How do you pick a good design agency?

How do you pick a good design agency?

Finding a good design agency to work with on your logo design, rebrand or website isn’t easy. Even if we start with the premise that no one sets out to do a bad job (I really believe that’s true), there’s more to finding a good design agency than randomly picking the company that tops the search results.

Finding a great design agency – one that you can build a relationship with over time, one that becomes a partner to your business, one that revolutionises how your current and prospective clients view your business – isn’t an easy task.

It’s also not a decision that should be driven by budget. Sure, budget counts, but if you try and save too much money in the short term, then it’ll definitely cost you more in the long term. False starts cost time, money and heartache so it pays to find the right design agency in the first place.

I suspect that this could be an incredibly long post, so let me just give you a few bullet points to get thinking about.

1. What’s the brief? What do you need doing? Is this a design project? A development project? A branding project or all three? Don’t be blinkered about what you think the real brief is either — be prepared to listen to the experts.
2. Don’t be too prescriptive. We recently met with a start-up who was out of love with his logo before he’d even launched! He was on revision seven and had just given up by this point. How sad! He explained that he’d told the agency “exactly what he wanted” and it was only when he saw that, he realised he didn’t like it. We never ask the client to tell us how we want a logo to look – instead we spend time understanding their brief, their objectives and the impression they want to create and we use our expertise to deliver something waaaay above and beyond the client’s imagination. If they really insist they know what they want, then we’ll always show one version alongside two of our own.
3. What questions are they asking you? How interested do they seem in your business? Are they passionate about what they do? Are they excited about what they can do for you? Do you get the feeling that they’re just going to deliver what you’ve asked for? Or are they going to listen to your brief, think creatively about how to solve your challenge and deliver something that really adds value to your business?
4. How do you respond to their portfolio? Are you inspired by it? Does it have you thinking excitedly about the possibilities for your own business? Is it creative? Is it diverse? I always say that you don’t need to like everything in our portfolio but you do need to like the reason behind it. You need to like our approach – and you should like a good chunk of the portfolio if you’re going to work with the agency.
5. What’s the team like? There are pros and cons to freelancers versus an agency. Clearly an agency is going to cost a lot more than a freelancer - their overheads are higher. The flip side is that the world doesn’t stop turning just because they land a big job or go on holiday and I believe that the diversity and vibrancy of a creative team is essential to generating ideas that are ahead of the curve. Also consider whether they have designers/developers in-house or do they outsource?
6. Are they producing powerful design? The concept of powerful design is not easy to put your finger on — it’s about everything from creative flair to producing designs that enable you to win more business. It requires robust processes and a clear insight into a client’s business.
7. What are their strengths? And how does that fit with what you need? All too often we’re asked to redesign a site that has been designed by a web development agency – unsurprisingly it lacks the creative flair, vision and design edge that a design/branding agency can deliver and it’s that flair that’s essential to ensure that your site engages your target audience.

Fiona Humberstone is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and managing director of Flourish.

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