While Providence, RI did not make the cut, I take comfort that we are sandwiched right in the middle of these great cities. In fact you can’t get to one from the other without passing through Providence on I95. I’ve been to all these cities, and while they all have vibrant arts communities, the main factor in determining the list was average wages compared to the cost of living on a per-city basis, along with overall employment opportunities for creative professionals. Finding good graphic design talent is very easy in all these cities (including Providence). A great place to start is to simply google “graphic designer” and then add the city name, like this: “graphic designer providence“. Google will give you a local map based on your location (if Google can tell where you are based on your IP address from your internet service provider) and show you the closest matches to your location. 
Right below the local results, you will see links to graphic designer and artist portfolios, mixed in with some garbage results from out-of-town companies that try and trick local searchers into considering their businesses by using bait-and-switch page titles on their sites, like “Rhode Island Graphic Designers”, which is really just a computer-generated boilerplate page usually filled with ads for a thousand other things. If you carefully read the links before clicking, you can learn to tell a real graphic design firm portfolio web page or graphic design blog from a spammy, link-baiter type of website. The legitimate listings at the top of any search results you may find (not the obviously bogus results) are usually the result of the hard work of the firm to optimize their site to win your attention, favor, and business. You will notice for instance that yours truly ranks highly in the results from the link above for Providence. Have fun browsing the results – lot’s of wonderful designers have great websites in all the New England metro areas, and there are many to chose from. Find the right designer for you – and don’t give up looking until you find that right match! Without further ado, here are the 4 cities that made the cut: Please click through to see information about each city, including a brief overview of each city, average salary (for all industries), and cost of living rank.