Ready to hire a designer

[lexsigns]

Design is the biggest part of my biz I love I sub out everything else I can with the exception of installing vinyl. I have even subbed out the design to fiends when the install load is high but that works for me.

I think the design is most important part of every job and could not afford to let that suffer or be done by someone with little to no sign experience.. Just my opinion..
Jill I would love to keep you in mind for when the need arrises

 

[anotherdog]

I can't take it any more. Spending 3-4 hours per day designing and sending proofs. I'm ready to bite the bullet and hire someone.
Put an ad on craigslist and got about 40 replies.
My question is should I save money and hire a kid right out of art school for about $9 an hour or pay more money and get someone with real world experience?

Curious because I'm really a designer who needs to hire someone to run the machines and make signage. I spend my mornings designing and afternoons in the shop printing and making.

The hard part isn't just skills, they can be learned. It's motivation.
I have hired people and ended up working around them. People to answer the telephone and do sales that turned on facebook when I left the room.

We do a lot of handholding to external designers working from other companies, the quality of junior designers shows in both simple (costly) mistakes and the time taken to design even simple jobs. You need someone with experience you can trust to get the job done and only apply as much time as the job will pay.

You can't usually find that on Craigslist.

Oh and you need someone who will clean the place up when it isn't busy without being told. Another beef is someone just sitting there surrounded with things that need doing waiting to be told to do them.

 

[Gino]

I think the OP is really talking about hiring an in-house employee with whom he can count on to do design, mock ups and work around the shop.

That's not always easy to find, but when you do.... they're worth their weight in gold.

We have a truly 1000% designer, sign guy and everything else all wrapped up into one.... with one of our guys. We pay a nice price for him, but he's been with us almost 7 years and we still make plans for future expansion. He's become more than just an employee and I do believe he knows our appreciation. Every one of us in our shop can design… some faster than others, while another might have a strong suit in certain areas. We’re always bouncing ideas, layouts and designs back & forth.

Just keep your eyes open and don’t be afraid to use some of the members here until you find your own person. Some really good ones have already been mentioned.

 

[adamfilip]

Hire a kid right out of Graphic Design school from a College.
Thats how i got my first design job and its been great.. now Ive been doing signage for 10 years and run a shop with 4 of designers

 

[Sign Up Graphics]

Sign Up Graphics

 

[signswi]

I guess I should clarify. I don't have 8 hours a day in design work. This person will also help my sign tech and my screen printer when not designing.
That's one reason I didn't want to go the sub out route.

You're going to have a hard time finding someone like this. Make sure you're really clear with the applicants that this really isn't a design job, it's a sign shop job that does some design. Otherwise you're going to burn through designers as they realize they're in a job that's not doing much for their career and is a complete sidetrack to what they set out to do. Rarely do people go to college for design thinking they'll work in a sign shop, and those that have at least some interest in signs are going to be looking to do environmental projects.

That said if you have some 2-year near you spitting out ill prepared designers that aren't going to get agency jobs anyway, give it a shot. Just be prepared for churn.

 

[BPI Color]

Real world experience is what will in the end, save you time and money. A 9$ per hour newbie amounts to scraping the bottom of the barrel. In essence, you're going to lose a lot of time teaching that part-timer the trade. Color management, color space, vector versus raster, pixels per inch, transparency support, color-profiling; Is this how you want to spend your time? And once you get that newbie trained, he's going to leave you for a higher paying job. It'll be deja-vu all over again. Start looking for competent designers with sign experience. Build up a stable and save yourself a lot of hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth.