Should you hire a design agency, or freelancer? (for startups and small-medium businesses)

Choosing between a cost-efficient freelancer or a professional design agency can be a tough decision to make when you're a business owner that cares about your cost and revenue.

🧠 Here are a few questions about their train of thought we've researched from business owners when asked about cost efficiency and revenues, related to hiring creative teams, design agencies, or freelancers.

What is the cost of cutting corners?

What do they need to know before hiring one?

What's the benefit of hiring an in-house design team?

What's the cost of cutting corners?

The Law of Entropy in Business

Entropy is a scientific concept that explains what happens to energy as it powers your flashlight and the universe. When applied in a business context, entropy can show you where additional resources would make your business more efficient and that there are other inefficiencies that you can do nothing about.

The cost would be inevitable for running a business, however, it comes in various shapes and forms. Choosing the right one might save your business entirely.

Cutting Corners Hurt Your Brand

One of the best-known examples of the cost of cutting corners is the Ford Pinto fuel tanks. In the 1970s, Ford produced and sold cars with a gas tank that they knew had the potential to leak gas and create a severe risk of fire. This defect caused consumers injury and resulted in some deaths. Ford had discovered the potentially fatal design error in safety testing and still chose to release the vehicle rather than fix the mistake because it would have cost the company more money.

It cost Ford $50 million in the 1970s to put a bandage on their brand due to cutting corners.

💡 The real cost of cutting corners for your brand is measured by how much you dare to bet on losing when everything falls apart.

Choosing between cheap freelancers vs professional design agencies

When hiring a freelancer here are questions that you need to ask yourself:

Do you have the capacity to manage their work? A lot of cases indicate that freelancers mostly work and contribute at the execution level rather than the strategic or managing level.
Do you have the confidence in communicating your project thoroughly, and that your freelancer will understand everything completely?
How do you manage your room for errors in the project? With no system in place, this could be messy.

Why would you want to hire a design agency:

No BS meeting and complicated explanation of the expertise. In DotDesign, the project manager communicates results and impacts at the level that the CEO, business owners, and other high-level decision makers would understand best.
Proper management and streamlined communication. In DotDesign, most clients are B2B, so we always have one dedicated project manager in every project. All your communication, updates, and account will be handled by one dedicated person.
DotDesign runs with strict deadline and timeline management. This practice helps both clients and the agency, making sure there's no overlap bandwidth when onboarding clients and handing over projects.

When hiring a design agency, here are the things you'd want to know beforehand.

More often than not, it all comes down to budget and resources. As non-creatives, business owners and CEOs, it can be hard to understand the right value in this investment.

Articulate your problem (or ask the agency about their discovery process)

Design agencies are essentially a bunch of problem solvers under one roof. They all solve different problems using different tools — through logos, communication, messaging, key visuals, motions, website design, experience design, and many more. Often, clients are not aware of what the actual problem is they want to solve.

⭐ If your company has more budget and fewer time constraints, in DotDesign we normally still suggest the client move forward with a discovery session, in order to both validate and challenge the problem articulation for your business.

Be very clear about what you're paying for, and the nitty gritty deliverables

With design agencies like DotDesign, we deliver not just the design files most of the time, but also research documents on the reasoning behind why your brand uses a certain color. On top of that, to create controlled and sustainable branding, we always deliver a rule of thumb for your company to use.

⭐ Be very clear in what the deliverables are, and be strict with your internal timeline management. In DotDesign, our deliverables depend highly on a rapid feedback system, hence being engaged in the project 100% would benefit both your company, the project, and the agency's performance.