I have always had good luck working with graphic designers, but recently a few friends have told me that they have been having bad experiences with certain designers. Because of that, I decided to sum up my strategies and organize them into a list of seven dos and don’ts for working effectively with graphic designers:

#1 – DO Have an Idea of What You Want

Before you talk to a designer, you need to have an idea in your head for what you want your website to look like. Going into a project blind usually leads to a frustrated designer (as the designer has little or no direction on the project), and a frustrated webmaster, as the first few mockups are probably not going to be what you want.

The designer can’t read your mind, so make sure you communicate your ideas using the following methods:

• Textual Design Briefs – Use a design brief to textually explain the major requirements for the design, and also feel free to link out to other images or websites that the designer can use for inspiration.

• Sketches – I love sketching out my ideas for a website design, as it helps me visualize what the final result might look like while I play around with different ideas and layouts. I usually just use a piece of notebook paper and a pencil, then take a picture of the sketch with my digital camera and upload it to my computer (I really need to buy a scanner ). Later on in this article I show an example sketch I did for my designer, along with the accompanying final website design.

• Design Contests – If you are drawing an absolute blank as to what you want your website to look like, one idea is to go to 99Designs.com or the Digital Point Contest Forum and start a design contest. For $145 at 99Designs, or even less at Digital Point, you can start a “sketch contest” where the entrants simply enter sketches for your website design so you can see tons of different layouts, logo ideas, colors, etc. From there, you can pick a design sketch that you like and show it to your designer so he/she can work on turning it into a full design.

By coming up with at least a couple general ideas of what the design should include, you will make things much easier on your designer and you will know what to expect when he/she sends you that first mockup.

#2 – DO Negotiate Payment Terms Ahead of Time

The majority of problems that arise between webmasters and designers are from misunderstandings regarding payment. Before you enter into an agreement with a graphic designer (especially one you haven’t worked with before) you should both be crystal-clear on every aspect of payment and service. Use the following checklist to make sure you two have covered everything:

• Hourly rate or fixed rate? If you are paying an hourly rate, figure out a reasonable retainer payment and make sure to have the designer let you know when your retainer is running out.

If you are paying a fixed rate for the job, make sure both parties know exactly how much work is expected for the fixed rate, and how payment will be handled for any additional work that may arise. Also, discuss when payment will be released (upon completion of certain milestones, upon completion of the design, etc).

• Payment method? Will the designer accept PayPal? Will you have to send a check? Make sure you are both on the same page.

• Who handles the coding? Some designers do both design and coding, while some will simply send you a .PSD file when the design is done. Make sure this is discussed beforehand, as a design can quickly become more expensive if you have to pay additional money to get it coded.

If the designer is handling the coding, make sure you see some examples of designs they have coded so you know that they know what they are doing. Nothing is worse than going from a beautiful .PSD design to a jagged, code-bloated HTML template.

• How many revisions? Some designers include only one or two revisions on a design, while others offer unlimited revisions. Make sure you discuss this beforehand, as well as back-up plans should you run out of revisions before you are satisfied.

• What’s the timeframe? Before starting the project you should have at least a rough timeframe for the project’s progress. Ask how many people are in line ahead of you, if the designer works weekends, how long a typical design takes for completion, etc.

• What is the privacy arrangement? I personally love for my designer to use my websites in his portfolio, as it sends a link to my site and sometimes a little traffic too. However, if you are working on a groundbreaking idea or would prefer privacy, make sure your designer knows that he/she cannot use your design in their portfolio.

By figuring out the payment terms ahead of time, you will avoid numerous headaches down the road.

#3 – DON’T Send Full Payment Up Front

I never like to send full payment for a design up front, even if I am working with someone I trust. There are two reasons why I never like to send full payment up front:

1. Theft. Even if you have worked with and trusted someone for years, there is always the chance that something could happen in their life that would force them to ditch on your job while keeping the cash.

If you are working with someone new, there really is no reason to ever consider sending full payment up front as the risk of theft can be fairly high depending on where you found the designer.

2. Loss of motivation. I’ve found that designers work a lot harder for their money when all of it isn’t already sitting in their PayPal account. Make sure to defer a significant portion of the payment until the design is completely done, just so the designer has good motivation to see the job through to the finish.

#4 – DO Request Designer Input

Although (as mentioned before) it is extremely important that you have at least a good idea of what you are looking for so the project stays on track, a lot of the fun of working with good graphic/web designers is to let them have a little leeway on a project and see what they come up with. Some of my most original and creative designs have come about from giving a designer a few firm ground rules and then just letting them loose.

If you are going to do this, though, make sure you are actually open to unique or perhaps even risqué ideas for the project. We all have had certain projects where we know in our head exactly what the final design needs to look like, and if that is the sort of project you are working on, it doesn’t make sense to tell a designer “let’s see what you can come up with” then have him go back and change it 100 times until it is what you were thinking of in the first place.

What it DOES make sense to do (if you are looking for a creative design) is to present the designer with some rules, such as what sort of navigation the site needs to have, basic color scheme, and basic page layout, and then say “make it look fantastic”.

As an example, here is a sketch I did for my last web design project. I used a pen and paper to hash out my ideas for what the basic site outline should look like, and then sent it to my designer with further instructions on what he was to do:

From there, we exchanged ideas several times and went back and forth on mockups until he came up with the current homepage design at BusinessCards.org, pictured below:

From my initial sketch, he was able to come up with a unique sidebar where the navigational links transform to reveal a product icon upon hovering, a new call to action in the middle of the page, a nice watermark for the left navigation boxes, and a good-looking breadcrumb navigation section at the top. The design never would have come out that well if my design rules had been too rigid.

#5 – DON’T Ever Settle for Something You Aren’t 100% Satisfied With

If you are doing a website design with a hotshot graphic designer, there is never any reason to accept a design you aren’t 100% satisfied with. When a great designer sends you his or her initial design for a website, it is easy to be blown away and say “this is absolutely perfect, send it to the coder”.

However, I recommend sitting on the design for at least a day or two so you can look it over several times, think about it, discuss it with your Internet marketing buddies, and figure out how it can be improved.

Nothing annoys a designer more than having to go back and edit a design someone already said was finished, so don’t put yourself in that position.

Also, if there is absolutely anything missing from the design that was discussed in your initial conversation, make sure to mention it repeatedly until the feature is added to the design. I’ve worked with several designers who charge hourly fees approaching a lawyer’s fees, and when you are paying that kind of money you deserve exactly what you paid for.

#6 – DON’T Complete a Project Before Receiving Everything You Need

As Internet marketers, I’m sure we’ve all gone through a scenario similar to the following, frustrating example:

You just received your brand new design back from your coder, and since you have been pre-writing content for the website for the past few weeks, you are ready to launch the website today.

You fire up Dreamweaver and start copy/pasting content into your design, and then you realize you are missing one small thumbnail or logo that you absolutely need for your homepage.

Now you can’t go live until you get that image. And when this happens, you can bet every dollar in your bank that your designer will not be on Skype at the time

To avoid this situation, make sure you visualize each page on your site beforehand and think of absolutely any potential images, logos, graphics, or icons you may need. Don’t forget to include your newsletter opt-in form, Facebook/Twitter buttons, RSS subscription form, or search box in your design.

As we are all bound to forget something, I like to negotiate a little “buffer” with my designer that basically says if I need small icons or images in the weeks after we complete the job, he throws them in for free.

#7 – DO Treat Your Designer Well

I always like to take care of my designers, regardless if that involves sending customers his way from time to time, accepting his first quote even though I know I could work him down a little, or giving him a break when he tells me he needs an extra hour or day to complete a job.

I know some guys are real sticklers when it comes to their relationship with their designer, but I’ve always found that by treating my guy well I can always expect his A+ effort, he never puts me in line behind other customers, and he throws me a freebie every once in a while when I need a small job done fast.

What do you guys think? Are these helpful tips? Have I missed anything? Feel free to sound off in the comments, and thank you to Jonathan for helping me set up this guest post.

Michael Wittmeyer is the founder and owner of www.BusinessCards.org – an online print shop that also offers a business card blog, Photoshop tutorials, and a complete guide for business card design. He has been working online full-time for over five years in various industries.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

• Get My Facebook Advertising Guide!
• Get My Affiliate Marketing Guide!

They have one of the best reputations when it comes to being able to find reputable companies to work on your stuff.

But… my experience with them kinda just plain sucked. $3,131 kinda of suck to be exact.

You see… a while ago I decided to pay a company on elance to work on one of my sites called “Cartoonate.com”. This was going to be a web based project that people could use for free to convert their photos into cartoon looking images on the fly… or could pay $10 to have it drawn up by an artist.

The idea I know could have taken off just based on the other services that offer this.

So I hired a good programming team / design team out of India that had a fair price and a good reputation. The most important thing was that I felt I could trust this team and Elance because… if they do a bad job… I can simply leave bad feedback. Just like eBay, so much of the Elance ecosystem relies upon good feedback.

Bad feedback equals no work.

Seems simple enough right?

Well… After paying thousands of dollars to the company and getting the project about 60% complete… I get this unfortunate message from them.

The company I have working for me had been banned from the elance marketplace right in the middle of my project. DOH!

Ok… so at first I thought it wouldn’t be a huge deal. I figured that they had a reputation enough that they would finish the project.

The company contacted me, let me know that they would be contacting me via this new method now… and that’s when the communications started to die down. Responses took longer and longer until I just stopped hearing from them all together.

Emails faded away and I quickly realized that I was not only not going to get this website finished… but that I was not going to be able to get the work they had already done either.

And because elance decided to ban them… I had no way at all of leaving negative feedback. It felt like I got screwed by Elance to be honest. Ok… so it’s definitely NOT 100% elance’s fault. In fact, I totally think it was just them following policy. I don’t know why that freelance company was banned. All I know is that if they were allowed to stay on Elance… I probably would have had my project.

Proposed Change For Elance Policy

So, Elance… if you have a freelancer working an active project, my suggestion is to wait to ban them until they have no more active projects…

Doing this will allow people like me to get the projects.

That… or you can require the freelance companies to upload all the project files into a sort of “Escrow” hard drive. Once the project is complete… (or the company is banned) you simply release those files. Sure they won’t be finished projects… but might be able to salvage it.

Anyways – I’m not mad at Elance because I realize they were probably just thinking of removing that team for whatever violation they did. But, something to think about.

EDIT: Seems this lady has a VERY similar story (except 100x worse):

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

• Get My Facebook Advertising Guide!
• Get My Affiliate Marketing Guide!

As such, I’ve asked him to write a little bit about his online design course and tell all of you about it. Personally, I think it’s a great idea for those who cannot afford to pay a designer to consistently make changes to their landing pages. It’s also great for those who want to better their design skills.

Everyone here probably understands the importance of effective design, whether it be for a full website, or a landing page. Unfortunately most affiliate marketers and business owners aren’t equipped with the skills necessary to tackle the design aspects of their own businesses and projects. This is where they must rely on paying designers, and if you’ve been around for awhile, you know that not every project turns out how you envisioned.

So this is why I launched my web design course. It’s very simple and straight forward.The service features just about 20 hours worth of video tutorials that show me designing with commentary, real projects from start to finish. You get to see exactly how a real designer tackles full design projects, beginning with the logo, and ending with the HTML/CSS.
There are 6 web design projects with even more logo projects.

At the very least, the course will provide you with a solid foundation in which you can begin to tackle your own projects. Being able to launch projects when you want and not having to rely on designers is always a huge positive.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2009.

• Get My Facebook Advertising Guide!
• Get My Affiliate Marketing Guide!