You never forget your first . . . designer?

February 28, 2008 4:21 PM

What should I know before hiring a graphic designer for the first time?

I've been given the blessing to hire a graphic designer to redesign the menus at the restaurant I manage, but I have no idea what to look for, what questions to ask, how much to budget, etc.

If you've been in this position before, what do you wish you'd known in advance?

Graphic designers, what do you wish first-time customers knew about the process?

posted by joshuaconner to work & money (16 comments total)

Yes, there will most likely be a Jobs posting in the near future.
posted by joshuaconner at 4:22 PM on February 28

The long story:
- determine your budget
- what will the content be?
- will the content change frequently?
- do you need the ability to update that content yourself?
- are you interested in exploring creative formats or do you already have a size selected?
- is your restaurant high end or not?
- is there required continuity with marketing materials or your brand
- will you be managing printing or will you be paying the designer to take on that task?
- would you like to print on recycled material/soy ink?
- what is the deadline?
- do you have anything beyond the menu that you're looking at having redesigned?
- is working for trade an option?

The short story:
- get your nephew to do it in Word and print out copies from a laser printer
posted by quadog at 4:40 PM on February 28

understand that you're hiring aesthetic sense as well as technical ability. if you're picking someone based on portfolios of past work that you like, trust their judgement. the more you micromanage their work, the less involved they are and the weaker the final product. if you or the owners don't seem likely to let a professional run with it, you're better off getting the nephew with word to do it.
posted by tremspeed at 4:51 PM on February 28

Look for a good portfolio with similar work in it. You don't need to find someone with an entire book of restaurant menus under his or her belt, but someone who has print experience rather than web experience is obviously your best bet.

If this is an upscale restaurant, you want to find someone who's great at setting type - I can't tell you how often I've been to a really nice, expensive restaurant only to find that the menus have all sorts of typographical mistakes, such as straight quotes in place of typographer's quotes, lining numerals instead of oldstyle numerals when the place in question is banking on its reputation, and the like. It doesn't make the food worse, but if you're trying to present a professional, detail-oriented atmosphere, everything is important. Knowing paper will be of huge benefit.

Good designers working freelance typically charge between $60 - $100 per hour. If someone comes to you willing to work for $20/hour, rest assured that your project will be late and look awful. And your printer will charge you for all the stuff your cheapo designer messed up, so you don't even come out ahead financially.

You may want to select three or four designers whose work you like and ask them to bid. Typically this will involve you laying out all the aspects of the project - if there's already a branding strategy in place, what kind of restaurant it is, what kind of clientele, what the interior design looks like, what overall image you're trying to impress on your guests. They'll need to know how many pages the menu is, if it's just text (typically fine dining), or if you're like a casual dining place, if it's a glossy, full-color Applebee's/Chili's style thing.

Additionally, they'll need to know if they'll be responsible for updates and what timeline those need to be completed in, or if they need to supply editable digital formats. (I do not recommend the latter for fine dining.) Will they be responsible for getting the final menus printed correctly and on time or just supplying the artwork?

I look forward to seeing your Jobs posting. Good luck!
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:55 PM on February 28

First of all, you'll want to understand the difference between a designer (artistic) and a person who can manipulate images/graphics (technical). If you can get both in the same package, it's a blessing. A great designer who creates visually appealing imagery and layouts while understanding the technical challenges inherent in the medium is hard to find. Designing a print menu vs. an online menu is totally different. Look for a designer who has experience doing whatever you want to produce.

As for budget, keep in mind that there may be additional, slightly-hidden costs. If you want to use generic or stock photos/images, there is a cost to license them (from Getty, et al.). If you want to use actual images of your restaurant, the food, etc., you'll need good photos that are composed well. You may consider hiring a photographer once you've discovered that no one has a good camera or a good eye. If you only need patterns or textures with text, keep in mind that even some fonts are copyrighted. All this just to get the raw material.

If you want the work done for cheap, there's a lot you can do by yourself. Collect images, find patterns, pick fonts and colors, etc. and then get a technical person to color-correct photos, assmble the layout, etc. You can have a lot of say in the final product and it could well turn out just how you like it (which isn't to say that everyone else will).

If you are comfortable delegating the entire task and want something with artistic impact, you'll need a designer. There are risks and rewards, or course. While you can set the general parameters for the design and give the designer an idea of what you want, as tremspeed noted, you can't micromanage the artistic process and expect dramatic results. As far as budgeting for a designer, the most important thing to remember is that you can't expect an established designer to be less creative just because you're offering less money. If they have a minimum charge, try to respect it. Whatever they design for you is an extension of their brand, and it is entirely possible that if your budget is too small, there is no benefit for them to work with you. If it's "just a menu" to you, don't bother trying to haggle for a lower price - if you want Lexus results, don't go in with a Yaris budget. But if you trust the designer based on what they've done before and know they understand what you want, the reward is a design that you may never have even imagined, knocking the socks off of your customers and pushing your brand to another level. And that's worth every penny.
posted by krippledkonscious at 6:08 PM on February 28

Do your designer a favour and don't dictate minutiae like font choice. But what most of us like to see is examples of visual material you admire. Needn't be other menus, could be ads clipped out of magazines or bits of packaging or anything else along those lines. This gives us a shortcut to understanding your aesthetic, and we understand you're not asking us to copy your samples, but that they're there as a talking point and to give us a general sense of the kind of thing you have in mind.

Also, a graphic designer is someone who bridges the artistic and the technical, so you don't have to worry too much about krippledkonscious's arbitrary division of the two. No designer with any serious experience will be incapable of handling one of those two aspects of the job. No matter how brilliant you are artistically, if you can't prepare a file for press you're a dilettante, not a designer.
posted by zadcat at 7:15 PM on February 28

Lots of good advice here. You can feel free to contact me and ask me specific questions, I can talk you through the basics too. Website's on my profile. I need more restaurant work in my portfolio so I might even be open to helping you out, depending on your budget and timelines. :)
posted by miss lynnster at 7:49 PM on February 28

Most important thing: set a timeline. If the designer balks at hard milestones, take your money and walk. It's probably the last thing any designer wants to talk about, but from experience I know that meeting deadlines consistently is what separate the pros from the not-pros. Everything else is just aesthetic tastes.

Oh, and don't micromanage. But you wouldn't micromanage the guy fixing your car, right? Let's assume you already know this part.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:15 AM on February 29

When I have hired new designers in the past, I always ask for 3 (sometime up to 5) test layouts before the real work begins, rather than just either 1-accepting the first layout/design concept s/he gives me, or, worse, going through re-design after re-design. This will save you money and aggravation. Seconding (someone) above-- let the designer design. Font and other graphic choices should be theirs, with caveats to the readability needs of a menu. I would not work with someone who has not done menus in the past-- this seems like a very specific skill. Unless your budget is very low, work with someone experienced. Talk to current/prior clients to find out how easy they were to work with. Know your budget and your timetable.

If your budget is extremely limited, you might try calling the graphic design department at a local college and see if you can get a class to take it on as a project. As I said, a menu is quite a specific design problem, so a gd professor might be very interested in having a class take on a real world project like this. You'll get a class full (I've gotten as many as 24) separate design solutions, and the "winner" gets to take a professional project through to the end and include it in a portfolio. I've done this often and have never been disappointed. I've worked with every level of student from freshmen to graduate students. Once we put everyone's solutions up as an exhibit, and we still have many of these items framed, because they were so great. Plus, the winning one is our logo/corporate ID to this day.
posted by nax at 6:37 AM on February 29

Two suggestions. The first deals quite generally with the process of finding a designer and following the job through to completion. The second is with particular regard to the design of menus. They are not necessarily listed in order of importance ...

1) Find a designer whose judgement you think you can trust.

Zadcat's suggestion to supply some 'visual material you admire' is one I will occasionally ask a new client to follow. But only for the sort of clients that were I a better designer I'd flatly refuse to take on.

Because it is an approach that risks blurring in the client's mind who the designer is really designing for: the client, or their (potential) customers.

My suggestion is to look for a designer who has a body of work which not only looks fantastic but which 'fits' the clients it was produced for. And then—having addressed more prosaic issues like budget and timelines, and having answered as best you can their questions about your business and customers—trust them to exercise their judgement.

When reviewing their proposals try to do so on the basis of whether the design is likely to resonate with your clientele; not whether it uses the same shade of blue as your favourite website, or the font you think your boss likes. In fact, rid yourself of the phrases "I like" and "I don't like" completely, and only let them re-enter your lexicon when looking for artwork to hang on your bedroom wall.

With such an approach you're unlikely to end up with a design that you could have anticipated. But you're more likely to get a design which does its job.

2) Make sure that at least one of you understands the proper usage of apostrophes.
posted by puffmoike at 10:28 AM on February 29

Oh, and pretty much everything quadog said.
posted by puffmoike at 10:31 AM on February 29

You'll get a class full (I've gotten as many as 24) separate design solutions, and the "winner" gets to take a professional project through to the end and include it in a portfolio. I've done this often and have never been disappointed.

Not even students should be asked to do work on spec or for free. This is not pro bono, done for the greater good, this is taking advantage of people and using their skills and naivete in pursuit of profit for your commercial enterprise. Shame on you.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:27 PM on February 29

Optimus: Please talk to the professors, as they are the ones through whom I always connected. Not all classes will do this, not all professors will take on such projects. I guess you're right, for a for profit enterprise like a restaurant, this might be over the line you describe. I have always worked in small not for profits. We often use interns, paid (poorly) and unpaid, student input such as that described above, etc. It is not exploitation, it is education; an internship if you will. However, you are correct that for a for-profit enterprise might be different from my experience. Perhaps the winning design could be actually hired, at a rate that reflects that this is a designer with less experience. But shame on me? no.
posted by nax at 4:33 PM on February 29

folks, I did this because the professors came to us. It's educational because it is a class assignment that just happens to have a real world application. If you will notice my first response, I conceded that if it is for a for-profit business the winner should be paid. Please explain to me how this differs from an internship, many of which are full time, months long and completely unremunerated. Vomiting on me seems uncalled for. Please only respond with pertinent information and not personal attacks. Mods?
posted by nax at 6:23 AM on March 1

[DO NOT turn this into a shaming exercise about spec work. If you can't explain why something is a good/bad idea without being a total jerk about it, go straight ot metatalk, thanks.]
posted by jessamyn at 7:13 AM on March 1

My concern with having a class take on a project is that although it might be a great design they probably will not have a real world grasp of printing, preparing files etc. You might have to count on extra time/money for this. At least this was the case when I was a student. A class might rather take on an identity project for the restaurant with the branding including a menu... that would probably be more educational than just a menu.
posted by Bunglegirl at 5:48 PM on March 21