What to expect when you hire an artist: concepts and idears

This is the second in a series of posts on what to expect when working with an artist. Besides, you know… art. The first is here: Conversation, Anyone?

Concepts and Idears

I am a big ego monkey, so I’m going to quote myself here. I could point you to the post, but then you’ll be clicking around my site all day instead of just reading.

Techniques are easy. Ideas are hard.

So you’re looking to get something created – a web site, a graphic, a bar chart for your presentation, whatever. If you search online, you’ll find scores of talented people who can produce professional work. They’ll probably use the latest techniques and all their skill to turn your concepts into a finished product.

Knowing this, how do you choose a designer out of the teeming masses?

You pick the one who can communicate ideas.

Techniques are easy. Ideas are hard. They’re also more valuable.

How do you like them apples? It sounds great in theory, but how do you know this before you hire the designer? I’m so glad you asked.

One way is to tell the designer about your project and ask them to give you some ideas so you can evaluate them and possibly hire that person.

Um, no. Leave that to the craigslist crowd. Sure, someone will bite, but that’s not who you want working on your project anyway.

Really real, no-kidding, professional artists and designers will balk at this, with good reason. You’re pretty much asking them to work for free, until you decide to actually hire them. The concern they’re feeling is that you’ll take their potentially brilliant ideas and hand them to a cheaper production artist to execute. It’s a killer deal for you, but apply the Golden Rule to this situation and you’ll see how you might react if someone asked you to coach them for free until they figure out if you’re effective. Right… that’s what I thought.

What you can do is ask the artist to give you a few examples of past projects where they’ve created concepts with successful outcomes. You should get a sense from this if they can do the same thing for you. You’ll also get a good feel for how they communicate, which is important since you’ll hopefully be doing a lot of that throughout your own project.

Mommy, where do ideas come from?

I carry around a little moleskine with me to doodle concepts. I also use my iPhone to record notes on the road. The thing is, I could be shopping for cereal and suddenly have an epiphany about a client project. So I’m working even when I’m shopping. You can’t always choose when the great concepts are going to beam down from the mothership, you know what I’m sayin’?

So this means that a designer working on your thing is working on your thing pretty much all the time. When you’re sleeping. When they’re sleeping. There aren’t any banker’s hours for ideas.

Knowing this, you should expect to not merely wait for ideas to arrive in your email, you should fuel the idea furnace early in the process. I don’t mean you should be thinking up concepts all day then nickel-and-dime an artist with your nuggets of inspiration. Please. No. I mean you need to give the designer all kinds of information about your business, your audience, and the meaning behind your project (as in “Why are you doing this?”)

You should expect to contribute to the final result by sharing information. The ideas are cooked up by the designer, but you supply the ingredients. Enjoy the process. Mmm, smells delicious.

Next: Roughed Up