How Well Do You Handle Criticism
Just like creative block, getting negative feedback is a regular occurrence in the career of any graphic designer. So the design studio wants to know you won’t throw your toys out of the pram and make their life difficult.
Once more, you’ll ideally answer this question with reference to a real-life project. And the main point to convey is that you see negative feedback as a good thing a way to improve your practice and that you welcome it.
That’s the kind of attitude that will make you an asset to any team. And if you can convince an interviewer you actually believe this, you’ll be well on the way to a second interview.
What To Ask Before Hiring A Designer: Standard Questions
If this is your first time interviewing a freelancer or if you want some more detailed advice, lets run over the standard questions to ask before hiring a designer. Think of these as round 1 questions, youll find a set of round 2 questions for your finalists below.
First, you want to make sure their availability and location meet your requirements. If you found them by browsing portfolios or using a designer search tool, they may not be open for work right awayso inquiring into their availability for new projects is essentialand a nice ice-breaker, too.
A lot of freelance designers work remotely, but you may not know it unless you ask. If working with someone in-person or over the phone is important to you, mention that early on so you dont waste their timeor yours.
Likewise, you want to make sure you can fit them into your budget. Designer rates vary by thousands, so discuss compensation as soon as possible to avoid dead ends.
Also consider whether they have experience in the kind of design work you need. The worlds greatest website designer may know zero to zilch about designing logos, so make sure your candidates are actually qualified to do what youre asking.
If youd like to know more, read this comprehensive beginners guide to finding and hiring a graphic designer.
When youre ready, move on to these more advanced questions for designers who have made the first cut.
What Is Your Design Process
Knowing what the designers design workflow looks like will give you insight into how they work, and whether or not the approach to designing your companys project meshes with theirs. Be sure to ask for a detailed explanation of their process so that it can be compared against your expectations in terms of timeline and deliverables.
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What Do You Think Of Our Work/company
A job interview might give you the chance to step into the spotlight, but that doesnt mean youre going to be the only one in it. Employers love to hear you talk about their company and the work that they do just as much as you like to hear people say nice things about your design work.
This is also a bit of a test to see if youve done your homework, so try to be prepared to answer this ahead of time. Again, if you dont know anything about the company and cant find out any info, this is a good chance to hear more about them.
Give your honest opinion, but avoid being too negativeafter all, if you didnt like the company or the work that they do, why would you want to interview for the job in the first place? Constructive criticism is okay, but again, you want to frame it around why youre the best person for the job.
Its okay to impart that there is something missing within their organizationperhaps its a void that only you can fill! But you dont want to come across as someone who is ready to start tearing everything down and doing it all your way.
Regardless of what you know or how you feel, you should have some nice things to sayeven if its just your initial impressions when you came in for the interview.
What Software Do You Use
Can they go beyond Photoshop and InDesign toward newcomers like Sketch and UXPin? Do they have extra skills like animation, video, or illustration, which could come in handy for other projects? Are there languages or programs they would like to learn? Do they have print skills for layout and production work? Can they back up their design with coding skills? If youre not familiar with the creative design world, get someone on your team who is to jump into the interview or check out our job descriptions to get a better understanding of the skills needed by role.
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Do You Work Better Alone Or In A Group
While your day-to-day would typically consist of solo work, graphic designers should be able to work well with coworkers and clients. Like your strength and/or weakness question, its best to answer truthfully so your manager knows your preference.
If you fall on the far end of either side of the spectrum it may be best to bring up ways you manage that much like the weakness question above.
“I prefer working alone when there is a deadline. However, I find that I come up with better ideas when working collaboratively.”
What Is A Design Process
Here you need a slight spoiler. The design creates the primary, fundamental properties of objects. Its entire history and modern practice prove this.
When they try to assert the opposite, that is, to consider design as the creation in the production process of a particular spiritual content that interprets reality, this leads to serious negative consequences: a deterioration in the consumer properties of products and to losses in the national economy.
As a result of this, ideological damage to our socialist social system is also indirectly inflicted.
The design process is part of a comprehensive industrial product design process. However, the designer deals not with industrial products as a whole but with specific industries and groups of products, and sometimes only with individual products.
Experience shows that the designer should create any product already at the pre-design stage of development.
Of course, we will have to regret all those decisions concerning our future object world that has been made without the participation of designers.
It may seem that this understanding of the designers tasks is contradicted by the trend towards further specialisation of modern industrial production.
But the designers activity is aimed at the product as a whole and, first of all, at achieving such a unity of form and function, which provides the most favourable effect on the human body, particularly on the human sense organs.
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Tell Us About Yourself
This is your chance to make yourself shine and explain why youre a great match! Think of it as your elevator pitch where you concisely summarise your work experience and how it pertains to the role. This is a great way to make you stand out from other candidates, but make sure the qualities you talk about are a mix of your personal interests that also tie in to your professional experience and the expectations of the position.
Tip: Highlight your accomplishments with examples you can quantify that clearly align your experience with the requirements of the job. Show how both your skills and personality would be a great fit for the job and team.
Bonus Question: How Do You Differentiate Yourself From Other Candidates
This is definitely a tricky question as you do not know what your competition looks like! But this is a great opportunity to highlight your strengths and skills to make sure you shine as the top applicant. Think about what may set you apart from other applicants, taking into consideration both your technical and design experience. The hiring manager needs to have a clear idea of why youre the top candidate.
Tip: Perhaps you have niche expertise that is not common for the industry. Discuss how your past experience in several areas allowed you to gain the knowledge needed that will help you excel at this job, ranging from technical to transferable and personal skills.
We hope these common graphic design interview questions and answers will help you prepare for your next interview! Although this isnt a comprehensive list of everything you may encounter, this is a great starting point to get you prepared. Now get focused on polishing up that portfolio and get ready to talk about your experience with confidence! Best of luck!
Looking for more resources? Find out how you can ace your interview in these 18 steps. And be sure to read this graphic designers interview guide with some very useful insights on what you can do before, during and after your interview.
New to design? Follow this guide on how you can get started as a graphic designer, even if youre a total beginner.
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Bonus Question: What Else Do You Think I Should Know About You As A Designer Or About The Way You Work
Its always good to end the interview by giving the designer a chance to volunteer anything. This could be something theyve been trying to bring up the whole interview but never found the chance, or it could be something they thought of after-the-fact and wanted to add to the dialogue.
Like other open-ended questions, youll learn more if you hand over control to the designer. Pay attention to what topics they choose to talk about as much as what they actually say.
If the designer has nothing else to add, thats okay, too. Its best to give them the opportunity either way. If you do end up hiring them, it starts your collaboration off on the right foot.
Describe A Situation Where You Had To Meet A Tight Deadline And How Did You Deal With It
This is a frequently asked graphic design interview question as it helps the interviewer understand if you can perform efficiently with time constraints without compromising on the quality.
Pick any project where you had little time and discuss the strategy used to overcome the challenge.
Talk about time allocation and answer to reflect how you designed and followed the road map throughout the project.
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What Tools Do Designers Use
Graphic Designers use a combination of cutting-edge computer programs and more traditional tools to create their designs. Photoshop and the Adobe Creative Suite more broadly are still the industry standard for image and video editing, manipulating 2D and 3D images, creating computer art, logos, and animations, compositing, and image analysis. Designers also use Sketch, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects. Be sure to search out the original job posting. It could contain information on the specific tools and programs that a company uses. Its also worth it to talk about more traditional tools that Designers could find use to create their designs for example, pen and paper or a camera.
How Do You Meet Tight Deadlines Tell Me About A Time You Completed Great Work Under Pressure
Every designer has experience turning around projects on what seemed like an impossible timeline. Think back to the time-sensitive projects that youve delivered. Tell a story about how you managed to meet a tight deadline in the past. Share how you organized the tasks ahead of you to make sure you could get the job done effectively and on-time. Be as specific as you can, even breaking down the tasks that you had to complete and how you decided how much time to allocate to each. Ultimately, you want to leave no doubt that you work well under pressure, understand how to prioritize tasks, and have the time management sense to find success even when time constraints are much less than ideal.
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What Was Difficult In The Previous Position
Be prepared.
- First of all, you will need to ask to describe the problem.
- And then you must find out how the designer dealt with this situation. One person doesnt need to decide, show that you called and used other peoples services, which was the right and best solution to the problem.
- In the last part, you can share your philosophy of doing work or work ethics.
It is worth saying that there is no need to invent any global problem and ask how to save the company from financial ruin. This is beyond the power of an ordinary designer.
An example can be completely ordinary and straightforward. For example, how did you help resolve a disagreement between two colleagues who disagreed on a problem?
For example, we tell you how, having moved to work as a designer in a large company, it was difficult at first to understand the workflow and the hierarchy of the distribution of responsibilities between team members.
This was new, and we did not understand how the Product differs from the Project Manager and how we dealt with this problem, contacting my colleagues more, asking more questions, reading a lot of documentation, etc.
Can Graphic Designers Impact Society With Their Works
Unique designs have the potential to impact cultural shifts. They reach out to a huge audience and inspire people, becoming the voice for political and socio-cultural causes.
Graphic designers who work for social causes design websites and logos to create awareness and invoke empathy amongst people.
These designs become the face of the cause and enables better engagement with people.
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How Would You Handle Negative Client Feedback On One Of Your Designs
An interviewer might ask this question to see how well you are accustomed to receiving critical feedback. Your answer should reflect a positive outlook on the situation and how you approach such situations.
Example:”Negative comments are always disappointing, as you want to deliver the best quality of work to represent your company and please the client. In these situations, I would use the client’s feedback as fuel to revamp the project to incorporate their new vision and restructure my design based on the elements they disliked.”
What Prompted You To Become A Designer
The resume should describe professional skills, experience, personal qualities but not include unnecessary information.
Employers want to hire designers who are passionate about their work. They want to know that you are passionate about the design industry and your chosen career path.
It will be good for you to find out how a designer has begun their career.
Moreover, the graphic design interview questions are not always related to how the designer navigates the craft.
The applicant often asks a profile question and looks at how well you have theoretical and practical knowledge.
Answer: It is better to apply the tactics of personal experience here there is no need to share knowledge from Wikipedia the employer will learn your theory lesson. However, it may not come to practice.
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List Of Graphic Design Interview Questions From Top Companies
Whether youre eager to work at a top tech company or just curious what they are looking for in graphic design job candidates, here are a few interview questions from Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
- How do you like to receive feedback?
- What is the difference between vector and pixel?
- What are three things our company is doing well and three things we are not doing well?
- Critique a marketing campaign and provide an alternative solution.
- How did you deal with disagreements when making decisions with a team?
- What is your design superpower?
- What was your favorite design project?
- What expertise can you bring to Graphic Designer jobs?
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Whats Your Creative Process
Here you want to understand how this person best works, and if that works for you and your team. Do they try to understand the problem before they start designing? What kinds of questions do they ask? Are they comfortable with ideation? Can they execute on someone elses idea? Do they like to brainstorm or concentrate on their own? Do they like when people offer advice? Are they more of a leader or a contributor? How do they collaborate remotely, which is rapidly becoming the new norm? Can they handle curveballs? Their answers will give you something to marinate on.
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How Do You Stay Up
Graphic Designers must follow current software and design trends to excel. This question lets you check the sources designers mention and can give you an idea of the level of skill they possess. What to look for in an answer:
- Knowledge of current software
- Passionate about the industry
Example:
“I like to keep up-to-date with new technology and software through the hundreds of publications covering the design industry. Two of my leading sources for design news are Graphic Arts Magazine and Azure.”
What Is Your Availability
Most freelance designers work remotely, so you need to ask if you want someone close by. If you dont, you still need to know when their work times are so you can coordinate with them. You also want to make sure that they are available for your project. Not every applicant will be available for work right away.
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What Brands Or Design Projects Do You Admire Most
This can be an illuminating question, but make sure you word it so its relevant for your project. If youre hiring a freelancer to design a book cover, ask them which book covers they admire most.
This question should give you insight into the designers character: their stylistic preferences, artistic priorities and comprehension of their own trade. Its a good way to get clearcut answers to see if your tastes align.
For this question, you also want to pay attention to how they describe their favorites. Do they use technical jargon and go into the particular aspects of the design, or do they just say it looks good and leave it at that? You dont have to understand the design-talk yourselfit only matters if they understand it.
