For those who have immersed themselves in the world of graphic design, it is very easy to say that finding the right contact to land a job or complete a project takes quite an effort and a considerable amount of time. On a designer’s end, it is very difficult to get your work the necessary exposure for businesses to get interested especially with the cost-cutting strategies of a lot of executives which includes spec work and design contests.
On the other hand, businesses (assuming they’re not involved in any spec work) would need to sift through thousands of online portfolios located on several networking sites for designers. And on top of that, you still need to go through the rigorous process of finding what style you would want in your project and of course the long bargaining process that both parties need to do before closing a deal.
So wouldn’t it be nice if there was a system that designers and consumers can use to speed up the process and make it more efficient? Well, a startup company founded by Limor Goldhaber – a former architecture instructor in Israel, and funded by several private investors might just have the thing we all need.
Armed with the vision of providing a convenient way to help people find talented graphic designers that speak their language, work in their specified pricing level and understand their taste and creative needs – Limor Goldhaber together with Jishai Evers and Lio Fleishman founded dèzquare in 2012.
With an initial funding of $105,000 in a pre-seed round from three private investors, the dèzquare team developed a unique online solution that matches people’s taste, design preferences and budget to a graphic designer through a smart algorithm ingeniously built in a “Hot or Not” game. This process eliminates the need to browse through hundreds of designer portfolios and the uncertainty of selecting a bid or starting a design contest. Both of which are beneficial to both parties.
At present, dèzquare is now online and consumers and designers can already signup for the service for free.
If you sign up as a consumer, you will be asked to first select a product in their list of graphic design products. You will also need to set your budget through a bar at the bottom. Users are then asked to give several artworks a pass or fail rating, the results of which will be used to match your needs with specific designer/designers in their database.
After that, users can then now choose which designer they want to work with and contact them to set a deal and set the time frame for the project.
On the other side of the fence, signing up as a designer would require you to fill up an information sheet and upload your artwork into their system. Each uploaded image of your work would need to be tagged with the use of their so-called “design indicators”. These tags will be used by dèzquare algorithm to match your style with a customer’s preferences.
With the company just barely a year old, the efficiency of their system remains to be tested and only time will tell whether dèzquare will be a hit to both graphic design product consumers or to graphic artists. For now, you can check out their website and see how it suits your needs.
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