Yes. Hire a design firm. Now.

Business owners all look for ways to save money. We get it. We do it too. But there are places to save money and there are places to spend money and design is one of them. To many times we see people trying to do their own design, logos, brochures, flyers and worst of all websites. Or they have unqualified staff or family doing it for them. It is really that obvious.

Just like hiring an accountant or electrician or plumber, graphic designers specialize in what they do and are good at it. Anyone who has been audited and finds their accounting was done wrong knows the nightmare and anyone who has tried to do their own plumbing and ended up with a huge mess on their hands knows, you get what you pay for. Even worse they end up paying more to “clean” up the mess.

Designers go to school to develop their creative skills and learn standard design principals. Really. We learn things that are standard across our industry and are the foundation of good design. Just because someone has a degree in marketing, advertising, communications, finance or any other major, does not make them a graphic designer. Just because they know how to use Adobe Design products does not make them a designer. Most people do not how to create separate plates for special printing processes, set-up press ready print documents, understand the difference between RGB, CMYK and Pantone colors and how and when to use them.

Design and art can be very subjective but there is good and bad design. We see it everyday. Your flyer had 5 different fonts on it, or your branding is inconsistent, line spacing is incorrect in a report, terrible kerning in the text in a logo, images stretched (not proportionately), colors that don’t go together. We could go on and on.

There are a lot of creative people, artists, interior designers, landscape designers, architects, amazing marketing and advertising people who are NOT graphic designers. They are talented at concepting ideas, marketing products, creating marketing plans, great at writing or managing  a creative team etc. and they most likely have a great eye for  design or are designers in their discipline but again that does not mean they they are graphic designers.

Hire an accountant because you need an accountant. Hire a programmer because you need a programmer. Hire a designer because you need a designer. Hire the right person for the right job. When you have employees, friends, family doing work for you that are not technically trained in that field it will reflect in the final product and that applies to just about everything, not just design.

Don’t be afraid of good design and don’t be afraid to invest in good design. Your brand and your image is what sets the whole tone of your company and is often the first impression someone will get. Do you really want to leave that in the hands of the best friend of the owner’s son or a trained design professional?