To find a graphic designer for your business, start with work you've already seen doing its job, then shortlist on how each designer questions your business before anyone mentions style. The usual advice is to check the portfolio and read the reviews, and some guides add a test project. That finds you someone with good taste. Taste is the easy part to see. What you're paying for is judgement about your buyers, and a free sample can't show you any.
When I search this, most of what comes up on page one is written by companies that sell design services. Delesign, a design-subscription company, calls the portfolio "one of the most important parts of this process". Designity, which sells monthly access to a vetted team of designers, says some designers who impressed it with their portfolio showed "a completely different side" during its own "challenge project". Both are right that a portfolio matters. Neither tells you how to read one.
Where should you look for a graphic designer?
Start where design is already working in public. When a local business, a supplier or a competitor's site makes you stop and look twice, ask the owner who did it and whether they'd hire them again. That second answer is worth more than any review page. A review usually tells you the designer was pleasant to work with. An owner who would hire them again is telling you the work held up after launch.
Many designers credit client work on LinkedIn and on their own sites. Use that to trace a piece you liked back to its maker.
Marketplaces are fine for a quick, cheap job. I started on Fiverr myself, and the trade-offs are in whether a Fiverr logo is good enough. Contests sit at the far end: you get a pile of drawings from people who never spoke to you.
How do you find a good graphic designer for your business?
To find a good graphic designer for your business, collect three to five names from work you've seen succeed for other owners. Read each portfolio for problems solved, because different businesses should get different answers. Ask which pieces shipped for paying clients and what the brief was behind one of them. Then book a short call and shortlist the designers who ask about your buyers and competitors before they talk about colours or style.
Read the portfolio for problems solved
Open a portfolio and look at the businesses before you look at the logos. Then ask one question of the whole page. Did each business get its own answer?
Say you're looking at a designer whose bakery and law firm share the same thin type and the same soft pastel palette. It looks polished and consistent. It's also a warning. That designer has a style, and every client gets it, whoever their buyers are and whoever they're up against. Hire them and you'll get it too.
In Signal Protocol terms, that makes you interchangeable. Buyers compare you with the next name on their list. If your identity could belong to any client in that portfolio, it can't set you apart. The portfolio you want is one where you couldn't guess the designer from the work. A law firm that looks careful, a bakery that looks warm, and a reason behind each.
Ask which pieces shipped for paying clients
A portfolio mixes three kinds of work, and they look identical on a screen. There are pieces made for paying clients and actually used. There are pieces pitched and never used. And there are pieces the designer made for themselves, with no client and nobody to say no.
The third kind is normal, and I have it too. The Syrian Architecture Institute identity on my site is my own project. Nobody briefed it and nobody paid for it. It won an Indigo Design Award Silver, which tells you I can draw. It tells you nothing about what my work does for a client's sales. Prizm, the coffee brand on the same page, is self-initiated as well.
So ask plainly: which of these shipped, for a paying client, and is it still in use? Then pick one and ask what the brief was. A designer who did the thinking can tell you who the buyer was and what the business needed them to believe. If all you hear about is the colours, they probably just drew.
Self-initiated work proves craft. You also want shipped work with a brief the designer can explain, because that shows they can solve a client's problem. Look for both.
Skip the free sample and watch what they ask
Some guides suggest a test project, and I think it measures the wrong thing. My reading is that unpaid work gets drawn fast, and the research is the first thing to go. AIGA, the US professional association for design, said in a 2009 position statement that "speculative work can compromise the benefits of effective design for both clients and designers."
Test projects are fine for hiring someone to resize your social posts every week. They are the wrong tool for choosing who decides how buyers see you.
The better test costs you half an hour. Book a short call with each name on the list and count the questions they ask before they mention style. Listen for questions about who buys from you, who else those buyers consider, and what they should believe about you. A designer who asks those first is already doing the work. One who opens with "what colours do you like?" will design for you, and your buyers will be an afterthought.
I've been on the other side of that question. On a sales call, a prospect asked me which single part of brand strategy I'd get right if I could only pick one. I said the audience. He was surprised that a designer put the logo second. That order is what you're listening for.
Can't answer those questions yourself? Then read what a brand strategist does first. A designer can only answer a brief someone has written.
What to do before you hire anyone
- Write down three to five businesses whose branding made you look twice, and ask each owner who did it and whether they'd hire them again.
- Open each designer's portfolio and check whether different businesses got different answers. Cross off anyone whose clients all look alike.
- Ask each one which pieces shipped for paying clients, and ask for the brief behind one of them.
- Book a half-hour call with the three who remain and count the questions about your buyers and competitors before style comes up.
- Skip the free sample. Put the budget toward the real job instead, and check what each logo budget actually buys first.
- Before you sign, ask the questions about files, rights and templates from the Fiverr post linked earlier.
Want to know what a designer should hear on that first call? The Signal Check is a one-page self-check emailed to you after sign-up.
