Get advice to help you create your t-shirt graphics. Discuss t-shirt design software, special effect techniques, or other topics related to creating a t-shirt design on your computer. If you'd rather hire a graphic designer to do the work for you, please post in our Referrals and Recommendations section here.
I am ready to hire a freelance designer for my logo and other images...which would be the best questions to ask besides the fee? Do I ask if revisions are included? How they supply the image? I want sole ownership of the image is there a "legal" term for that?
You would have to get them to sign a contract that states all of the art is your property and that they can't ever resell/reuse it. Most will have no problem signing it. I would definitely get their revision policies up front. It usually doesn't come into play here since we can revise the documents ourselves if we need to change something. I'm sure most will revise for free until you are happy w/ the image.
We used 99designs.com to design our logo and website - and did it very inexpensively. You just create a contest, determine how much you want to award the winner (we awarded $250 for the logo contest), provide any details and set the duration of the contest (there's a small fee associated to creating a contest). Once your contest is live, designers start submitting design concepts. We got over 150 design entries for our logo contest. I liked using this type of service over trying to pick a designer solely based on their portfolio. We got a wide range of ideas and wound up picking a design we think is awesome and will help build our brand nicely.
I never heard of 99designs. Were you worried that someone would take your idea, giving out so much info to a lot of people? Did the same person do your logo and website?
It's a great site. I just discovered it as well, but found it incredibly easy to use and determined I'd get the best "bang for my buck" there. I didn't say too much about the overall idea in the contest, just directionally what we were looking for in creating our brand and our logo. I figure if we have a good shirt idea, someone will likely copy it pretty quickly, so I can't worry too much about that. Instead, we're focusing on building the brand as quickly as possible. We used 99designs for both logo and website design, but we wound up using a concepts from different designers. Check out 99designs » Logo Design for new undershirt company
That will work for logos, but I doubt you will get intricate artwork done for shirts.
Maybe you will, I am not familiar with the concept or the site.
The best thing to do is to specifiy the way you need your art formatted and sent to you. This will make it easier on them and you to make it the way you want.
Agreements should be made that they won't reuse/resell the art, however sometimes it costs more to get the artwork originals passed on to you.
Finding someone locally or that you trust can be a big benefit. They will "feel" what you are trying to do better and be able to draw on that and create what you want. Plus its easier to get revisions. Hit up college campus art buildings and students and post flyers advertising $$$ for concept art or something. You will have poor talented kids knocking down your doors.
I live in NJ and registered at SVA and Parsons in NYC to try and find some talented artist. I only got 5 replies from both schools and unfortunately none of them were close to showing me what I want. I posted on Guru and Elance. Guru is much easier for me to navigate and I feel bad that I may be missing s perfect match at Elance, but I'm having a hard time pulling up portfolios or samples.
well, we ran the contest for 5 days and throughout the contest we provided constant feedback to the designers. at the end, we had narrowed it down to 3-4 designers/designs but only one design (the one we chose) had all the elements we were looking for in creating a logo and a brand identity. but, overall, we did spend a lot of time on interacting with designers on both contests (logo and website).
i've used elance in the past as well. i also looked at using odesk.com. the challenge i had with those services was that you had to make a decision based on their portfolio and not how they would apply their skills to creating our logo or website design. i much preferred going through 150+ concepts created specifically for us and then narrowing it down from there.
the challenge i had with those services was that you had to make a decision based on their portfolio and not how they would apply their skills to creating our logo
I know what you mean! That's the problem I am having.
I'd recommend giving 99designs.com a shot at your logo design and if your experience is good, you can consider using it for your other work. The person who designed our logo, has also helped us create our retail package concept, business cards, and polybag sticker (our standard packaging for online orders). Feel free to look at our contest at the link above and copy as much of the description and instructions as you want.
You own the design when it's all done and the designers provide you with the source files (.eps or .psd) after you've paid. You should also make sure you ask for colors they used (in hex -- they'll know what that means). I think my contest has all that verbiage, so you can just pull it from there.
If you need any other help, please don't hesitate to ask.
btw, the guy who won our website design contest on 99designs was absolutely great to work with. He did the design, and then found someone to code it for us for a pretty darn good price. I'd be happy to refer you to him directly if you're interested and looking to create a website. He's on the east coast -- i think in NY somewhere.
That would be great since I am in NJ. I was hoping to find someone fairly local, I just think that helps he communication process a little more. Thanks to this forum, I didn't realize how important the coding was. I got resumes from art school students who want to create my website, but hey just have the design knowledge, none of he coding.
Which questions to ask a freelancer 
