Graphic design is becoming a valuable tool for modern enterprises, used in everything from social media and digital product UX to marketing and brand strategy. Excellent graphic design work extends your brand beyond your logo and helps you stand out from competition visually.

You need to start in the appropriate spot if you want to locate some of the top graphic designers for your design job.

1. Toptal

Toptal has transformed the freelance marketplace by creating a curated experience with customer satisfaction guarantees. Whether you are looking for a freelance graphic artist or to hire a graphic designer part-time or full-time, Toptal can help ensure that you are matched with a designer specific to your needs, interests, and timeline.

The platform’s model helps ensure they match customers with some of the best freelance graphic designers AND that your match works for you and your team. Toptal’s screening and testing process identifies the best talent in both design and customer experience. Toptal also offers web designers, software developers, and other experts to help with your graphic design project.

• With only the best graphic designers applicants from Toptal’s pool of candidates, you can rest easy knowing you’ll have highly-vetted designers working on your project.
• The no-risk trial period allows you to explore the platform and try out the selected designer before you commit.
• Save time and get matched on your timeframe. Rather than pouring through potential candidates, Toptal will match you with a designer based on your profile.

2. Upwork

Upwork is one of the most well-known freelance marketplaces. With millions of users and jobs posted each year, the platform serves as a marketplace for different skills. Additionally, Upwork has inherited the experience and project management systems from the two previous players in the market that merged to form Upwork.

With its history, Upwork is a platform that designers of various levels use to find work. Use Upwork if you’re looking for branding, logos, illustrations, Photoshop capabilities, website design, or even business cards.

• Upwork has a high customer rehire rate, pointing to customer satisfaction across their diverse clients.
• With designers at most experience levels, you should find a graphic designer to fit your budget.
• The project management tools allow you to mitigate risk by paying once certain project milestones are completed.

3. Dribbble

Dribbble is a community created for designers. Originally as an invite-only site, this platform provided space for designers to show their work, meet, share ideas, and find a community. More recently, it has become open to anyone who wants to join and has developed a job board, operating in some ways as a freelance designer marketplace. You can explore portfolios and reach out directly to designers about work, post on the job board, or use Dribbble’s Talent Partner solution.

• The Dribbble community has designers with multiple skill sets and is a place to find a graphic design artist.
• With the community format, Dribbble designers can provide each other feedback, so that you can draw from the talent of the community.
• Dribbble Talent can save you time when looking for graphic designers by giving you access to qualified groups.

4. Behance

Behance is an online graphic design marketplace acquired by Adobe as a place for Adobe users to show off their work. Adobe tools include Photoshop, InDesign, and Adobe Illustrator. You can explore portfolios and works of art by both graphic designers and artists. If you’re interested in hiring through the platform, you can sign up for Adobe Talent through Adobe Creative Cloud or with a monthly package.

• Behance is open to most artists, so there’ll be a graphic designer that meets your specific project needs.
• We suggest this site if you’re looking for an independent graphic designer using the Adobe Creative Cloud.
• Public job posts are free with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

5. Working Not Working

Working Not Working (WNW) has taken the standard job board and given it a twist. With the title “UnJobBoard”, WNW has established a site where both freelancers and creatives looking for full-time work can find positions that work for them. With a magazine as well, the platform looks to elevate the status of the creative. Freelancers can mark their calendars as Working or Not Working, so you can sift through designers available in your time frame.

• There are freelance graphic designers for hire at different skill levels and with different specialties.
• WNW is trying out a concierge service, Human, which can save you time and risk by helping identify the candidate for the job.
• WNW does not charge a commission, so it is a place to hire graphic designers for long-term projects or full-time staff.

6. Freelancer

Boasting millions of users, Freelancer is one of the largest graphic designer freelance sites. The platform charges a flat fee for most projects. With the Preferred Freelancer Program, you can access a group of more highly qualified candidates for a rate from the platform. Need a range of designers, even for web design, product design, logos, branding, illustration? Freelancer has them. One interesting twist is that both parties pay fees for starting a project, which helps distribute accountability and ensure interest and follow through.

• Hire graphic designers through the method that works for you, whether it’s a contest, posting a job, searching through profiles, or choosing a pre-existing package.
• There are affordable graphic designers that can meet most budgets.
• The payment management system, which includes paying by milestone, helps mitigate risk.

7. People Per Hour

People Per Hour is a freelance marketplace initially built for the European market. People Per Hour has lower rates and affordable graphic designers for hire. You can pay by the hour or pay a set rate per project. If you aren’t sure how much time is required for a fairly straightforward task, you can also hire people one-off for “hourlies”. Use this platform because it has project management tools to help you with the project.

• With a variety of designers available, you’ll be able to find a graphic designer online to fit most budgets.
• There’s flexibility in the type of hire you can make, whether you want to post a job that pays hourly or by project, or you would rather hire through “hourlies” posted by the freelancers.
• You can save time by hiring through a representative project posted by the designers, so that you don’t have to write a job description or sort through applicants.

8. 99designs

99designs crowdsources graphic design ideas to meet your request. When you post a job, you may find hundreds of designers submitting their ideas on how to proceed. This system allows you to find the design that you like before committing to work with a designer. You can also skip the contest and choose to work directly with a single designer. For that option, you get to choose from a pool of more experienced designers.

• View different takes on your proposal to see what you like.
• Design packages are affordable, and allow you to pick and choose the services and experience of designers that make sense for you.
• Designs are turned around at the pace you need so that you can stay within your project’s time frame.

9. AIGA

AIGA is the professional association for design in the U.S. With numerous chapters across the U.S., it is the hub and support for design professionals. While AIGA has a collection of different resources on the site, we suggest this job board as a place to look for designers.

• You receive two free job postings per company.
• Candidates are AIGA members, so they’re committed to the field to pay for a membership (although that is the requirement to join).
• We suggest AIGA if you want a full-time on-site designer in the U.S.

10. Design Hill

Design Hill describes itself as “a combination of a crowdsourcing custom design marketplace and a creative platform for designers to learn and showcase their creative work.” The crowdsource model means that you can choose from multiple designs each time you submit a proposal. Alternatively, you can select a monthly package which allows you to make as many requests as you would like in a month, or negotiate a single project directly with a designer.

• With a collection of affordable ways to hire, you can find the package that works for your needs.
• The contest option means you can see different perspectives on your project.
• With the monthly membership, you can send multiple requests in a month.

11. DesignCrowd

DesignCrowd uses the power of crowdsourcing to give you a collection of options for your designs and selecting a designer. By hosting a contest for your particular need, you will receive submissions from dozens of designers from which you can select the design you want. With affordable rates, there are opportunities to customize your order to your particular needs.

• DesignCrowd is an efficient and affordable way to get graphics designed.
• The money-back-guarantee lowers the risk of entry.
• Due to the site’s structure, cases in which dispute resolution is required are minimal.

Because there are so many different kinds of graphic designers, it can be difficult to find and hire the greatest expertise in the field. You will come across designers for brand identity, websites, mobile apps, and user interfaces throughout your portfolio reviews.

Read Also: How do I Hire a Graphic Designer?

In addition to graphic designer, other titles that come to mind are creative director, layout artist, website designer, app designer, and so on. If you’re in need of design services, you might not know where to look for independent graphic designers or how to evaluate them when you do.

What Should I Look For in a Graphic Designer?

Hopefully, it is clear from the information above that it is worth hiring an expert. But now you have to figure out where to find freelance graphic designers for hire online. Here are a couple things to keep in mind.

Internal considerations:

What is the project scope? Are you looking for a logo design, a website redesign, or some marketing graphics? Perhaps you need a logo redesign, but in essence, you really need to redesign all of your branding. Does the project need to integrate with existing graphics or campaigns?

What skills do you need to finish the project? Is your project online? In print? Is branding an element? Is there an audience or industry that this is geared towards?

What is your team’s working style? Is the project laid out or evolving? Is your team collaborative or more siloed? Will the designer be working with one person or the team? How quickly do you need something delivered? Do you need work to be done in-person or is freelance graphic design online in a remote environment an option?

How would you like to manage the designer? There are two predominant models of design, and depending on your organization and the project, which your designer chooses can make or break the project. You need to be clear internally about your needs before looking to hire. The two are:

Rational: design that is informed by research and knowledge in a predictable and controlled manner.

Action Centered: a more improvised process that uses creativity and emotion to generate design candidates. This structure translates readily to agile project management and works well for technical designs in UI/UX, mobile apps, and websites.

The first step when evaluating potential hires is to look at their past work. While you won’t become a design expert overnight, there are a couple things you can look for:

• Does their creative work match the type of work you need?
• Can they provide samples of that work?
• What is their familiarity with design tools like Adobe Photoshop?
• Have they worked in a similar style and feel?
• Are they familiar with your industry?

Once you have found designers that you work well with, you will want to talk to them directly. A few areas to be sure to check into include:

• Can you communicate well with them? Are they in the same time zone, and are they fluent in your language?
• Based on their personality, is this someone you can collaborate well with?
• What model of design do they follow? (Rational or Action Centered)
• Are they available to match your timeline and hourly rate, or are they too busy with other projects to feasibly complete tasks on time?

You should discuss the candidate’s approach to design, as described in the previous section, to make sure it fits your organization’s structure. With both models, push them on their method. As AIGA explains, you will want to understand their approach to:

• Research
• Ideation
• Prototyping
• Wireframing
• Web design
• Iteration
• Presentation

Closing Words

For graphic designers, freelancing is a great method to show off their skills and get extra money. Creative people can enhance their portfolios and earn money by exploring many top freelance platforms for graphic designers, such as Fiverr and Upwork. With this list of the top 10 freelance websites for graphic designers, we hope you may find a spot to start looking for new freelancing opportunities.