focus on the interaction between real human users and websites or apps. They include elements in their design that make using sites and apps easy and accessible.
UI designers
These designers create all the screens through which users will move while using a site or app, while also creating the visual elements that make the movement possible.
Web designers
Web designers create the design and layout of websites or web pages. It can mean working on a new website or updating an existing site.
Mobile designers
These developers develop apps for use on mobile devices such as cellular phones or tablets.
Visual designers
Visual designers focus on all the aesthetic elements of a website, mobile app, or other digital design.
Graphic designers
These designers assemble images, typography, or other motion graphics to develop a piece of design.
Brand designers
Brand designers are creative professionals who develop a company’s public image and messaging.
Animation designers
These designers are also known as animators and they specialize in creating animated characters and objects.
Logo designers
These professionals are graphic designers who create unique or custom brand imagery for businesses.
Illustrators
Illustrators are designers who create two-dimensional images that can be used for digital storytelling.
Product designers
Product designers work to make a practical and functional product as attractive to a consumer as possible.
The Hard and Soft Skills of an Ideal Designer
With around 507,690 designers in the world, it can be tricky to find the right candidates. Before hiring a part time designer, it’s essential to know what type of skills to look out for. Let’s explore some of the hard and soft skills good remote designers should have:
Soft Skills
- Creativity
Creativity is key when it comes to designing different elements. But there’s much more to creativity than simply having great ideas once in a while. Designers should have a structured process that helps them focus on creative thinking and come up with ideas continuously.
- Communication
Communication is crucial for the effective functioning of every business in any industry. It’s no different for design work. Every designer needs to know how to efficiently communicate with clients, management and other stakeholders.
- Time management
Designers typically have plenty of deadlines to manage, and often, they need to handle several projects at once. Since these projects are sometimes in different stages of the design process, designers need to know how to keep track of everything.
- Active listening
Designers must be able to accurately comprehend a client’s vision and turn it into a piece of visual design. This means having good active listening skills
Hard Skills
- Design Software
The first important thing that your designer must know is different design software. Depending on the project you require, your designers will need to use various design software skills. For instance, if you want to create prototypes, you will need a graphic designer that has a strong focus on UX design and that knows tools like InVision. But, if you’re looking to create a website, you need to look for design tools such as Adobe Photoshop.
- UX Research
UX design involves the look and feel of products, as well as the usability and how a product can help users reach their goals. As a result, all designers should be able to gather and use insights about how best to design for real users.
- UI Design
UI design is focused on how a user interacts with a product. It involves designing effective screen layouts and transitions in the user’s journey. UI includes fine detail of how a user will reach their end goals.
- Information Architecture
Information architecture involves the process and strategy behind the organization of information in a website or app. For most digital products, this encompasses all content, including the visual hierarchy of content and all on screen elements.
Reasons to Hire a Freelance Designer
If you’re considering hiring a designer for remote design, you may be wondering why you should opt for freelance talent instead of hiring in-house. There are many benefits to finding freelance designers for hire, some of these include:
- Saving time and money
A professional designer will ensure all aspects of your design material meets industry standards and regulations. They will also ensure that your design work is not similar to others in your industry. This saves time because there aren’t multiple iterations before producing something good. It also saves money because there are no in-house hiring or human resource charges.
- Getting access to top talent
Finding talent locally is not always possible. But working with a vendor that offers freelance designers gives you access to talent with skills, knowledge and experience not otherwise available.
- Making scaling easy
By working with freelance designers, you can hire workers and pay for them only when required. This enables you to scale without employee risks.
- Getting access to advanced tools
Most freelance designers bring their own resources to a project, including design software. This enables you to have access to new tools not otherwise available to your team.
How to Hire a Freelance Designer
To hire freelance designer candidates and get the best work from them, you need to be clear about exactly what you want and what you require. Here are some tips about the process to hire UI designer candidates:
- Define your needs
It’s important to carefully define all your requirements before hiring designers. You need to identify your goals with a specific design project and specify timelines and budgets.
- Gather information your designer may need
At the start of your partnership, your freelance designer knows very little about your company and its brand. Therefore, it’s important to have information available about your buyer personas, brand guidelines, brand voice, and other information about your company.
- Find potential designers
Once you have determined your exact project goals, you can start to source candidates. There are many different platforms to use to find suitable candidates, including talent-finding platforms and outsourcing vendors.
- Narrow down potential candidates
To narrow down a list of candidates, you can look at the portfolios and quality of work of prospects. Then, ask yourself if their skills and style fit with your branding and design ideas.
- Interview and test potential candidates
It’s always best to talk to candidate designers before hiring them. Further vetting can involve an interview and test phase where you discuss previous experience and check if their work ethic suits your project requirements.
- Hire designers
Once you have determined suitable talent, you can start to negotiate the payment amount and terms. You can also discuss deadlines and what you expect from communication before hiring.
The Best Sites to Hire Part-time Designers
Today, there are several platforms to use to find a freelance designer suitable for your project. Some of these include:
UpWork
This is one of the most popular platforms to find freelance designers. UpWork gives you access to a shortlist of some of the best candidates available whenever you post a job. You can also test and pay applicants directly through Upwork.
Fiverr
Fiverr is an international online marketplace created for finding experts such as freelance designers and hire 3D designer candidates offering freelance design at low costs. It is one of the most affordable hiring platforms currently available.
Freelancer.com
Freelancer.com is another online job marketplace that offers a means for clients and designer freelancer candidates around the world to collaborate for mutual benefit at affordable rates.
Mobilunity
Mobilunity is a leading outsourcing company offering access to a large talent pool available at very affordable rates. The team at Mobilunity assists with sourcing and hiring highly skilled and qualified candidates for a variety of projects in different industries.
Toptal
This platform provides some of the best remote designer candidates in the tech industry because only the leading 3% of candidates make it through Toptal’s vetting process.
Choosing Outstaffing Vs Freelance Designers
| Outstaffing | Hiring Freelance Designers | |
| What is it? | Outstaffing means long-term indirect employment through a third party. | Hiring freelancers involves hiring designers only when required for a project. |
| Time involved | Outstaffing vendors can find candidates in a matter of hours. | Finding suitable freelancers can be a time-consuming task. |
| Cost involved | Outstaffing agencies typically have set rates for candidates. | Freelancer rates vary from country to country, level |
| Dedication | Outstaffing designers typically work only on one project at a time. | Many freelancers work on several projects at a time. |
Hourly Rates of Freelance Designers
One of the most important factors to consider when hiring freelance designers or finding a remote design agency is the cost involved. The cost depends on the country as well as the level of skill of the designers. Let’s take a look at some of the average hourly freelance designer salary rates from five different countries:
*Ukrainian salaries are provided based on Mobilunity’s Recruitment Team research on the local job markets. All salaries are net and do not include the service fee (in case of hiring on a dedicated team model). The salaries are provided for comparison purposes and could be not entirely accurate. Contact us to know the exact cost of hiring a developer corresponding to the required parameters.
From this data, it’s clear that hiring a freelance design engineer from Ukraine is highly cost-effective. This is because Ukraine offers a low cost of living to its citizens but still invests in their education and skills. As a result, businesses can hire top freelancer designer talent from Ukraine without compromising on quality.
Mobilunity: a Reliable Provider of Freelance Designers
Mobilunity is a Ukrainian-based outsourcing company offering designers specializing in different freelancer design fields to take care of a variety of design projects. With over 10 years of experience, Mobilunity has access to a large pool of talent that can work with many different businesses, both big and small.
With Mobilunity, you can hire part-time designers and pay flexibly for just the hours worked. In this way, you save valuable money while getting access to the best talent when required.
Mobilunity has worked with many businesses in a variety of different industries. Some of our clients include 42Matters, TDMS, Qrates, Paidy, and ServIT.
With Mobilunity, you get flexibility, fair pricing, and talent accessibility fast and efficiently. We work with you every step of the way, from the start of the partnership to the end.
If you need a freelancer designer for your next project, talk to the expert team at Mobilunity. Find the best talent effortlessly today!
All salaries and prices mentioned within the article are approximate NET numbers based on the research done by our in-house Recruitment Team. Please use these numbers as a guide for comparison purposes only and feel free to use the contact form to inquire on the specific cost of the talent according to your vacancy requirements and chosen model of engagement.
