Running a design business means allocating the budget for any given project to the personnel who will get the best possible job done considering those constraints. It’s a juggling act every project lead must wrestle with, and one that doesn’t always present the path of least resistance.

The fact is, what you really want to be pouring that budget into is the design itself. This means countless hours spent drawing, collaborating, critiquing, modelling, and then doing it all over again a hundred times until the Chinese food shows up any everyone can finally come up for air. It’s hard work and sometimes leaves little room for spending money on things like professional visualization, rendering, and artwork.

Of course, there is a remedy for this common ailment (isn’t there always?). There is a growing online community of freelance 3D rendering artists who are not only changing the way architecture firms do business, the are providing strength and rigidity to a feedback loop that, due to constricting design budgets, is left to flail untethered in the wind.

Hiring 3D rendering freelancers can give your firm the power to produce photorealistic renderings of your design work without the hefty price tag. Here’s why it pays to invest a small amount of cash in something that can revolutionize your design business.

Freelancers Are Cheap

Actually, I should say ‘cheaper.’ Also, I hate the word cheap. It’s connotations revolving around the unsavoury aspects of the red light, nightlife underbelly have effectively soiled that word. Let’s say, they’re...inexpensive.

Because that’s exactly what they are. In some ways, keeping a 3D visualization artist on the full-time payroll is in the best interest of keeping all the design-related work in house. However, doing so can get expensive, and if you don’t have a wealth of projects that require immediate work from them, they will be draining project budgets that have little room for wiggle.

Hiring freelancers for that work keeps the books lean and mean, and allows the budget to be spread out over project architects, designers, and people who are contributing to the realization of the built work.

Finding Them Has Never Been Easier

The days of blindly throwing darts at a Craiglist want ad are officially over (thank God). Finding talented, available, and budget-friendly 3D rendering artists is as easy as knowing where to look. The internet has several streamlined job-finding services that are tailor-made for design firms in the market for help with rendering and visualization.

Easy Render is one example of such a marketplace - a website that lets you browse perspective freelancers with a few clicks of the mouse. You can have someone in Beijing up and running on mock-ups for your new Civic Centre in a matter of hours. Better yet, all the work is guaranteed, and you don’t pony up a single dime unless the work has been delivered to your standards of excellence.

The internet has strained our world in countless ways (looking at you, Facebook), but one thing it’s proven to do is allow the cream to rise to the top, there to be scooped up be anyone willing to peer in and grab a spoon. You will always find quality freelancers, and if they can help you out, they’ll let you know.

They Really Can Help Your Business

Every design business is built upon a single thing: reputation. It’s the currency used to buy bigger jobs, promote current jobs, and prove any given office’s ability to both design and execute. However, reputation isn’t something you just conjure from thin air. It must be established through years of work, but also the ability to show people why you rock.

This is where visualization can have such an immediate and emphatic impact. Not only will it promote unfinished or conceptual design work, bolstering that feedback loop will make your current and future projects better. The more information you have about a design prior to entering construction documents the better the final product will be.

Visualization in all forms is aimed at giving real-world information about materiality, light, texture, space, and the overall human experience. Now, any firm can afford to have that kind of work done on a regular basis. There are no excuses anymore, so find a few freelancers that can help you work towards getting those bigger jobs and growing your reputation into something someone somewhere might hang their hat on.

The people willing and able to help take your design office to the next level are out there, waiting to give you their best. They don’t require contracts, big salaries, or hand-holding to give you something that used to require all three.