The power of the image can be seen in every area of our life. TV and movies are more popular than books. Writing blogs got niched, adding photos on Instagram not. On Facebook, photos generate much more traffic than simple text posts.
To get ahead of your competition, you also have to invest in promoting your product with the right design. The more tailored and unique it is, the more eye-catching it ends up being, bringing you more customers — sometimes from groups or markets you haven’t thought about targeting yet.
How to get such content? One of your best bets is to hire a digital illustrator. Such an expert can provide you with:
- Unique characters or other illustration elements that will be the symbol of your brand.
- Infographics highlighting the most important selling points of your products.
- Shareworthy content that will spread fast across social media.
- Your blogs or other text content made more interesting.
- Both digital and print ads.
- Tailored solutions depending on your illustrator’s specialty, such as medical illustrations, technical illustrations, or movie/game concept art.
But how to find truly amazing digital illustrators and hire them? And what skills and background they should have to truly thrive in the role? We explain all the ins and outs of the hiring process in our piece below.
What hard skills are the most important for a digital illustrator?
Unlike in the case of developers, data scientists, or other very technical roles, the stack of a digital illustrator is much more flexible. Of course, knowledge of Adobe tools and how to use a drawing tablet are musts but besides these, such designers have much more freedom than some of their peers.
There are, however, skills that they should possess to truly thrive in the business environment. These skills include:
- Understanding of web and mobile design best practices
You likely want to hire a digital illustrator who can closely work with your web or mobile designers. Because of this, they should be aware of the requirements and limitations of web and mobile design. Knowledge of UI and UX best practices is also very helpful.
- Experience with various digital design processes
To cooperate well with your developers and designers, your digital illustrator should be able to follow the development process on every stage. While they probably won't have to build mockups or wireframes themselves, experience with such forms of prototypes (and tools used for preparing them) is definitely beneficial.
- Understanding of channel differences
Different social media platforms may require a bit of a different approach. The requirements, of course, differ in terms of the preferred size of an image and similar formatting features — but such platforms may also have unique audiences that want different types of content depending on their needs. Your digital illustrator should be aware of these characteristics of each channel to tailor their designs accordingly and guarantee your success.
Soft skills to remember about
In a creative role like a digital illustrator, the right mindset matters even more than tech skills. With the right, creative mindset, the person will grow either way and always strive for getting better in what they do.
When it comes to digital illustrators, the most beneficial soft skills for your business are…
- Analytical mindset
To always run a thorough research on the product and customers before starting work.
- Approachability
To cooperate well with various teams, including other designers, developers, and marketing experts.
- Curiosity
To always strive for innovation and self-improvement.
- Business-oriented approach
To look beyond what only looks great and create amazing illustrations that actually sell.
- Customer empathy
To always look at a design from the perspective of an inexperienced but curious customer.
How important for freelance digital illustrators is formal education?
Formal design education might give quite a boost to your potential digital illustrator — it often gives background and professional knowledge on how to work with business products and target them to specific customers. You'll most likely get candidates with diplomas in general fine arts, graphic and digital design, and product design.
However, you should also not automatically rule out people without a diploma. There are a number of people who haven’t attended art university because of various life circumstances but were involved in creating illustrations and other designs since early childhood. Many of them start pursuing their dreams by investing time in self-learning. In the world of digital design, where talent and imagination matter a lot, this is often enough to make one stand out on the market.
How to review a portfolio of a freelance digital illustrator?
What matters more than formal education is the previous professional experience of your candidate. You want to hire a digital illustrator who has previously proved themselves in a business environment. In the end, if other companies trusted your candidate, they must have had good reasons to do so. The more business projects your candidate has in their portfolio, the better for you, as it assures you that they are reliable and provide quality work.
What other things you should consider when reviewing a portfolio of a freelance digital illustrator?
- Ask for all types of portfolios your candidate has. Encourage them to share with you their professional social media profiles (e.g. Behance, Instagram, Dribbble) or their website. The more content you have to review, the better your assessment will be.
- If possible, review carefully both business projects as well as after-hours drafts of your candidate. Sometimes freelance digital illustrators take more innovative approach when they draw for fun and you might find something really unique and convincing in these projects.
- Don’t stop yourself from subjective assessing your candidate’s work. If you are the person responsible for the project, you have some brief idea of how the illustrations for it should look like — if the style of the freelance digital illustrator doesn’t match your taste, feel free to drop it, even if the art is objectively well done.
- Ask another design expert about their honest opinion on the craft of your candidate.
- Run an interview with your candidate and review their thought processes and what they do to tailor their illustrations to a product.
How to hire a digital illustrator that truly matches your project?
The last on our list — but definitely not the least important part of the hiring review process. Finding a digital illustrator who really fits your company can bring you truly amazing results, often provided also faster than you might imagine. Consider the following two areas of a company fit…
- Industry fit
Hire a digital illustrator with previous experience in your unique industry. Such a match guarantees your candidate already understands the type of customers they are facing so the initial research stage will take them less time.
- Company culture fit
Especially important when you want to hire a digital illustrator to work for you full time and not only a freelance basis. Finding a person who shares the same values as your business makes the onboarding process easier and cross-team cooperation better. Consider issues like the preferred style of management, approach to remote work or flexible working hours, and any other values that are important to your company and its members.
Leverage the power of great illustrations and designs to the fullest
Beautiful and unique digital illustrations can bring the attention of new customers to your products — but if you want to keep them with you, you’ll also need to invest in an amazingly performing technical backbone.
Fill your team with best-performing web or mobile developers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and other IT experts fast with the help of Ideamotive. We run the industry-leading network of top IT professionals looking for new work opportunities — this also includes a selection of world-class designers, including UI/UX designers, 3D designers, and, of course, digital illustrators. Our team will always carefully review your application so you get matched only with experts who truly fit your project requirements.
