How to Hire a Graphic Designer: Reviewing Portfolios the Right Way

Graphic design covers very different specialisations. List the outputs you need every month, the formats and the tools your team uses. This shapes the portfolio you should look for.

For example, a real estate firm may need brochures, hoardings and site banners in print-ready formats. An e-commerce brand may need product creatives, marketplace images and ad variations. An edtech company may need presentation decks and explainer graphics.

• Social media creatives and ad variations
• Print: brochures, catalogues, packaging, signage, hoardings
• Brand identity: logos, colour systems, brand guidelines
• Presentations and infographics
• Basic motion graphics or short video edits
• Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Figma, CorelDRAW (still common in many print shops), Canva for quick work

Designers want to know what they will make, for whom and with what freedom. Share your industry, typical projects, the volume and whether there is an existing brand guide. Ask for a portfolio link in the application.

You can post a graphic designer job on BetterJobs in about five minutes from a single line; the AI-written description gives you a starting draft that you can tailor.

• Sample line: "Create 25–30 social creatives a month and festive campaign artwork for our jewellery brand, following our existing brand guide."
• Sample line: "Prepare print-ready catalogue and packaging files in Illustrator and InDesign, coordinating with our printer in Surat."
• Sample line: "Please share a portfolio link (Behance, Google Drive or website) with three pieces closest to this work."

Do not decide in ten seconds based on style. Review the portfolio against your needs with a simple checklist, and score each candidate on the same points. Look at fewer pieces in more depth.

Real client work with constraints is more useful evidence than personal concept projects. A designer who made a cramped price list readable for a local shop has solved a real problem.

1. 1Relevance: does the portfolio include work similar to what you need, in the same formats?
2. 2Range within a brand: can they produce many variations that still feel consistent?
3. 3Typography and hierarchy: is the most important message the first thing you read?
4. 4Craft: check alignment, spacing, image quality and spelling in English and regional languages.
5. 5Production readiness: for print roles, ask about bleed, CMYK and file formats.
6. 6Explanation: shortlist candidates who can describe the brief and result for each piece.

Some portfolios include agency work where the candidate played a small part, or templates lightly edited. This does not always mean dishonesty, but you need to know what they personally did.

Ask, politely and directly, what their role was in each piece. Request an editable source file for one project with layers intact. Ask them to show early drafts or rejected versions. People who made the work remember the messy middle; people who did not tend to speak only about the final result.

A short test shows how a designer handles your brand and brief. Keep it under two to three hours, use a fictional or past campaign, and never use test output commercially. For longer tasks, pay a fee.

Give a brief like the ones your team writes, including a few deliberate gaps. Good designers ask questions about audience, size and deadline before they start.

• Sample brief: "Design two Instagram posts and one story announcing a monsoon sale for a footwear store in Pune, using the attached logo and colours. Headline in English, one line in Marathi."
• Ask for the source files along with the exports.
• Request a short note explaining the layout and colour choices.
• Score on brief fit, clarity, craft and the quality of their questions.

Use the interview to understand process, collaboration and handling feedback. Designers will work with owners, marketers and sales teams who often have strong opinions and short deadlines.

Listen for how they push back. A good designer will explain why a change might hurt readability, but still deliver on time.

• "Walk me through one project from brief to final file. What changed along the way?"
• "Tell me about feedback you disagreed with. How did you handle it?"
• "How do you organise files and versions so anyone can find them later?"
• "How would you design for a WhatsApp forward versus an Instagram feed?"
• "How do you stay consistent when making 30 creatives in a week?"
• "Which design tools are you fastest in, and which are you still learning?"

Graphic designer pay depends on city, specialisation and experience. As a rough guide, junior designers are often offered somewhere around ₹15,000–₹25,000 a month, while experienced brand or packaging designers usually command more. Use these as starting points only and compare local offers.

If your volume is steady, a full-time designer usually works out better than paying per creative. If the need is irregular, a freelancer or part-time staff can cover it. Design also suits remote work well when briefs and feedback are clear, which lets you hire beyond your own city.

Hand over the brand guide, logo files, fonts, past best-performing creatives and a shared folder structure on day one. If there is no brand guide, make creating a simple one an early project.

Set a clear feedback routine: one consolidated round of comments from a single decision-maker, not five people on WhatsApp. This one habit saves designers hours each week and improves output more than any software upgrade.

Owners often hire the designer whose personal taste matches their own, and then discover the person cannot work within brand rules or tight deadlines. Taste matters, but the ability to follow a brief and deliver consistently matters more for most in-house roles.

Another frequent mistake is expecting a graphic designer to also be a video editor, photographer, UI designer and social media manager. Some people do have broad skills, but asking for everything usually means you get average work everywhere. Decide the core skill and treat the rest as a bonus.

Finally, many companies never check the boring parts: file naming, folder organisation, export settings and print specifications. These habits decide whether your marketing runs smoothly or whether every reprint becomes a crisis. Ask candidates to show you how they organise a typical project folder, and how they would hand over files if they left. A designer who answers this clearly will save you a lot of trouble later, especially when a printer or agency asks for an old source file at short notice.

• Judging only the most attractive piece instead of the whole portfolio.
• Ignoring regional language typography when your customers read Hindi, Marathi or Tamil.
• Not asking how quickly they can turn around urgent changes.
• Hiring without checking that they own a licence for, or can use, your design software.
• Skipping a reference call with a previous manager or client.