I need a designer. Where do I actually find one?

Finding a designer isn’t hard. They’re everywhere: Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, freelance platforms, Discord, X. Finding the right one is the hard part. You’re trying to separate people who solve design problems from people who are just good at making a nice looking post.

Here’s where I’d look, and yes, I’m starting with my favorite.

1. Reddit

I’ll admit my bias: I love Reddit for this. It’s one of the few places where you can see how someone thinks before you ever talk to them.

The big design subs like r/graphic_design don’t allow hiring posts, but there are communities built for it, like r/designjobs and r/artistforhire. Each has its own posting format, so read the rules before you post.

The real advantage is context. You can open someone’s profile and see the work they’ve shared, how they give feedback to other designers and how they talk to people. That tells you a lot about what working with them will be like.

How to write a post that gets good replies

Don’t post “need logo, DM me”. You’ll get flooded, and experienced designers will scroll right past because they can’t tell if it’s a fit. Include:

• What your business does
• What you need (a logo, a full identity, a website)
• Your budget and timeline
• A few examples of design you like
• How you want people to reply (portfolio link, rates, availability)

That post will get far better replies than one line ever will.

2. Instagram

Great for finding designers visually. Search things like brand designer, identity designer or packaging designer. But don’t stop at the grid. Click through to their portfolio and look for full projects: a logo shown on packaging, signage and a website. One beautiful post doesn’t prove someone can build a whole identity.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn isn’t my favorite place to find a designer. It’s packed with agency owners and agencies, and the whole vibe is tacky corporate: everyone polished, everyone “thrilled to announce”, very little actual work on show.

Where it does make sense is long term hiring. If you’re bringing someone onto your team full time and want to check their work history and references, LinkedIn is useful. For a one off freelance project like a logo or a website, I’d look elsewhere first.

Upwork and Fiverr

These are the two names everyone thinks of first, so I’ll be straight about why I don’t recommend them.

Fiverr is built around cheap, fast packages, and the quality of the work shows it. There’s no real quality control, and no real accountability either. If the result is bad, you get a revision or a dispute, not a designer who stands behind the work. Templates, stock icons and lightly edited AI output regularly get sold as “custom” logos, artwork and book covers, prices are so low nobody can afford to think about your business, and five star reviews usually just mean it arrived on time.

Upwork has a different problem. A lot of it is agencies that take the project, charge serious money, then offshore the actual work to other designers who get paid pennies. You think you hired one team and you have no idea who is really designing your brand.

There are good designers on both platforms. But you have to dig through a lot to find them, and you’re often safer hiring someone directly.

X, Threads and Discord

Treat these as places to discover people. There are brilliant designers on all of them, along with spam accounts and profiles that can be difficult to verify.

X is especially problematic because it’s full of bots and spam accounts, which makes it hard to tell a real designer from an account that just automates posts and reposts other people’s work.

Discord has bots too, along with some good artists, but established professionals are harder to find. It’s much more one to one and private, so there’s often very little social proof: no public feed and no easy way to see someone’s past work. When the whole conversation starts in a private chat, it’s hard to verify who you’re actually dealing with.

Threads is somewhat better in my experience, but it still has many of the same issues as X, just with less bot activity.

If someone’s whole portfolio lives inside a social feed and you can’t find any real client work elsewhere, look closer before hiring.

What about design contests?

I started out in design contests and won a lot of them, so I’m not going to pretend they’re useless. They’re a great training ground. But in a contest, lots of designers make concepts before anyone gets paid (that’s called spec work), and you pick from a pile of submissions. That’s a different thing from hiring one designer to understand your business and build the identity with you. If you want the second, hire directly.

How to actually choose

• Look at the work, not the follower count.
• Look for relevant experience. Need packaging? Look for packaging.
• Look for taste. You should see considered decisions across their projects.
• Ask why. A good designer can explain their type, color and concept in plain words.
• Notice how they communicate. You’re working with a person, not a vending machine.

The platform isn’t the designer

Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, Upwork, Fiverr, none of them are the designer. They’re just where you find people. What matters is the portfolio, the thinking, the craft and how they communicate. Start wherever you’re comfortable, find work you actually like, then dig one level deeper.

Don’t hire the platform. Hire the person. And if you’re browsing Reddit anyway, you can find me there too.