How to Hire a Designer to Create Certificate Designs

Hiring a designer to have beautiful certificates is not always a piece of cake. You need to be sure of that person's skills, as they will be the ones preparing your award certificates.

Fortunately, there is another way to design certificates that don't require a big budget, creativity, or technical knowledge, so you will definitely be able to do it yourself.

But let's start at the beginning. 🚀

What is the best way to hire a designer?

There can be many ways to hire a designer that will meet your requirements and prove to be a great certificate creator. For example, if you have a lot of connections, you can get information from them, especially if they have experience in finding designers and have already gone down this road. 

You can also advertise online, on social media platforms, or in your neighborhood that you are looking for an employee for such a position.

What's more, you can then choose a designer based on, for example, their design experience or educational background– if graduating from a design school is more important for you than a portfolio. You may not even know, and the perfect candidate is right under your nose.

But if these solutions don't appeal to you, you can also search the Internet to find professional designers there. Then, platforms that bring together freelancers from different fields and provide a lot of information about them will prove helpful to you. Also, a custom web design agency that specializes in producing unique websites for customers and has a team of professionals that can bring your idea to life is another alternative.

#1 Browse the best designer freelancers

👉 Upwork

The first platform you should look at is Upwork. Many freelancers advertise their services at this largest network of independent professionals. With such a tool, you can find many talents and work with the most amazing designers in the field. Companies, entrepreneurs, and freelancers from all over the world support Upwork– which makes this system so popular and so successful. 

Source: Upwork

Businesses turn up for help to this platform, as it provides them with quality information, reliable people, it's safe and secure, and it requires no costs until they hire somebody. You can browse similar projects they've worked on, check qualifications, or even run a chat or video interview.

In addition, if you don't have time to do the recruiting yourself, Upwork specialists will do it for you. You can say all about your requirements, budget, and your goals, and a list of top talent will be presented to you.

👉 Fiverr

One of the UpWork alternatives is Fiver. It performs similar functions– it brings together the best of the best professionals and thus makes the process of getting new employees (in our case, graphic designers) easier for you.

You can simply check out their portfolios, compare custom quotes, and verify over video. Along with this tool, you can also request revisions and realize your vision with talent that delivers results.

Source: Fiverr

Fiverr also offers a huge selection of designers. You can choose specialists from different categories (e.g., Infographic Design or Business Cards & Stationery) who will perform the desired service for you.

👉 SolidGigs

And another platform worth checking out is SolidGigs. Unlike Upwork and Fiverr, this tool does not take a percentage of a client's revenue. Rather, it serves as a lead finder tool that integrates with a freelancer's existing business. 

Source: SolidGigs

SolidGigs also works easily and intuitively. It assigns the right freelancers to the right companies. This means that the recruitment process itself is relatively short, as brands receive relevant and reliable offers for collaboration. This saves you time, as you see the matching offers to your brand and can focus on something else.

#2 Select some designers and choose the best one

Both Upwork, Fiverr, and SoliGigs will provide you with a large talent pool. Then, from this pool, you need to make an initial selection and eliminate your candidates more and more to identify the best applicant available finally. The above platforms will help you do that.

You can browse through portfolios of freelancers, which will definitely make things easier. It is a very essential step to match the portfolio to your company's needs so a designer can handle your tasks and, for example, build a certificate from scratch.

You can also arrange a video call and make sure you and your chosen specialist are on the same page. Such a conversation can benefit you in many ways. 

For example, you can:

💥 tell about your expectations (for example, if you want to create SIEM architecture related certificates, you might have to pass a lot of info on that)

💥 make sure that the selected person can do your dream certificate creation

💥 ask if they have experience with designing various documents, for example, artistic certificates or even animated certificates, as well as using tools and techniques like image upscaling

💥 make sure they agree with your terms and conditions

#3 Create a PDR for the graphic designer

After you have chosen your certificate designer, you can facilitate their cooperation by creating a document with your requirements and expectations. For this purpose, Preliminary Design Review will come in handy.

The Preliminary Design Review (PDR) is intended to help both the graphic designer and the company to assess the progress of the project, its compliance with the established assumptions and determine the extent to which the desired effect has been achieved.

The PDR mainly proposes detailed requirements about the whole project, its design, and even layout and shows what design elements should be contained in the project– in our case, in the certificate. 

With PDR, you can see that all requirements set before the graphic designer have been reviewed, allocated, completed, and the final result is as intended. What's more, PDR helps you stick to the set plan and gives the company confidence that the graphic designer will deliver the project as promised. 

But before you send a PDR to a graphic designer, you need to know what to include in it. Therefore, you should first find out what key elements you need to include in the certificate. 

Among them should be: 

✅ certificate title

✅ recipient's name

✅ reason for issuing the certificate

✅ issuing institution

✅ date of issue

✅ branding - including, e.g., Logo, brand colors, and brand font

Many of the aforementioned items are included in this article. Check it out, as you may find it very helpful  ⏩ 8 Steps To Effective Certificate Design

#4 Evaluate the results

If you know what is to be included in your project, the graphic designer is ready to work and knows what to do during the certificate creation process, then let him work. Probably, they won't build a Certificate in minutes unless they use some Certificate Apps– then their work will be much faster. Wait for the final result and then evaluate the results.

Now you can summarize your work with the designer and make sure his skills match your expectations. Did you receive a beautiful certificate design? Is a finished certificate what you expected?

If so, congratulations– you've achieved your goal, and it's possible that you've found the perfect professional you can rely on!

How much cost hiring a new designer?

Well, so this is what hiring a certificate designer in your company might look like. However, you need to know that this is a relatively expensive process. 

Hiring costs vary based on a number of factors. Factors to consider include:

• the freelancer's hourly rate

• the scope of the project

• how long the freelancer estimates it will take to complete the project

It is important to remember that the answer to this question is an approximation.

Also, remember that as a company, you need to pay for the software by which you are looking for professionals. For instance, UpWork charges employers a subscription fee and workers a service fee. What's more, a freelancer on Upwork pays a sliding fee based on the total lifetime billings they have with a client, regardless of whether the project is hourly, fixed-price or a Project Catalog. As above, agencies working with non-Enterprise clients are charged the same service fees. So a fee can vary. 

In addition, there is such a risk that the recruitment of the selected employee, however, fails. 

An unsuccessful hiring process, as you probably guessed, costs far more than successful recruitment. For this reason, it's a good idea for you and your HR team to be aware of the consequences and expenses that will await the company in case of an improperly conducted process.

If not hiring a designer, then what?

If you've thought about the question of hiring a designer and estimated how much the process would cost your business, you may begin to wonder if it's worth it for you. But, if not hiring a new designer, what else can you do to create different certificate design templates?

Well, that's exactly what you can do to create them yourself! 

And this is a very beneficial solution:

💯 you allocate much less money because you use free or cheap solutions

💯 you don’t spend a lot of time on creations– you have thousands of templates at your disposal

💯 you don’t have to be creative– the system will do everything for you

💯 you don't have to be a graphic designer– the system is easy and intuitive

That's why we present two pieces of software for you today– both are easy to use and can be used by your company.

#1 Canva

Canva is a basic solution that can be a good choice for small and medium companies that don’t want to create or issue a large number of certificates. It has many attractive features that are sure to be enough to help you streamline your certification process. 

Source: Canva 

Canva is a very popular tool because it is easy to use and contains what you need to be able to make beautiful designs yourself. So you don't have to be a graphic designer to use this system. It will be necessary for you to create an account, and then you can already focus on creation. Then you can download the certificates as a PDF file and send them to your recipients.

Source: Canva 

Although Canva has an intuitive interface, it doesn't have dynamic attributes that will allow you to autocomplete recipients' names. Because of this, your work can be much longer. Moreover, it's not a dedicated certificate software, so you don't have as many design options there.

#2 Certifier

Certifier is an easy-to-use certificate maker app that will let you create your certificate content in no time without the help of a graphic designer. Unlike Canva, it has been specifically designed to create certificates 🎨

It has a range of basic and advanced certificate management features that will make you so fond of creating various credentials that you won't want to hire anyone else to do it for you.

With our certificate generator, you will be able to design your awards from scratch. You will also be able to use pre-made templates and issue documents much faster (even more so if you send them via our built-in email).

You don't need to have any certificate design skills to use this system. Even more so, you don't have to be an experienced graphic designer. All you have to do is create an account, specify which pricing plan you want to use (you can even use the free one), and start producing digital certificates.

Check out this article where we tell you how to build a certificate in Certifier ⏩ How to Design a Certificate? Step by Step Guide.

But that's not all, because our custom certificates are also ready to be printed; just download them to your computer 🖨

You can also verify and share awards with ease. Your recipients can also be managed– for example, you can create groups of them and issue certificates only to selected individuals. As Certifier provides its customers with dynamic attributes, it is easy to upload a spreadsheet with recipients' data and send documents instantly.

Over to you

We hope you can find a professional who will build beautiful certificate awards for you. However, if we have convinced you to use a cheaper and less time-consuming solution, bet on Certifier.

Together with our tool, you will design awesome certificate template designs, and you don't have to be a professional to do it. Create an account and issue creative certificates for free!