Actually, it’s hardly possible to give you a straight answer. Because it all depends on your budget and the amount of time you’re ready to devote to the project. But let’s try to make the choice between in-house and graphic design agency a little easier.
Сreate the design with your own team or with a graphic design agency? Sit down and let’s take a closer look at the key factors that influence decision-making as well as the pros and cons of both options.
Budget
Accurate budgeting plays a key role in any business. Figuring out how much money is enough for implementing, launching and testing the idea as well as developing business and marketing strategies. Whether you’re an early-stage startup or a well-established company, taking into consideration and forecasting all these expenses is tricky. Always.
Let’s face it, creating your own team (be it just one designer or more) is not just about finding the right people to join you. It’s expensive. It’s easy to forget that the cost of an employee means more than just a salary: you’ll have to take care of recruiting and training costs, payroll taxes, life insurance, overtime & holiday pay as well.
A few facts to convince you that hiring in-house isn’t beneficial in the long term:
- The average company spends around $2K/year per learner on training
- The real costs of employees are usually in the 1.25 to 1.4 times base salary range
- Companies give full-time employees at least 2 weeks (10 days) of paid vacation time
Unlike in-house teams, graphic design agencies are more flexible and cost-effective. Because if you hire a third-party agency to design and project, there’s no need to worry about full-time salaries, paid days off, free meals and gym memberships. Instead, you just pay for the benefits. It means that at the design stage, you pay for the time that 3-rd party designers have spent to come up with UI/UX design.
Time
Getting started with your own design team — in theory, this sounds good. Just imagine…working together cohesively, sharing one space, missions and goals. Doesn’t this sound perfect? Actually, it does.
Although, let us bring you back to reality.
Have you ever thought about how much time it takes to create the best graphic design firms? Posting out job requests, looking through tens of resumes, interviewing a bunch of random people and testing their skills. The hiring process might take weeks or even months— you cannot afford to waste that much time. Simply because the whole idea might lose its relevance, while you’re trying to find the right candidates. Even if you need just one designer.
Here’s one more advantage of hiring a graphic design agency. This one mainly refers to full-cycle product building agencies that provide all the needed services — from business analysis to post-launch support. With such product design companies, the entire workflow is organized and you just go from one step to another in a very smooth way:
How do creative agencies work?
For founders who want to create MVPs, it is out of crucial importance. Why? Because once you’re done with the design stage, you don’t have to worry about where to find a skilled dev to implement the ‘done’ UI/UX design. A graphic design agency gives you access to a complete team from day one — with UI/UX designers, developers, QA experts, and managers on board. It means that when it’s time to hand off the design to the devs, you’ll have the needed skills (in one place!) to make it happen.
Building a “web designer near me” work environment, finding & buying office supplies for a team is time-consuming either. Whether you want to rent office space or set up a super small home office, you’ll have to make it workable and attractive. Laptops, desks, adequate lighting, boards — are you sure you want to stuff up your head with these things? Doubt that.
So, yes, sniffing out top talent, finding the needed expertise and creating a comfortable working space — with graphic design agencies, this is not your zone of responsibility. In this scenario, you work with a team that already has space to work in. Their working location is comfortable and organized, their working processes are already set up. Therefore, you can focus entirely on your design project without worrying about how to be a good employer.
In fact, the choice mainly depends on your goals
So, building a team or hiring an agency? And if you opt for the latter, what kind of agency to hire? A few cases that will guide you on the path to finding the right answer:
