By, The Curator
One person can only do so much. One person can only have so many skills as well. So how do you get something done when you don’t know anything about it? Outsourcing. You either outsource the task to an employee who is more qualified to complete it than you or to a freelancer. Unfortunately working with a freelancer raises a whole new set of problems.
How do you find one?
How do you know you can trust them?
Is that their real work?
Are they actually talented?
In this post I am going to be focusing on graphic design freelancers and the two biggest things to consider while working with one.
Finding and working with a graphic designer is a very common and often necessary undertaking. When many people start clothing brands they have great design ideas and a lot of sketches, but they don’t know a single thing about how to bring them to life.
Become Literate in Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard for almost all things graphic design related (with occasional exceptions). This is due to its advanced interface and the fact that it uses vectors. If you want to be even semi successful in the clothing industry I would highly recommend that you at the least learn the basics of Illustrator. You can still outsource design work to a more skilled designer, but being literate in Illustrator can help you better identify which artists are skilled and which are not.
Take Your Time Searching For Designers And Be Thorough
The first few months after you start a new business are both exciting and terrifying. You have officially started to bring something that started as a simple idea to life. The one drawback of this is that it leads many to rush every move they make or job they need to do. Rushing means lower quality, less attention, and an increased chance of making mistakes. One thing that you absolutely should not rush is finding the right designer.
I understand how excited you are to have started this new journey. I know you really want to see your designs come to life right away so you can immediately start showing everybody and doing all the wrong things, but take my word when I say this will benefit you in the long run. Finding the right designer will save you a lot of trouble in the long run and make everything more seamless for both you and your company.
How I Failed To Do This
I started my first successful business in 2013 and did not know a single thing about graphic design or Adobe Illustrator. For years I knew that at some point I would have to spend the money on it (it’s not cheap) and spend the time to learn it, but I wanted to hold that off as long as possible. Lucky for me, a big supporter of my business referred me to a graphic designer that he worked with a lot. I hit him up and he was really friendly, professional, and his prices were unbelievably low. I ended up working with him for the following three or four years.
Sadly, right when I was starting my clothing brand in 2016 he picked up a new job somewhere and was no longer available to do any work for me. This meant I had to find a new designer. It would be my first time having to find one myself since my first one was referred to me. I already had a guy in mind so I hit him up right away. I’m not going to drop names, but in the past he had been a writer for a very well known and successful sneaker blog. He was also in school for graphic design. Based off those two things alone I figured he would be a good fit. In addition to that we already knew each other as well from my past work with shoes. He seemed like the perfect candidate.
I had commissioned him to transform a bunch of rough drafts I had mocked up into complete final drafts. During our initial conversations about the order I was very thorough and detailed about what I wanted done, what style I wanted it, and what the end product was supposed to look like. He quoted me $800 with 50% to be paid before the job and 50% after. It sounded like a good deal to me because I knew many graphic designers charged way more than that.
Long story short, he completed the job and we worked together easily, but something still seemed off to me. There were little things here and there that I still was not satisfied with, but my idiot self decided to forget about it. My first attempt at starting that clothing brand ultimately failed. It failed for a large number of reasons, some were in my control and some were not. The designs weren’t the only reason the brand failed, but they definitely played a role. I place part of the blame on myself because conceptually they were my designs, but the final execution of them wasn’t perfect either.
In fact it was not until about a year later when I took a class on Adobe Illustrator and learned how to do the designing myself that I realized how bad the final designs were. Maybe he knew they were bad and just wanted to rip me off since I didn’t know better. Maybe he was actually just a bad designer. Maybe there was some sort of unforeseen issue that caused it. In the end though, it is my fault because I am the one that decided to work with him and I could have easily prevented that had I properly done my research and gone with a different artist.
My biggest mistake in all of this was making the assumption that because of his past work with that huge sneaker blog he was automatically a credible human being and graphic designer. That is why you need to thoroughly do your research and be semi-literate in Illustrator yourself. You see, if I knew anything about Adobe Illustrator at the time I would have known that the guy I worked with did the bare minimum and sent me some extremely basic trashy designs. I wasn’t Illustrator-literate though so I had no idea.
Moral Of The Story
Just like I previously stated, I went on to learn about graphic design and Illustrator myself. Later when I made a second attempt at launching that clothing brand I did all of the designing myself. To this day every single item that I have sold through that business has been designed by me from start to finish. You do not need to be as hands on as I am because for one, there are still plenty of things I don’t know how to do in Illustrator and for two, it takes up a lot of time. What you do need to do is learn the basics of Illustrator and take your time finding the right artist to work with. Trust me, in the long run it will save you a good amount of trouble and potentially money as well.
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The Curator 
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