Want to hire a flyer designer? I've worked in the graphic design industry for decades, and still to this day flyer designers are some of the most in-demand freelancers out there.
Whilst I typically write with freelancers as my audience, today I'm turning the tables to help business owners find flyer designs online and nearby.
But first, there's a few key points we need to cover. There are many types of flyer designer with many different styles; just as there are many types of illustrators, musicians and events.
It's important you hire a flyer designer that's right for you, your brand, your event and most importantly: your budget. Hiring a flyer designer who charges more than you can afford is never a bright idea, likewise, hiring below your budget isn't a good idea either.
So whether you're looking for party flyer designers or someone to make a flyer for your business, in this post I'll outline key considerations to help you hire the right designer first time round and avoid countless hours of wasted time and energy.
If you're a business owner who needs help with a flyer, please let me know with a comment at the bottom if you found this post useful. If so, I'll write more how-to articles like this for the clients of our graphic design world.
Skip to sections in this post:
- What is your budget?
- What is your project?
- How much does a flyer design cost?
- Where to find flyer designers
- Local recommendations
- Flyer design Facebook Groups
- Envato Studio
- UpWork Freelancing Platform
- Graphic design job boards
- Make your own flyers with templates
First things first: what is your budget?
I have worked in the flyer design business for many years. In my time I have produced over a thousand flyer designs for hundreds of different clients.
One of the most common questions I am asked by friends and clients alike is: “How much does a flyer design cost?”. My response is almost always the same: “How long is a piece of string?”.
There are tens of thousands of graphic designers who identify as flyer designers; meaning they focus almost entirely on printed flyer designs.
Amongst these thousands of flyer designers you'll find any price: from $10 to over $1,000. Yes, you read that correctly: there are designers who charge over a grand for a flyer design, and there are clients who happily pay it.
Before trying to hire a flyer designer, make sure you have a budget in mind. Knowing how much you have to spend – whether that's $20, $50, $150 or more will help narrow down the best places to find a designer that suits your budget.
What is your project?
Just as important as figuring out your budget, you need to know exactly what your design project entails. Do you only need a flyer design? Or do you want social media graphics, posters, tickets and other branded materials as well?
It’s very important you tell your designer everything you need at the beginning of your project so the designer can properly plan their designs. Few things are more frustrating than a client who asks for more work after the fact, and keeping a good relationship with your designer is essential.
Additional design work will also increase the cost of your project, so make sure you factor this into your budget. Do not ask your designer for additional work once the flyer design is complete and expect the extra work for free.
How much does a flyer design cost?
Typically a one-sided flyer design costs around $50-60 US dollars, with double-sided flyer designs starting at around $75 US dollars.
Young or inexperienced designers may charge less, likewise expect to pay experienced designers $100 or more. According to this post on graphic designer earnings, experienced designers and art directors can get rather expensive.
Tip: Many local designers & printing services may design flyers at a discount or even for free in exchange for ordering your printed flyers through their business. In this situation the designer or print service earns a commission on the print cost instead of charging you for the design, and this won’t increase the cost of your printing either.
Thanks to the internet you can find and hire flyer designers from all four corners of the globe, and through some of the sites listed below you can certainly find a designer that fits your budget.
However, one thing I advise always keeping in mind is that if you pay peanuts, expect monkeys. Finding the cheapest designer possible could end in disaster when you pay them to complete a flyer design which prints incorrectly – costing you much more in the long run when.
Cheap design is often not very good and high quality design is rarely very cheap. Investing some time and money in finding a great flyer designer now can pay dividends for your business or event in the long run.
Other typical costs:
- Social media graphics usually cost around $20 – $30 extra
- Tickets and other small printed items $20 – $30 extra
- Posters $20 – $50
- CD covers: $20 – 50
Where to find flyer designers
In this section I’ll highlight the best places to find flyer designers that match your budget. The flyer design business is large, so if you post a public ad you should expect a lot of flyer designers to apply.
The number of people who apply to your job may be overwhelming, but as I previously mentioned, putting the time and effort in now to find the right flyer designer for you and your business will pay dividends later down the row.
Having a designer you can rely on and who designs flyers in a style that matches your brand and fits your budget can be priceless.
1. Local recommendations
First and foremost, if you own a local business, hiring a designer within the local community can be a really smart decision. Not only does it support local businesses and local designers, but you can also benefit from in-person meetings.
Sometimes if can be difficult to communicate your brand image, message or vibe to a designer who is sat at a computer screen on the other side of the planet.
Hiring a local designer means they can come and sit down inside your business to get a feel for your brand, and then reproduce this in the flyers – or other design work – they produce for you.
Actionable tip: Reach out to business owners in your area and ask if they can recommend a flyer designer. If they can, ask if you can see the quality of their printed work in person before you hire them. This will give you a strong guarantee of the quality you should expect.
2. Facebook Groups
Can you imagine a world without Facebook Groups? Almost everyone today is a member of at least one Facebook Group, and for good reason too. Facebook Groups bring together people who share similar hobbies, skills, locations and other interests. This includes flyer designers.
There are dozens of high quality graphic design and flyer design focussed Facebook Groups where you can post jobs for free and reach 1,000s of potential freelancers.
Recommended Facebook Groups:
- #GraphicDesign by FlyerHeroes – a community of expert flyer designers created by the leading flyer design resource website
- Advanced Graphic Design – a Facebook Group filled with specialised & highly-skilled graphic designers and illustrators. Try not to be intimidated by these pros!
- Freelance Graphic Designers – a general design focussed group populated by freelance graphic designers from all over the world
Actionable tip: Use Facebook search to find designers in your area; e.g “graphic design new york city” or “london freelance designers”. This can be an effective and free way to find flyer designers in your area. You never know, you may have friends in common!
3. Envato Studio
Envato Studio is a marketplace for individuals and business owners to find professional graphic designers and other creative freelancers to complete one-time jobs.
Unlike Facebook Groups, with Envato Studio you can choose from pre-vetted designers who are paid through Envato Studio’s secure billing system.
They have a huge directory of flyer & poster designers, which you can find here.
The average price for a flyer design on Envato Studio is $50. You can sort “jobs” or “freelancers” by the number of jobs they have completed, their rating and their price.
You can also see public reviews of each freelancer and the job they have provided, giving you guaranteed assurance that you’re hiring quality, reliable people.
Actionable tip: Don’t choose the cheapest freelancer just to save a few bucks. Instead, choose a freelancer with a style that you like who has delivered lots of successful jobs and has high feedback. This will help guarantee you love the flyer design they make.
4. UpWork
UpWork is the world’s leading freelance platform with tens of thousands of active freelancers and millions of jobs posted every year.
Just like Envato Studio, UpWork is a marketplace which helps individuals and business owners find trustworthy freelancers to work with. But unlike Envato, UpWork is not limited to one-time payments for one-off jobs.
UpWork provides a readymade platform than enables you to hire freelancers by the hour or by the job, which is great for when you want to a designer to continue working for you on multiple projects.
Actionable tip: UpWork is a huge platform with tens of thousands of freelancers, and certainly more than 1,000 flyer designers. You’ll receive dozens, if not hundreds of applications for your flyer design job.
When posting your flyer design job on UpWork, include a message at the bottom of the job description and ask applicants to do something specific. For example, every time I post a job to UpWork, at the bottom of my job description I ask freelancers to start their application with the word “Elephant”.
This is effective because it means freelancers must read the whole job description properly before applying. Anyone who doesn’t start their application with the word “Elephant” I know hasn’t read the job details fully and can be disregarded. You’ll thank me later 😉
5. Graphic design job boards
If you can’t find a flyer designer locally, on Facebook, via UpWork or on Envato Studio, it’s time to hit the graphic design job boards. But let me warn you, graphic design job boards aren’t cheap.
Job boards make their money by charging an up-front fee to post your job. Whilst in the short term this can appear very expensive, it could help you save a lot of time by connecting you with a very good designer, very quickly.
- Behance Job Board – $399 posting fee
- HOW Design Jobs Board – $295 posting fee
- DesignJobsBoard.com – £49-£199 posting fee
Behance is a hosted portfolio website for graphic designers, owned and operated by Adobe (the people who make tools like Photoshop). Their job board helps connect businesses with highly talented designers, and links you directly to the freelancer's portfolio for examples of their work.
Whilst Behance can connect you with tens of thousands of qualified designers, the $399 fee (billed each month your job post is live) makes the service prohibitively expensive for most one time flyer design jobs.
HOW Design Jobs Board is run by the incredibly popular HOW Design graphic design blog & inspiration website. Again, it is another expensive and premium option for finding flyer designers, but if you're looking for long-term high quality talent, this could be a cost-effective option.
Design Jobs Board is a premium jobs board which focusses manly on finding full time or long term designers. If you're a business (like a nightclub, for example) who is looking to find a designer to work with on a long term basis and produce several flyers per week, this job board could be an effective way to find a designer. However, it's premium posting fee is once again prohibitive for those looking for a one-off flyer design job.
Actionable tip: These job boards are catered towards clients and businesses with slightly larger budgets and longer term projects. If you’re an individual or very small business, I’d recommend skipping these job boards. However, if you’re a nightclub looking for a long-term club flyer designer or a big business with a big budget, these are probably your most cost-effective options.
6. DIY with templates
So here’s a thought, you’re a crafty business person with a knack for doing things yourself, right? Maybe paying a high job board fee or spending hours combing through freelance marketplaces is too much time or money for you to bother with?
What about if designing a flyer yourself? You might be surprised, but there are several incredibly useful DIY options when it comes to designing flyers, from readymade PSD templates to online flyer makers.
Related: Top 50 InDesign Flyer Templates
The great thing about readymade flyer templates and online flyer makers is that they cut out the cost of hiring a designer. Instead of spending $100+ on a designer, you could spend $20 on a template and do it yourself. C’mon, where’s your sense of hustle?
For some of these templates you’ll need Adobe Photoshop, but for others you can use PowerPoint, Publisher, Illustrator or even do it with your browser and no extra software.
- BrandPacks – For those of you wanting business related flyer templates, BrandPacks library of flyer templates is ideal. Each templates comes in both Photoshop & Illustrator with all stock photos included. You just gotta download the free fonts and edit the text. Everything else is done for you.
- FlyerHeroes – these guys are kings when it comes to any club flyer related. At the time of writing, they have over 1,000 nightclub flyer designs to choose from. Unfortunately stock photos are not included with FlyerHeroes, but their designs more than make up for it.
- StockLayouts – One of the oldest template providers with hundreds of templates for Adobe & Microsoft Office applications..
- Canva.com – This cloud-based graphic design software is perfect for business owners and non-tech people who want to create their own design work but don't know how to use professional graphic design softwares. Canva is super easy to use and is mostly free. They also have dozens of readymade templates to help you create kickass flyers with your own two hands.
A last, but important word on hiring designers
I hope you found this post useful, and moreover, I hope you find a flyer designer. If you did find this post useful, I’d love it if you can leave a comment below. Cheers!
One comment
Really great post. Thanks for shearing.