Best Way To Find And Hire A Freelance T-Shirt Designer

A good t-shirt design should be a head turner. It will bring people to your shop whether it be an online or physical store. The question is how do you get access to an excellent design especially if you are not that good of a designer yourself.

What is the best way to find and hire a freelance t-shirt designer? Due to its ease of relative access and wide reach, advertising your job opening through the internet is the best method to find and hire a freelance t-shirt designer.

There are other ways to go get this designer who can take your printing press to the very next level and I will show you what are they. In the meantime, I want to start this blog post by discussing in detail this particular way to find and hire this t-shirt designer.

Where To Find These Designers

Let’s start with listing what are the available sites on the Internet where you can find these designers. I will then detail as to how these same sites work in finding and hiring these people. Later, I will discuss what are the other ways you can consider to get this help outside the internet.

Freelance Sites

Sites such as Fiverr, Dribbble, Behance, 99designs, Upwork, Freelancer, and Guru exist for this freelancing purpose. There are dedicated designer sites such as Graphic River and Creative Market. T-shirt Factory has templates available to be used for faster creation of designs.

Fiverr is a discount marketplace for freelancers. It gets its name because jobs can be outsourced for as low as $5 per piece for a basic task. There will be additional charges for more complex requirements. Just because the price is low doesn’t mean that the work quality is substandard. This site has a rating system in place designed to control errant designers.

Dribbble can be tagged as the social network for passionate designers. Artists post their work here to build their fan bases and promote their craft. You can even search for these artists within your demographic area.

Behance has a large set of artists and their works hosted within their site. These same artists would be the one submitting proposals to any job that you will post on this site. talent agency where they will pair you with the designer most suitable for your requirements. They have done background skill checks on these same designers and have categorized them into the top level, mid-level, and entry-level categories. They also made sure that you will get professional designers if you course the recruiting through their agency.

You can simply post your requirements, budgets, and deadlines and wait for these designers to contact you with their interest and respective bids.

Once you have received interest from prospective freelancers, you can contact them to ask for additional information or make a request for their portfolio samples.

There is a review facility for both job seekers and job posters here that can be checked to assess how reliable are these freelancers and employers. Use this so that you know the quality of work you will be getting.

Crowdsourcing

You can use this crowdsourcing facility to drum up interest in your t-shirt design project. You can even generate funding and social media buzz with this project.

Think about the positive results if you will use this facility for you will have a budget and a ready market to sell your t-shirts. This is if we are to assume that you will kill it in terms of presenting your idea on this platform.

For the purpose of getting a designer, this will be also similar to the freelance sites described earlier since you will get proposals from interested artists out there.

Employment Websites

Websites such as Indeed, Craigslist, and LinkedIn can be good sources for these artists. You can use their respective search functions to look for the designers you would like to contact for your t-shirt design project.

An advantage of these sites is that most job seekers here are looking for regular full-time employment. If this is the type of employee you are looking for, then these sites will be logical places to check out.

Online Browsing

If you have time, you can simply browse the web and look for designs that are out there. Once you have found a compelling one, you can simply contact the person or site who made this and try to reach a deal for this design piece.

Sites such as Startup Vitamins, Thefancydeal, and Envato Elements work along this premise.

Local Market

I know that we are now out of the web realm with this suggestion. There are people out there who are wary of transacting online for security purposes and it is totally understandable.

You can check out local exhibits and galleries or even schools especially those with fine arts programs for possible designs. Scan your local newspaper for this type of gatherings.

Now, I want to convince you that outsourcing your design work is the right way to go and here are the reasons why. I will also show what are the other things you need to be keenly aware of once you have finally decided to outsource this work.

Why Outsource Your Design Work

Designing artwork is a very important part of your print t-shirt business but it is not the only thing you have to handle. There are ordering supplies, maintaining your equipment, processing orders, doing customer service, managing your staff, handling your bills, making collections, and more. Let’s face it that you can only do so much within a given day.

If your shop is a startup, then you may have time to do this plus you need to learn all parts of the business anyway. However, in a big shop, you just don’t have the time. That is unless you are so driven that you can work for extended hours seven days in a week.

When you do an extensive analysis of this job, you will realize that the time you spend creating a design is quite expensive compared to just hiring somebody else to do this for you.

Doing design work is a very focused job and it demands lots of creativity and research. You will also have to allocate time to learn all the nuances of the necessary computer software used in creating these designs.

Designers need to focus solely on this specific task of designing for them to do a good job here. They cannot simply be bothered with a myriad of other things while doing this specialized work.

I am making a slight detour here to talk about designs components. I want to impress upon you the complexity of this design work.

Typography

This deals with fonts. It is quite small compared to the overall design but it plays a major part in the print quality that will come out.

Typography helps in conveying the emotion that is trying to be shared with the audience of the design.

A designer who possesses knowledge of this knows that serif and script fonts make a classic feel for the design while sans serif ones show a modern influence. These things should not be set aside when creating the design.

You also want to avoid instances of typography overshadowing the design itself through those swirly and loopy fonts.

Color Codes

There are rules here to follow when designing.

Some of them include the use of complementary colors that will not mess up the merchandise. Choosing the right t-shirt color for the design is a rule here like avoiding dark ink for a dark-colored fabric.

Other things to be aware of here are:

Use with caution pastel colors on light-colored shirts for they are not visible from a distance,
Cardinal, maroon, and forest colors of fabrics should not be used haphazardly with light ink colors,
Light colors should be used for events.

Be wary of screen filters for they have the ability to distort the actual color that will be shown when a t-shirt is printed.

There should be a balance between the fabric and the print colors in the design.

Vector Formats

Specific formats should be used when designing t-shirts.

The dimensions would have to be successfully translated to a printed design from a draft. There is a skill involved in getting the right proportions here.

Creating Adobe Illustrator (AI), EPS, and PDF files for each design are necessary.

What Are Your Expectations In This Outsourced Work

There is work to be done here prior to engaging with the freelancer.

If you can finish this prior to the engagement, it will make the process of hiring a lot faster.

Your Primary Consideration

You have to estimate a budget for the compensation of this freelance designer. Try to work out this budget on a per design basis.

Set a maximum amount so that you have room to negotiate but do not indicate this amount in the initial contact.

Work out also payment schedule within your budget. Try to be flexible here in the event that the freelancer you may get wishes to have a different payment schedule compared to when you usually pay your employees or bills.

Frequency Of Design Needed

Look closely at your clients and assess how often they ask for new designs in their requests. Or simply, ask yourself as to how many designs do you want to be readily available in your shop.

A tight schedule will warrant that you have to pay extra for this. But if you can do serious planning ahead and schedule properly, then this will not be the case anymore.

What Type Of Artwork Do You Need

Do you have designs lurking somewhere that you want to be improved upon? Or maybe you have some distinct ideas that you want this freelancer to work on.

If not, you can just accept the notion that this person will have to come up with their original artwork. This will be more expensive for you although it may have a quicker turnaround time in terms of completion.Original designs if done right will serve to make your printing shop special. It will differentiate you from the other shops out there.

What Are The Printing Options That Will Be Used

Are you using screen printing? Or that spanking new DTG printer of yours? Maybe a combination of both will be utilized.

You have to finalize this because it will have an effect on the designs that will be created for your shop.

What Will The End Products Be

Would you be printing the design for a company t-shirt? Perhaps, this is for the local band that is currently rocking at the stadium.

I have to be honest to say that the personality of the design is totally reflective of the designer itself. It will help a lot in determining the right personality fit for this freelance position.

What To Do Once You Find A Designer

Congratulations for now that you have finally found a designer who is willing to work with your requirements and budget. You are now about to interview this person hopefully so that you can bring him on board.

The Interview Process

I would like to discuss as to how to proceed with this.

I assume that you have seen his portfolio before making this call.

Ask a lot of questions during your interview. Conduct this exercise as you would with your other employees.

Project all the conditions that your shop operates with and see if there is a fit with his working style and personality. There has to be a match here or this will not work out.

It is also important that this person can understand your requirements. And that he or she is receptive to being critiqued in his work. There has to be a degree of rapport between you and this designer.

Some things to be on the lookout for include:

Can this person work with minimal instructions?
How fast are his turnaround work for the initial designs and subsequent revisions?
Is he adaptable to a different working schedule or environment?

Assuming that the interview went well and both of you have expressed mutual desire to work together, consider having a trial period for this employment. This is advisable so that you can have a working idea as to how this person will really perform. If it doesn’t work out in this trial period, then there is not a lot of risk for you since contact is minimal at best

Have an employment contract be signed if he aces this trial period. This contract serves as your protection and sets the guidelines and expectation for this person’s performance.

How To Retain Your Freelance T-Shirt Designer

By this time, you should realize that finding and hiring a freelancer t-shirt designer is not a walk in the park exercise. If you have a good one, then you should exert as much effort as possible to retain this person.

It is important to have clear and open communication with them. You can ask for feedback regarding their work so that they can feel that they have a say in what they are doing.

Your deadlines should be firm but you have to bend it sometimes especially if there is a situation with your designer.

If they made a mistake, discuss this with them calmly and rationally. Be very objective and specific about the wrongdoing.

Give this person a compliment and if possible, a pay rise if he is doing a good job. This will make him more appreciative of working for you.

As a contingency, it would be wise if you have a backup designer on call. You have to be prepared in case this person leaves without notice.