When structuring a team, finding like-minded professionals —who share the same drive, purpose, and qualities— is always key to brainstorming successful ideas, developing creative solutions, and increasing productivity. 

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However, building and maintaining a top-tier design team can be difficult. It requires a combination of creativity, leadership, organization, investment, and strategic hiring. So, we'll share some practical tips and best practices you can use to enhance the performance of your design team and achieve better results.

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In today's fast-paced business landscape, having a high-performing design team is crucial to the success of any company. Excellent designers can create compelling visual content and user experiences, which are valuable assets to drive sales, boost customer engagement, and enhance your brand's image.

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From hiring and training to collaboration and communication, we cover all the essential aspects of building a winning design team on the following items:

1. Establish the skill sets and traits you need

It’s all about making the right hire! Before recruiting designers, make a list of the skills you need in your team according to your business goals so you know which profiles to look for. Depending on your needs, you can hire a designer who specializes in UX, UI, web, gaming, animation, IxD, or another branch. 

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Building a team with varied skill sets allows you to increase positive results on different projects and ensure your company’s know-how in diverse fields. But technical skills shouldn’t be the only priority. When hiring a designer, you should always focus on their level of curiosity, passion, determination, openness, problem-solving, receptiveness, proactiveness, and patience. 

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2. Communicate your brand identity

Consistently conveying your company’s mission, principles, traits, and objectives helps your team strive toward a common goal by cultivating purposeful work. You must create a brand narrative and build a steady work culture to boost your designers’ motivation and inspire their creativity. 

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Shaping your brand in the mind of your employees provides clarity and consistency for their work. Therefore, by understanding your brand identity, your design team can elaborate better creative solutions based on the projects you want to tackle. 

3. Focus on employee training and development 

Besides implementing a cooperative onboarding process, providing mentorship, close training, and ongoing education is crucial to elevate your design team. By helping your current employees advance their proficiency, you can boost engagement and keep the best talent in-house. Offer them online courses, peer coaching, professional certifications, skill-building workshops, etc. 

Encouraging your design team to continue their education and providing them with the necessary resources is one of the best ways to enhance productivity and drive better business outcomes. 

4. Supply the best tools

If you want to leverage and enhance your designers’ creativity, it’s essential to equip them with the latest design tools and software. Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Lunacy, Sketch, Mega Creator, and Affinity Designer are all excellent resources for increasing your design team’s efficiency and work quality.

5. Establish performance metrics and KPIs 

Setting goals and a priority order for each member’s tasks is crucial for improving your design team’s performance. If they have a target to work on, it’s easier for them to complete projects successfully.

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Therefore, you must determine timelines and establish boundaries to help designers proactively focus on the most important tasks. Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you measure the success and effectiveness of your team’s work according to your business goals. You can use the following metrics: time, budget, helpfulness, customer satisfaction, user engagement, conversion rates, and brand recognition. 

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6. Encourage design thinking 

Design thinking focuses on understanding and empathizing with user needs to create solution-based alternatives for their problems. Designers must use their knowledge, creativity, and curiosity to collect different approaches and solutions to face particular user problems. 

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By nurturing a space for creative exploration and applying this technique, designers develop empathy and collaborative thinking, allowing them to create meaningful and impactful solutions through brainstorming, sketching, prototyping, and testing. 

7. Share feedback and recognition

A high-performing team should be characterized by constantly seeking to grow professionally and optimize their work. Designers can identify their areas of improvement and develop their abilities by getting clear and timely feedback, allowing them to better their performance. So, plan regular evaluation meetings to exchange feedback between managers and designers.

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On the other hand, acknowledging your members’ achievements and rewarding them is a great way to keep your team motivated and enthusiastic about their work. If you are looking to promote a supportive company culture to increase your design team’s productivity and growth, implementing reward programs is the best way to go. You can include milestone rewards, work anniversary recognitions, experiential rewards, professional development opportunities, profit sharing, and more. 

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If you want to engage the right talent for your design team but wish the hiring process could be simpler and faster, our Talent Acquisition specialists can help you source, vet, and hire professionals in less time. 

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We know your great ideas are as brilliant as the team behind them! Schedule a call with us, and let us find the perfect designer for your team. 

hello@gofasti.com

+1(214) 817-1200