Why Would You Pay for a Professional Designer to Do your Brand?

“Why Would Someone Pay for a Professional Designer... When they could just use Canva or Fiverr?”

We’ve certainly heard this question being thrown about before and while we understand why for some this might be a dilemma, we want to make sure you know for a fact why a pro designer is always the best option!

Let's kick things off with a simple analogy: who would you rather pay to cut your hair?  Someone who has attended beauty school, trained and cut quite a few people’s hair before doing yours OR someone who’s only watched a couple of tutorials on YouTube before cutting their own? We understand that budget make swing your choice here, but let’s be honest - if you wanted proven results because you know you have a big event coming up and you don’t want risking a 90s bowl cut (or something worse), then we’re pretty sure you’d opt for the professional. And of course, the range of professional hairdressers ranges quite wildly in price, but as long as you find the one who fits you, you’ll still happily go and pay them to do the job.

Well, it’s not much different when it comes to designers. 

When you hire a professional designer, you are paying for years of knowledge and experience along with skills that have taken time to develop. You are hiring someone who will not only make your brand look good, but who will take the time to understand your industry and how your business lies within that, so you can have more success.

We live in a visual world, obviously, and every business - no matter how small - has a brand, so standing out visually is just another way to chip away at the competition.

Of course, all the tools available today do make it seem that anyone can do it, but truthfully, not everyone is going to be good at it.

Most importantly, many improvised designers wouldn’t know how to think STRATEGICALLY about your brand and that can be so damaging because - why bother with having a visual brand if it doesn’t give your business the results you want and it doesn’t resonate with your ideal clients? 

A professional designer knows how to create a connection between a brand and their target audience. They also understand the nuanced psychology of your audience, how to work with visuals to align them to your messaging and create a long-lasting visual connection. They will also know how to look at your industry and identify elements that will make you unique (independently of temporary trends) and they will be able to use colours, graphics and shapes to communicate your values and brand personality.

Plus, when it comes to branding work, you want your designer to be able to understand and collaborate harmoniously with your marketing team and/or within your marketing efforts, so that everything you put out feels coherent.

Other artists or wannabe designers working in Canva or on Fiverr often know how to make something look good, maybe even appealing or trendy but are less aware of the relationship between the design elements, the brand, the overall business and the effect on the ideal audience.

Still not convinced that a professional designer will be the better choice for your business? Here’s a few more details you might want to take into consideration:

A good process leads to success

Professional designers usually engage in a thorough process that starts with a discovery stage about the brand, audience, and goals, before even putting pen to paper. Once all of that is clear and bundled in a strategy, they create a cohesive branding, including logo, color palette, typography, icons and/or graphics, guidelines, and any other assets you might contract them for. When all the branding is ready, some of them might even be able to bring it all together in your marketing collaterals. This process is what helps professional designers craft audience-centric designs that align with your business and marketing goals and make you stand out. 

On the other hand, designers who are not professionals may prioritize faster turnaround and work off template solutions (and Canva has many of these, but sooner or later a brand will just look the same if everyone's using similar templates) rather than tailored branding strategies. 

Customisation over templated solutions

In line with the previous point, when working with a professional designer, you will see work that is fully customised, with no pre-made stuff. A professional designer should customise all your brand visuals to align with your messaging. They should be able to take your complex ideas and make them into result-driven visuals. 

Hands-on support and long-term consistency

It can be a terrible combination of lack of support and the possibility of a non-professional not doing a comprehensive job.

When you work with someone who isn't a pro designer - whether found on Fiverr or anywhere else - oftentimes there's a lack of customer service and hands-on support, so if things go south, you might find yourself at a loss. A professional designer would instead stick around and support the implementation of the branding, so they can help when issues arise.

Consistency is another major factor when opting for a professional designer. In fact, if we’re looking at the long-term, after the logo and colour palette and other basics are done, what happens if you need another asset or a brochure or website designed? Can the wannabe designer help with that? Is it outside their area of expertise? Are you gonna find someone else? Most business owners would mostly choose the latter option, meaning sooner or later they gonna get stuck with a Frankenstein brand, made with components and styles that bear no consistency among projects. And what's even worse — this will just make a brand look cheap.

So choosing a cheaper, quicker option in the short-term, might eventually turn out to be a big waste of time and money in the long run. 

So, yes, you can hire someone off Fiverr or even design your own brand, but why would you when you get so much more bang for your buck working with an experienced designer who can bring your business real results?

Hiring a professional designer means you get a comprehensive, strategic, and long-term branding solution— one that will surely make you stand out, for all the right reasons, within your industry.

At Saia Creative we offer branding services that range from brand strategy, to logo design, website design, full branding and so much more. Get in touch today to learn more about how we can support your business.