With the need for design increasing, the question remains: Should you hire an in-house graphic designer or outsource to a more flexible, scalable solution? Let’s look at the pros and cons of each choice.
Pros and Cons of Hiring An In-House Graphic Designer
Pros:
- Aligns with your vision — When hiring someone directly, you’ll have the time to brief and train them until they have a deep understanding of your business values and how your internal team functions.
- Reliable brand and customer knowledge — As they continue to work directly within your organization, in-house designers will eventually need less direction and start working more independently.
- High brand loyalty — The longer an in-house designer works for you, the higher their sense of ownership and pride over the work they produce. This will reflect in the quality of their work.
Cons:
- You need a lot of time to find the right designers — On average, it will take you 36 days to hire directly. This includes writing your advertisement, going through all the resumes, and conducting multiple interviews. Note that the average salary of a graphic designer is $48,561 in the US, which can be costly for a lot of businesses.
- Restricted skillsets — Finding a designer with a wide set of skills (e.g. video editing, photo retouch, graphic design) is one in a million. If you need these skills, you need to hire a small team. And depending on experience, each one will command their own hefty salaries.
- Competing against other businesses — Demand for graphic designers today, especially in the United States, is high. Unless you can compete on the grounds of compensation and benefits, it’s going to be hard to attract and keep top talent.
Pros and Cons of a Flexible and Scalable Solution Like Design Force
Pros
- Cost efficiency — Investments are generally lower for scalable solutions but deliverables stay at a high quality and are produced on time.
- Access expert talent pool — Tap on the expertise of multiple designers without needing to go through the arduous task of finding, hiring, and managing top talent.
- Work with an on-demand creative team — Have your own team that you can ask to work on as many or as few deliverables as the project calls for, while still remaining ready to ‘report to duty’ when needed.
- Outsource time-consuming tasks — You don’t have to worry about project management and the creative direction of your projects anymore. You only need to approve the quality of each deliverable, giving you more time to focus on more strategic tasks so you can accelerate your business.
- Get an objective perspective — You’ll get a fresh pair of eyes that are often needed in creative projects, especially with design deliverables and strategies.
- Fully managed — You’ll have a dedicated project design manager who will oversee the entire design process for you. You only need to communicate your requirements and guidelines, then your project manager will make sure these are met to the letter.
Cons
- You need to set the direction — Flexible teams are often more concerned with the production and churn work. Unless you’re working with a full-stack creative firm, the project direction will have to come from you.
- You need to provide clear brand guidelines — Brand guidelines will also have to come from you to make sure that the creative firm you’re working with will nail the design you’re looking for.
Comparison Table
Design Capabilities | Hiring An In-House Graphic Designer | Working With Design Force |
Lower Cost of Hiring | ✅ | |
Fast Turnaround | ✅ | |
Designers With Multiple Skill Sets (e.g. Logos, Web Design, etc) and Within Limited Budget | ✅ | |
Flexibility With Number of Deliverables (Can Work On As Many or As Few As You Need) | ✅ | |
High-Quality Designs For All Deliverables | ✅ | ✅ |
Can Work Independently From The Get Go (Minimal Onboarding) | ✅ | |
Can Work On-Demand | ✅ |
The Design Force Solution
While hiring in-house designers have their advantages, they do come with the added challenges of needing to spend significant resources to hire, onboard, and train the right designer. You’ll also have to make the choice to either pay top dollar for a top talent who has a wide variety of design skills under their belt (a definite rarity) or hire a small team to deliver all your design needs—both of which do not come cheap.
At Design Force, we want to make this easier for you.
We came up with the world’s first subscription-based design concept precisely because we understand that businesses today need flexible design solutions that can maintain the quality of deliverables without breaking the bank.
It’s fairly simple what we offer: We will take the labor-intensive and time-consuming design tasks off your plate and come back to you within our set deadline. You can scale your projects as often as you want, and turn your subscription on or off whenever you need it.
Our 50-strong team of passionate creatives has made it possible for us to win awards and work with Fortune 500 companies and startups all over the world in numerous industries.