The Problem with Hiring Designers from Portfolios
Portfolios lie. Most designers will show you their three best pieces from the last two years, polished up with weeks of revision, and none of it tells you how they perform under a real brief with tight turnaround times.
Over the years running In-box, I have hired and fired dozens of graphic designers. The only way to reliably find someone who can build high-converting Klaviyo templates is to give them a standardised, paid test task before you commit to regular work.
That is not cheap. In one hiring round, I tested 7 different graphic designers at once, which cost roughly $600 in test fees. But finding the right person immediately saves thousands of dollars in wasted revisions down the line.
Setting Up the Brief and the Style Selector
When you test a designer, you are not testing their ability to invent an entire brand identity from scratch. You are testing how well they interpret brand assets and combine them with proven email design layouts.
At In-box, we keep a style selector folder containing over 100 high-performing email designs across different ecommerce niches. When I set a test task, I pick three specific reference layouts from that library (for instance, style 45, 77, and 91) and give the candidate three assets:
- The target brand website (or full brand guidelines and media folder, if available).
- The three chosen layout references from our style selector.
- A clear instruction to build 3 variations that fuse the brand aesthetic with those reference structures.
If you are a single brand owner without a massive library, do not overcomplicate it. Find three email layouts from brands you admire, put them into a Figma file, and hand those over as your benchmarks.
Sourcing Candidates and Setting the Test Task
I typically source candidates on platforms like Upwork. When browsing profiles, I look for people with established job success scores and relevant case studies. For standard production graphic designers, my target rate sits between $10 and $20 per hour. If you are hiring a head designer or creative director, you will likely look closer to $40 per hour.
Once I identify a promising candidate, I reach out with a direct message asking if they have capacity for a short, paid test. I set up a fixed-price contract based on roughly 3 hours of work, which is more than enough time for a competent designer to produce three desktop and mobile mockups.
Always run this work inside Figma. Trying to review static image attachments over email or Slack is a mess. Figma allows you to inspect layers, check padding, see how components are built, and leave contextual comments directly on the canvas.
Evaluating the Submissions
When the designs come back, I look past the surface impression and evaluate the technical craft. Good email design requires precision, not just pretty colours.
1. Typography and Design Consistency
Check whether the designer actually paid attention to brand rules. If the reference design and the brand use sharp, geometric borders and modern sans-serif fonts, did the designer maintain those sharp edges, or did they randomly introduce rounded pills and soft corners? Following structural constraints matters.
2. Asset Treatment and Tooling
Look closely at how product imagery is handled. Average designers rely purely on automated background removers, dropping flat cutouts onto plain pedestals with awkward drop shadows. Strong designers use Photoshop properly to blend lighting, add subtle gradients, and create realistic depth that flows naturally into the email background.
3. Visual Hierarchy and Clickability
The layout must guide the eye straight to the call to action. The buttons need strong contrast, sensible negative space, and clear positioning. If the email looks cluttered or the primary offer gets lost in decorative elements, that template will fail in the inbox.
That is a mistake.
Deciding Between Training and Re-hiring
Sometimes a candidate submits work that is decent but not quite agency standard. If you run a small store and have time on your hands, you can take a $12 per hour designer who shows potential and train them on negative space and typography over a few weeks.
In my books, paying slightly more upfront for someone who already possesses the technical skills is usually the smarter move. If a designer cannot nail basic spacing, contrast, and alignment on a paid test, they will slow down your entire email marketing calendar.
Once a designer passes the test convincingly, I bring them onto our project management boards (we use Asana) and gradually increase their weekly task volume to build deep familiarity with the brand.
Final Thoughts
Never hire an email graphic designer based purely on an Upwork portfolio. Spend the $50 to $100 to run a paid, 3-hour test task using Figma and clear reference styles. It gives you an objective comparison of their speed, attention to detail, and technical craft before they touch your live Klaviyo account.
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