Better Design one task at a time

The struggle to find good design talent

Companies are finding it difficult to recruit designers who have the latest skills. The demand for these professionals is higher than ever, and as design becomes more complex, their roles are constantly changing. This leads to new titles and niches for designers. It's no wonder that it's hard for an outsider to find a designer with just the right expertise for a specific problem.

What type of designer are you looking for?

When looking to staff a new project with designers it is important to first understand which type(s) of designers you need in order to solve your specific problems. Are you looking to create assets for a marketing campaign? Need to increase the conversion on your webpage? or maybe you need help redesigning your brand identity. To help you get somewhat of a grasp of the vast  field of design we've put together a list of some of the most common roles for designers and what they do.

Are you ready to hire a full-time designer?

As designers are becoming more increasingly more important to businesses the cost of hiring has gone up with it. The annual cost to hire a full-time senior level designer now exceeds. And if you’ve taken the step you actually hire a designer in-house you need to make sure to keep them busy or risk being stuck paying for something you're not fully utilizing.

Things to consider when looking for freelancers

If you're not keen on taking the plunge and hiring a full-time designer, that's perfectly understandable. You can always seek out freelancers instead, in fact hiring freelancers to solve small tasks can be a cost effective solution and there are plenty of websites like Dribbble and Upwork where companies can find talented designers for hire. But since there is no requirements to register as a freelancer on many of these platforms, anyone with a computer can sign up and call themselves a designer, which is why for every good designer, there are thousands of crappy ones. So get ready to invest the time, because you've got a needle-in-the-haystack situation in front of you.

If you finally managed to find a designer that ticks all you boxes, is fairly priced and not fully booked, bravo! Now it's time to discuss the breif and plan the scope of work. If you are unsure how to structure a good design brief check out our quick guide here.

How to successfully collaborate with a designer

Once the project is under way and all of the nitty gritty details have been ironed out it's time to for you to take on the hat as project manager, to collaborate and give feedback. Questions to consider in this phase is how much transparency do you get into the design process and how often do you have check-in showing the progress and allowing for feedback?

Good design comes from an iterative process where you are able quickly test things in order to fail, learn and tweak your solution. But for freelancers having a bunch of check-ins and meetings with clients quickly eats up their calendar which is why they will probably try to keep them to a minimum. The risk then is that the designer works in a silo only to deliver a final result which is not at all what you had expected and its back to the drawing board costing you time and money.

This is why having a subscription for design can be really beneficial since you get an unlimited amount of request and revisions together with a full transparency of the process, you become a part of the design team. A subscription plan creates an iterative environment by how its set up!

Kan Ban Boards

When working on design projects is common to use a kanban board to track status of the project. Software such as trello, miro and asana all integrate kanban boards. Here at Adhoc we're are no different. The project management is run through a custom made kanban board where the client can add new tasks, see status of ongoing tasks and give feedback and comment un drafts. If you haven't previously worked on a design project it can be hard to know what tasks makes up a project and in what order they should be performed but don't worry. We always start a new cleint with an onboarding to understand your needs and help you get set up with a good to-do list. Once you start to get a hang of it we've create a series of checklist that suggest the next step to take on your design journey.

How long does a project take to complete?

The length of time a design project takes can depend on many things, such as the size and type of project. For any design to be successful, it must meet the needs of those who will use it; this is why testing your ideas early on with your target audience is so important. A design project is never truly "finished"; there are always ways it could be improved. We choose to see design a bit like a video game where you constantly reach new levels in design maturity.

The different tools of a designer

There are countless of different design tools available. Which one to use will depend one what you are trying to achieve. In our list of different designer roles we cover a few of these. At adhoc we use Figma, Photoshop, illustrator, After effects & Webflow to name a few. If you are curious to play around with some designs yourself we've put together a list of 10 free design tools.

Good outcomes requires a good strategic foundation.

It's a good idea to define a successful outcome of the project before you start designing anything. How to measure success will link back to your strategy. It's a good idea to let designers come in at an early phase of a start up and help set the strategy together with you.

Whenever we start a new collaboration we always make sure to understand our clients need and set a way forward together during an onboarding session.

Design Subscriptions, a new way of buying design

There is an increasing trend for design subscriptions, and it is evident why this set-up is favourable for startups: It delivers quick outputs that can be tested with users within days. There are no complex contracts or long timelines, and no need for budget meetings or presentations. On top of that the subscription can be scaled up, down or paused as needed. This creates a flexible solution with clear overviews.

Another benefit of subscribing to design services is that it covers several different design competencies all in one subscription.

What kind of growth can startups expect when implementing a design subscription service?

Design is an important emotional connection for people, which can be difficult to predict. However, when we build your digital presence, there are a lot of metrics that we can see in terms of traffic on your site and how long people stay engaged with your content. Additionally, we believe that by creating something visual for people to respond too early on makes it easier t get feedback and lower the risk associated with spending money on solving the wrong problems.

Using a design subscription as an add-on to an existing design team

If you already a have reached some design maturity within your company and have a staff of full-time designers but are strugglignt to handle workload then a design subscription can be a great way to take plug in during intense periods of the year to take the load of the design team.

We also offer different add-on service such as web development and content management which is a quick and easy way to have access to competence without hiring extra staff.

Having trouble finding the latest version of your logo?

Research has shown that more than 50% of office professionals spend more time on looking for files than actually working. With your personal dashboard at adhoc we offer you unlimited cloud storage making sure that all of your design assets are available and inte the latest version no more looking for company-logo v.45 or that slide deck for the next sales meeting!

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