Needle in a Haystack: Finding Great Graphic Designers for Your Small Business Who Work On Budget and On Time

Finding the right graphic designer can be tough, even for companies with huge marketing budgets. For small businesses, getting it right the first time is even more important – you don’t want to waste months working with a designer that’s totally wrong for your needs.

‘Crowdsourcing’ is a great option for small businesses. It’s a model of labor that takes tasks traditionally done by an individual or small group and sends them out to a global workforce. You set the price for your project, and designers will present their individual concepts. You choose the one that works best to refine the design. Each crowdsourcing site works a bit differently, but the basic concept is the same for all. Here are some of the best:

CrowdSpring.com – CrowdSpring deems themselves ‘a marketplace for creative services’, and you’ll find plenty of designers on here ready to get to work. As the buyer, you pay up front and CrowdSpring guarantees that you’ll get at least 25 entries to choose from or you get a full refund. CrowdSpring charges a 15% commission on all posted projects.

99Designs.com – Post a summary of your project and your budget for a $39 fee and graphic designers will respond with design concepts. You rate the designs, provide feedback and choose the winner within 7 days. The designer then sends you the completed design and copyright to the artwork. 99 Designs has over 11,000 designers as members and adds hundreds more every day.

DesignOutpost.com – Set your budget and pay in advance, and designers will compete to create the perfect design based on your guidelines. You can declare your own deadline, and give feedback to each designer during the designing process. All of Design Outposts’ designers are pre-approved to join the site’s ‘design team’.

For more crowdsourcing options, check out this guide on ReadWriteWeb.

Guru.com is a free service that gives you access to hundreds of thousands of creative professionals. You post your project and your budget and get bids from designers. Guru is a bit different from the other sites we’ve mentioned, as you choose who you want to work with based on their work samples and reviews from other businesses.

Amazon Mechanical Turk is another option for businesses that need an ‘on-demand workforce’. This web service allows companies to outsource simple tasks to a large team of virtual workers for small fees. It has 100,000 workers in 100 countries. Most of the tasks done by Mechanical Turk are repetitive rather than creative.

If you’d rather not use crowdsourcing for whatever reason, there’s always Craigslist. It’s not just for shady personal ads and $5 stained couches. Craigslist is a great place to find graphic designers, especially if you’re smart in how you go about it. Try putting ads up in smaller cities like Denver, Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix rather than LA, NYC or Chicago to find someone to work virtually. Posting ads in these cities on Craigslist is free and you’ll be able to tap into a great pool of off-brand designer talent.

If you’re smart about spending your design dollars you can have more options than ever in getting your brochure/website/logo designed for your small business. Check references, lay out your objectives in as clear a way as you can, and it might not hurt to cross your fingers.