Brand for founders

Member lesson

When to hire a designer, and how to brief one

Lesson 9 of 11 in Brand for founders.

Checked against the makers' documentation on 9 October 2026.

How to Create a Proper Design Brief · Superside
Lesson

Hire a designer when the homemade version starts costing you money. The signs are concrete. A stockist asks for print-ready files you cannot produce, a print run of thousands of labels is about to be ordered, the product is selling and the pack is the thing customers photograph, or you are spending more evenings fixing layouts than making the product. Hiring because a brand ought to have a designer is the wrong reason, and so is hiring before you have written the one-page brief.

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Members only

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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    A designer's copyright assignment says nothing about how long it lasts. Under section 19(5) of the Copyright Act, how long is it treated as lasting?

    • For ever
    • One year
    • Five years
    • Ten years
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these does the lesson treat as a job with edges, a price and a finish line?

    • Make us a brand
    • Help us find our identity
    • Give us a fresh look for next year
    • Redraw our wordmark and design the label for our amber bottle, front and back, print-ready
  3. Question 3, locked

    Why should any paid typeface be licensed in your company's name?

    • The designer cannot hand you a licence they bought for themselves
    • Fonts are covered by the copyright assignment anyway
    • IP India asks for it when you file a wordmark
    • Free fonts cannot be used by a company

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