ever hire from a freelance site?

[mrbigstuff]

I'm looking at having some illustration done and this looks like a good option, but I have never used any.

something like "elance" or "guru.com" etc.

thanks.

[DRR]

No but I've been hired multiple times to fix files that have been designed by those types of freelancers, so I love 'em.

[evilrobot]

DRR wrote:
No but I've been hired multiple times to fix files that have been designed by those types of freelancers, so I love 'em.

I wish we could like posts. I do like this one.

[cbelt3]

I've been called upon multiple times to fix things designed by 'my kid, who is in college for IT' or by interns and new hires. Usually requires nuke an pave.

[Uncle Wig]

Not related exactly, but I one had to redesign a page that my boss had laid out for a textbook cover design. She (not being too bright) opened up Quark and just started using Letter as her page size. The book was a different size. Her design would not fit.

:facepalm:

(as a freelancer myself, it seems like word-of-mouth is the way to find good people.)

[mrbigstuff]

DRR wrote:
No but I've been hired multiple times to fix files that have been designed by those types of freelancers, so I love 'em.

as part of your regular job or as a freelancer?

[clay]

Just like freelancers that you might work with personally/locally, there are good ones and bad ones found on this type of site. Stay away from the cheapest ones, stay away from the ones with no portfolio/work samples shown, and stay away from the ones that can't communicate effectively. So...the flip side of that is to look for ones that have reasonable rates (still likely cheaper than what you'd find locally, at least for me), have lots of great reviews, and that know how to put together a sentence reasonably well.

I have a tried and true method that I've used for this sort of thing in the past, but it would take more time to describe than I feel like spending right now. Follow my instructions above and you'll have a reasonably good chance of finding a good freelancer on one of those sites.

[D. Lawson]

We have used DesignCrowd for "small" projects like logos on a couple of occasions, mainly because it was a relatively cheap way to get dozens of ideas from dozens of people. There were several who just outright ignored the requirement that it be 1- or 2-color, and several more who have no business "designing", but we still got a number of quality submissions. In every case, we ended up selecting a winner and going through a few additional rounds of revisions, all of which were covered by the dollar amount we set up front (the winning designer does not get paid until the artwork is final and has been delivered to you).

It's possible we have just been lucky; I know another company who went through them for a logo project with no success. (You don't need to "guarantee" that there will be a winning design chosen and paid for, but that will greatly affect the number and quality of submissions you receive.)

[ka jowct]

Is Aquent still around? My old employer used to get people from them. IIRC they were called MacTemps before they became Aquent. Most of them did OK, although there was one guy whose work I had to repair extensively.