What To Decide Between In House Or Outsourcing Your Graphic Design Work

Marketing is not the same as what it was a few decades ago. Millions of people now have access to the internet which if leveraged properly can make you a star overnight. Your marketing strategy no longer consists of printing pamphlets and giving them out on busy street corners.

To draw attention and earn the appreciation of the social media generation, graphic designing is a MUST in your marketing strategy especially when research admits that an image is processed 60,000 times faster than text. It helps you create a consistent image of your brand which has a profound impact on customers.

When confronted with hiring graphic designers, you are torn between two options: hire them in-house or outsource to an agency.

Outsourcing your graphic design

Source: impactbnd.com

Outsourcing has become a very popular method for delegating the non-core activities of a business to the professionals. Activities like marketing are often outsourced to agencies to get the work done by professionals such as the Bizop company and maintain the employees’ productivity.

Similarly, you can easily outsource graphic designing to an agency if it’s not your core activity. Here are some of the benefits you’ll enjoy if you outsource graphic designing:

#1 Cheaper

Outsourcing graphic designing is often comparatively cheaper than in-house graphic designing because you can work within a fixed budget and decide what you want to spend on each project.

#2 Very Flexible

You definitely don’t need the same amount of graphic designing work done every month. If you outsource, you can easily scale up or scale down the number of people working on a project depending on its importance and urgency.

#3 Added Talent

Outsourcing your work to a design agency allows you to take help of experts with different talents. You can hire anyone for a project that requires a particular skill set, say, animation, and then for the next project, where you require expertise on some other aspect, you can hire someone else who has experience in that aspect.

For all the benefits it offers, outsourcing graphic designing still has some cons:

#1 Divided focus

The biggest disadvantage of outsourcing is that the person you’ve outsourced to is probably working on several projects at the same time. This divides their focus and they won’t be able to offer you their best work.

#2 Not easy to find a good candidate

When outsourcing, you need to be sure that the person is qualified enough to handle the assigned project. You will have to check in with people with whom they’ve worked before to get an idea of their talents and work ethics. This takes up quite a lot of time and in the end, there’s still no guarantee that you will find your desired fit.

Working with in-house designers

Source: stephenmorgan.org.uk

An alternative to outsourcing is hiring your own in-house designers. There are some benefits to having an in-house graphic design team too:

#1 Uniformity

Your team will be well accustomed to what your brand stands for. This leads them to create content that reflects your brand authority is and more importantly, as it’s the same group of people, all your graphic designing projects will have a unified tone.

#2 Passion

As a member of the company, an in-house designer will work with more passion and have a greater sense of accountability. They will be much more motivated to do well in order to benefit the company.

#3 Communication

You will be in close contact with your team and can take regular updates on the project from them. If you need to change something or they’re doing something wrong, you can immediately inform them and deal with it. This saves a lot of time.

There are some cons as well:

#1 Hiring process is difficult

Hiring an in-house team is much more strenuous than outsourcing. Since they will be a part of your company, you need to ensure that they are the ideal employees your company is looking for and that they align with your company’s vision.

#2 High Costs

It’s pretty costly to hire an in-house graphic designing team. You have to spend on their training, give them additional overtime costs and so much more. On top of that, the flexibility of expenses present in outsourcing is also absent here.

You must decide what your company needs at the moment before you make a decision. You can also try to include an in-house team and hire a freelancer from time to time for additional expertise.