If you run a business or you’re in charge of marketing, there’s a good chance you need graphic design illustrations that don’t suck. After all, there’s only so many Unsplash images you can use before you start to notice.. everyone else is using those same images. Not a good look.
Say Goodbye to DIY
no freelancers, no new hires – just designs on demand
Modern brands don’t have it easy. There are tons of graphic designers competing for your business, and you’re often choosing between exorbitant prices and low quality. On top of that, you have to choose between design agencies, freelancers, subscription services, and anyone else who decides they’re a graphic designer that week. It can feel impossible to choose, and even when you do choose, you may not like the designs you receive.
So how do the most successful brands get graphic design illustrations quickly and affordably, and how can you replicate their success?
Plan Ahead with Your Design Strategy
It’s a no-brainer that brands should be planning their content strategy in advance – and specifically their content calendar. Even more critical, agencies need to make sure their client work is getting done on time. The best way to ensure consistent content output and project completion is having your design process mapped out in advance.
There are ways to fuse your company’s bottom line with your customers’ wants to achieve a win-win. This is called design strategy, and every big company has at least a few team members dedicated to carrying it out.
Benefits of design strategy include:
- It cuts back on planning/execution time, as there’s no need to reinvent the wheel for each project
- It saves money, allowing you to get the most graphic design illustrations for your buck
- It keeps all stakeholders in the loop about creative direction
- It helps you see the ROI of your design investment and link design with business outcomes
When you look into the success of major companies like Apple and Microsoft, you find that their design process was central. It’s no accident that fans continue to rave about Apple’s product designs year after year. But design isn’t only relevant to tech companies or brands with physical products. Even a service-based business can thrive by putting design front and center. See some design strategy examples here.
Compare Your Options
Once you have a strategy loosely laid out, it’s time to figure out where you’ll be sourcing your designs from. This is the crux of your entire strategy. You need your graphic design illustrations to be on-budget but also up-to-par quality-wise. Here are your options:
Do It Yourself
So you’re creative and you want to try your hand at DIY design? Or maybe you run a small company and your design budget is still nonexistent. This is when you have no choice but to hurl yourself into design and see how it goes. While this will undoubtedly limit the amount and types of graphic design illustrations you produce, it might work fine for a small startup.
In this situation, you can rely on things like:
- free graphic design templates
- DIY tutorials
- batching & scheduling content
- stock illustrations
- tools like Canva
Hire a Freelancer
This is an extremely common option, especially if you only have an occasional design project to complete. Platforms like Upwork and Fiverr are teaming with professionals who are willing to help with one-off projects. The trickiest thing about freelance platforms is that the best designers are usually pretty busy and may not have time to focus on your brand or get projects shipped quickly.
Hire an In-House Designer
If your ideal goal is a tight-knit team that works together, hiring one or more in-house designers might be your best bet. Reaching a point where you can hire an in-house designer is cause for celebration. But remember: Just because you have all that money doesn’t mean you need to spend it. This is where a subscription service comes in handy. Plus, you save all that money you’d be spending on an in-house designer.
Subscribe to a Service
An unlimited graphic design service is probably the most hands-off of all the approaches. You are entrusting your design strategy to a team of designers outside of your company. They’ll have to get to know your brand, and it may take swapping designers a few times to find a good fit. But it often works out better than hiring a random freelancer and starting from scratch each time.
Grab a Graphic Design Illustrations Subscription
Yes, it’s that point in the article where we boast about the value of an unlimited graphic design subscription. But wait! Hear us out.
As an unlimited graphic design company, we’ve worked with thousands of brands in a variety of industries, but one thing is always the same: Leaders feel a weight lifted off their shoulders when they outsource some or all of their design tasks to us. Your time and energy is freed up to run your business (instead of micromanaging unskilled designers or trying to become a designer yourself).
Whether your design team is tied up with more important tasks or you don’t have a team at all, Penji fills the gap for you, offering unlimited graphic design illustrations from some of the best designers in the world. With 3 pricing tiers, our platform is designed to fit your current needs like a glove. Upgrade or downgrade anytime if your design output changes.
With a graphic design subscription, you get:
- as many designs as you can pack into each month
- unlimited revisions at no additional cost
- a 24-48 hour turnaround time for most designs
- access to many illustration design styles
- to talk directly with your illustration designer
- a simple dashboard to submit design requests in minutes
- the option to swap designers and get a fresh take on a project
- the option to upload brand guidelines and get hyper-customized graphics
- multiple brand folders to keep your clients or projects organized
- a 30-day money-back guarantee
You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain – outsource your graphic design illustrations to us and see why so many brands use Penji as their secret weapon. See a demo here.
