A hiring manager's question bank for graphic designers — design principles, typography, colour, tool craft, branding, and how to read a portfolio. Built to separate designers who make things pretty from designers who solve a communication problem on purpose.
A graphic designer is hired to communicate, not just to decorate, so the best interviews look past a slick portfolio to the thinking behind it. Anyone can produce something that looks nice; the designers worth hiring can explain why they made each choice — why that typeface, why that grid, why that colour palette, why this layout guides the eye where they want it to go. The strongest signal is fluency in fundamentals: hierarchy, contrast, alignment, balance, white space, and the deliberate use of typography and colour to create mood and meaning. A candidate who talks only about "making it pop" without a rationale is a warning sign. You also want to confirm real tool craft — comfort in the Adobe suite or Figma, and crucially the judgement to know when a job calls for vector work in Illustrator versus raster in Photoshop, and why file formats and resolution matter for print versus screen. Branding sense matters for most roles: understanding that a logo is a system, not just a mark, and that consistency across touchpoints builds recognition. Because design is a service to a business, you want signs they can take a brief, ask the right questions, handle revisions and critique without ego, and defend a decision while staying open to being wrong. Above all, the portfolio is the centrepiece: a great designer narrates the problem, the constraints, the options they rejected, and how the final piece solves the brief. The questions below cover principles, typography and colour, tools and production, branding, and portfolio critique. Anchor the conversation on one real project and keep asking "why," and you will quickly tell craft with intent from decoration.
Anchor the interview on one real portfolio piece and walk it end to end, pulling questions from Design Principles and Typography & Colour as you go, then cover Tools & Branding and Collaboration. Keep asking "why did you choose that?" and "what problem did this solve?" — a strong designer defends every choice with the brief and the audience, not just taste.
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