8 Reasons why you should not hire a full-time designer

So you’ve grown so much that you got to the point that you’re considering hiring a designer to deal with your creative tasks. Congrats! That means you have decided to take your business to the next level.

You might think that marketing and advertising will end up being a huge expense and maybe not even worth it, especially if you’re neither a marketer nor a designer.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s the first thing that comes to mind since marketing teams seem to just “make things pretty”.

The ROI (return of investment) into marketing and branding often takes time and for that to work properly, you need to be constantly pushing it with consistency.

Some companies in the process of scaling up have the luxury of getting full-time designers. You surely have that option too.

But you don’t wanna waste money, do you?

Why hiring a full-time designer is NOT for you

1. Having the overhead is expensive

A full-time employee requires a monthly salary, and each onboarding is an investment. As a business-minded person, you are inclined to invest in whatever gives you a profitable return, as soon as possible.

With the use of technology, there are cost-effective ways of getting design work done. One sure way is working with on-demand design services [read: Deer Designer].

2. You need to find, hire, onboard and train people

Hiring people is no joke. That’s why most companies have a whole department for that (a.k.a. Human Resources).

You gotta spend time looking for good designers (sourcing), filtering the best candidates (CVs, portfolios, tests), interviewing the top talents and later, dealing with all the paperwork.

“Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

Training can also be hard work as you need to either write down your processes so they can be easily followed, or babysit your employee until they’re ready to walk by themselves.

Can you afford to spend time on that, on top of everything you have to do?

No, I thought so too.

3. You need to have enough projects coming in to be worth it

In order to justify the costs of onboarding a full-time designer, they must have clear KPIs and a set of regular deliverables. Otherwise, you are just under-utilizing talent.

Each industry has its slow months and, during those time, you might feel the need to scrimp on your expenses.

Unfortunately, if you have a full-time employee, pausing their contract is not an option (like you can with Deer Designer).

4. You might be trapped with mediocre work

If you hire a full-time designer, you’ll do all you can to train them on your company values, culture, and everything that’s expected from them.

But even though you’ll arm them with all they need to do their work well, tools and training can only so do much.

What if your full-time designer keeps on delivering mediocre design work? You cannot make them turn into Van Gogh just by giving them a brush, right?

Sadly, you cannot wait for their output to be improved: your clients and businesses are knocking on your door.

5. Their design style might not match your branding

Once you’ve defined your brand, getting your designs done for it should be fairly easy. However, design artists (like everyone else), will oftentimes sit in their comfort zones. And comfort zones vary as much as different art styles.

As you look for the right designer, you go through their portfolios and eventually find a match to your liking.

But what if you change your mind? Or what if you decide to rebrand in the future? What about the designs you’ve gotta deliver to your clients that have a completely different style?

Can a full-time designer solve all these “what-ifs“?

You might need a service that has all the design skills under the same roof ready for you, and with multiple designers in case you need different options and alternatives.

If you’re looking for a more versatile solution, a full-time designer won’t be it.

6. No designer “knows it all”

As you’ve now realized, you probably need a design team, not just one designer. If you hire a full-time designer, they can do their best but there isn’t a designer that can master all kinds of skills (web, print, digital, illustrations, photo-retouching, etc).

They can surely try, but you must be prepared to receive a few outputs that won’t be up to your standard. They might ask you for help or extra tools, but you know what that means, right? 

More expenses…

7. Are you okay with them taking a week off for vacation?

I’m sure that, like me, you hate to be dependent on someone. But let’s face it: the more your designer does for you, the more you’ll need to rely on them.

It will be harder to let them take days off, which they obviously deserve. Even if you can look after your own design work for a while, what about your clients? Are they willing to wait until your designer returns?

After all, your designer hasn’t been on vacation for 10 years (!), they need a few days off.

With a service like Deer Designer, whenever your designer takes a day off, another designer will be ready to jump in and pick it up from where your designer left off.

No idle time, no interruptions, no headaches!

8. Designers are full of ego!

Designers are artists. Trust me, design professionals are full of designer ego. Disciplined, time-sensitive, objective designers are a rare bunch.

Since you’re basically commissioning their “art”, every feedback – especially when negative – might hurt them. Everything they do will always look perfect to them, but it might not be the case for you.

If you read between the lines of their replies, you’ll see something like…

– “Who are you to tell me what’s perfect or not? You’re not even an artist!”

Ouch!

Their creation is their child, so if you request dozens of revisions, Lord knows how they’ll react. Will they follow your feedback as intended? Will they trick you into “giving up” just so you choose their preferred design?

If you belong to the 1% of the people who had a web/graphic designer match made in heaven, you’re lucky!

That’s why Deer Designer gives you unlimited revisions. What do we do with their “designer ego”? If your deer designer believes it can be done better, they’ll channel their ego into providing you with alternatives, but still delivering what you requested initially.

They won’t stop making changes until you’re 100% happy.

Deer Designer delivers great designs, every single day

Unless you have ongoing design tasks to be done on a daily basis, hiring a full-time designer won’t get you the best bang for your buck. Or worse, they’ll probably dilly dally on a design project to, you know, just to “look busy”. I’m sure you don’t want this headache.

With Deer Designer, you can expect your designs delivered overnight, so you can instantly use them in your marketing and advertising. As long as you can describe your wishes in an email, we can design them for you.

One thing you won’t hear from us is:
– “Hey, hold on, stop! This is too much, we are overworked!” 

No, no, no. We eat design requests for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks. And we’re always hungry!

It’s just not cost-effective to hire a full-time designer, period.

When you hire a full-time designer, all the expenses will be managed by you. Their government mandatory contributions, salaries, bonus, coffee, reimbursements, days off, training…

With Deer Designer, you only pay a low flat fee, no matter how much design work you need. That’s it! We take care of the hiring, training, and even if your designer takes a day off or two, we’ve got you covered!

What’s more, is that you can pause the service whenever you’re not in need of ongoing design work. You can’t do that with a full-time designer, can you? I can even imagine the conversation happening:

You: “Hey, can you not work for a month then just come back when I have more work for you to do?”

Your full-time designer: “Uh. No.”

Here’s proof of how having a “Pause” option can highly benefit your company:

Hiring newbie designers vs seasoned graphic designers

Maybe it’s your first time hiring, so you will be tempted to get a graphic designer that doesn’t charge much. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Still, let me remind you that cheap designers will need intense training while expensive ones have the experience, but also come with horns [read: a big designer ego]

Our Deer Designers won’t be hurt by your constructive feedback, just like any true disciplined professional shouldn’t be.

And since our subscription design service gives you unlimited revisions, we will continue editing your designs until you are 100% happy with them.

Deer Designer is better than working with a full-time designer because we dedicate a whole design team for you, all your design requests are logged, monitored and, as you work with your design team, they learn your preferences and grow with you.

It’s just like having your personal design team.

Check out this comparison and decide which one is best for you:

Deer Designer is available to support you and your company no matter where you are in your business journey. During those lean months that you might need to fasten the belt, we can help by letting you pause the service and breathe.

And on those peak months when your design needs quadruple, we can add extra designers to your team so you can keep delivering a great service to your clients. Deer Designer helps you scale as you grow.

So before you put out an advert for “Hiring a full-time graphic designer”, try us out for 14 days [with a money-back guarantee] and decide for yourself whether you want to be worry-free or not.