At Peartree, we love freelancers, but we only hire the good ones.

And that’s one of the primary differences between hiring a graphic design consultant at Peartree and hiring a freelance graphic artist — we’ve already done the vetting for you.

The most common pitfall of most small businesses and burgeoning brands is the constant tug-of-war between quality and cost. Freelancers have less overhead than agencies so they can charge much less, but in many cases, those clients find out that they only got what they paid for. Freelancers don’t have supervisors and don’t report to anyone else, and they often work in solitude. As a consequence of that lack of structure, when they miss a deadline or only put in half the effort on your work, there is no one else in the room to call them on it.

Our view is simple — where there is graphic design needed, more is better. Peartree’s consultants offer more oversight, more designers with more options. Deadlines are more than just general guidelines or client suggestions around here. They are the law, but when an artist is behind or needs help to make it, we have a whole team to support them. In that sense, our clients get far more than they pay for because our team works as a single unit to deliver primary and added value every day. Our collaborative environment was crafted specifically as a creative bunker for professional graphic artists because when they have all the tools, technology and teamwork they need, their projects transform to become more than the sum of their parts.

Also, freelance designer’s prices, rates and schedules fluctuate wildly. In many cases, they don’t know when the phone will ring again, so they often take on much more work and wind up trying to do more, in less time than they should. They are also infamous for charging larger companies more for the same job, simply because they know they have deeper pockets.

Peartree has been around for 20 years, and we have survived and thrived through recessions and other outside market factors. We’ve learned how to structure our workflow logically, with an emphasis on quality, so we don’t have to play games with our pricing or scheduling. Unlike many freelancers who spend time waving at deadlines as they pass by, we pride ourselves on meeting or beating deadlines with a level of quality comparable to a national agency, but with local prices.More importantly, we treat every client like they are the most important one we have because that’s how we would want to be treated if the roles were reversed. When it’s time to find a graphic artist, we offer exponentially more than any freelancer — we have more talent, more resources, more time and more value, so every dollar our clients spend goes a lot further than they might think when they see the nature of our team and experience.