Graphic Design in Mississauga?

Graphic design is an ancient craft, dating back past Egyptian hieroglyphs to at least 17,000-year-old cave paintings. It’s a term that originated in the 1920s’ print industry. It continues to cover a range of activities including logo creation. Graphic design in this sense concerns aesthetic appeal and marketing. Graphic designers attract viewers using images, color and typography. However, graphic designers working in user experience (UX) design must justify stylistic choices regarding, say, image locations and font with a human-centered approach. That means you need to focus on—and seek to empathize the most with—your specific users while you create good-looking designs that maximize usability. Aesthetics must serve a purpose—in UX design we don’t create art for art’s sake. So, graphic designers must branch into visual design. When designing for UX, you should:

Consider the information architecture of your interactive designs, to ensure accessibility for users.
Leverage graphic design skills to create work that considers the entire user experience, including users’ visual processing abilities.
For instance, if an otherwise pleasing mobile app can’t offer users what they need in several thumb-clicks, its designer/s will have failed to marry graphic design to user experience. The scope of graphic design in UX covers the creation of beautiful designs that users find highly pleasurable, meaningful and usable.

There are two main types of Mississauga graphic designers: freelance and in-house.

To be perfectly honest, the majority of businesses don’t require an in-house designer.

This is especially true for startups and small business who operate with nominal and often limited budgets.

In-house designers work exclusively for your brand, meaning that they will get to know your brand inside out.

They know how to create an accurate graphical representation of your brand and its values, and as an added benefit, they are always available to your company.

However, in-house designers need to be paid regardless of whether your company has any actual design work in progress.

Furthermore, they will often have a set capacity, which can become tricky when the workload becomes too high.

Freelance Mississauga designers, on the other hand, are paid by the project.

You can hire them for a specific project based on their individual style and specialisation and only when and if you have any design needs.

However, a freelance designer cannot and will not be as familiar and as invested with your brand as an in-house designer would.

They require a very detailed briefing to paint an accurate picture and finding one isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

Additionally, you have to consider the fact that freelance designers might not be able to join every single company meeting or worse, take on a last-minute task that needs to be finished fast.

The good news is that you don’t have to pick one or the other exclusively unless you really want to.

You can have an in-house designer at all times and hire freelance designers to help out with heavy work-loads and approaching deadlines.

The option you choose will be dictated solely by your company’s needs and as such, is highly singular.

Not that that’s out of the way, let’s discuss some of the things you should look out for when hiring a designer. 

Before you even begin looking for a graphic designer, you need to specify your needs accurately.

What is it you’re looking for? Do you need a logo? A website? Alternatively, do you want to develop a brand identity?

You can easily find a logo designer, but a building a website requires both a designer and a web developer.

Building brand identity is hardly a one-person job, and you might want to consider going for an agency or a dedicated team.

There’s no point in hiring general graphic designers when your needs are highly particular.

Always go for specialists in their specific fields.

This ensures the quality of the final product and drastically reduces the risk of poor performance or missed deadlines.

Prepare a list of tasks that need to be accomplished, as well as a list of the services necessary to achieve them and then and only then can you start looking for a graphic designer. 

Besides the main difference between freelance and in-house designers, there are also other, more significant differences.

For example, there are:

• Brand identity designers
• Logo designers
• Motion designers
• Mobile app designers
• Packaging designers
• UX designers
• Web designers, etc.

Graphic design is a comprehensive term and the number of specialities increases as both the demands, but also the tools and technologies involved change over time.

The last thing you’d want is to miss a deadline because you hired a package designer to build you a high converting website.

Know precisely what you require and search for it accordingly.

Avoid thinking about graphic design as a one-size-fits-all-type of industry and instead, know what you’re looking for and have reasonable expectations.

Where to look?
Top 10 Freelance Sites
As we already mentioned, you can choose between a freelance or professional designer or look for agencies that specialise in the type of work you require.

There are numerous freelance websites to choose from that are dedicated to finding the right talent, such as Freelancer, Peopleperhour or Upwork.

Using these platforms, you can either browse through individual profiles until you find the right fit or post a job offering and get job-specific responses.

You won’t, however, be able to review different works as you would, for example, with a graphic design contest.

However, you can still study their past work and go through client reviews to help make just the right decision.

One of the downsides of freelance websites is that they often cater to a wide audience and as such, don’t offer a lot of design-specific tools you might need when searching for the perfect designer.

One of the positives of using freelance websites is that the majority of them are set up in such a way that protects both the client and the designer.

Usually, clients are charged upfront for the project, but the money is held in escrow until it’s complete.

This way, payment can be released only if the client is satisfied with the final results and designers don’t have to worry about chasing clients with invoices.

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