Design on Demand – A Simple Explanation of How it Works
Design on Demand. Design as a Service. On-Demand Graphic Design. With so much information out there to read and digest, it’s no surprise that companies often feel overwhelmed when deciding which solution is best for your them.
To help cut through the information overload, we’ve put together a clear and concise guide about Design on Demand and how it will benefit you. There’s no complexities. No hidden caveats.
Just a straightforward breakdown of our service.
What is Design on Demand?
Design on Demand is a subscription that covers design assets at scale for one flat hourly rate. Our clients choose a baseline level of monthly hours, starting at 40, for a minimum of three months. These hours can be used throughout the month or in waves that meet your needs, with time logs and SLAs to give you predictability.
Once on board, we’ll provide the tools for you to order whatever you like, whenever you like – with options to scale hours up and down.
Our services range from client to client, but any area of motion graphics and graphic design is possible, including:
- Illustrations and infographics
- Organic social assets
- Graphic design
- Presentation decks
- Ebooks and reports
- Print and merchandise
- Ads creative
- Motion graphics
- Campaign concepts
- HTML5 banners
- Brand design
- Email template design and build
Our Design on Demand service offers high-quality output at pace, with most projects completed in a few days depending on the size of the task.
For instance, social media graphics can often be finished within two working days, while more complex briefs for motion graphics can take up to eight working days to finalise. There’s no limit on revisions, but our aim is to get it right the first time around.
Who is it for?
Whether you manage a design team, oversee a marketing department or control the budget, Design on Demand provides a solution that can be tailored to your requirements. Too many briefs? A lack of capacity? Hiring struggles? Missed deadlines? These are just some of the challenges our clients face.
With our help, they are delivering more campaigns, more consistently, across more channels.
We believe there are only four dials you need to turn to achieve success – Volume, Creativity, Depth and Speed. Working closely with each client, we identify which dial needs turning up.
Looking for more Volume? Then let’s A/B test, create variations on asset types and personalise content. Or if Depth is what you’re after, then our team can offer support in the areas that you’re struggling with internally.
How much does it cost?
Our Design on Demand service starts at £4,000 plus VAT per month. For that, you get access to a team of web, motion and graphic designers, as well as digital marketing specialists, project managers and creative copywriters. This scope of expertise means we’ve got you covered for every brief, no matter how big or small.
For new clients, the first three months offers time to make sure we’re the right fit. Assuming we are, we’ll enter into a 12-month agreement. You’ll pay quarterly in advance, meaning you can pause or cancel during any three-month period – we’ll end the agreement at the end of that period or when we deliver all the hours.
The same applies when it comes to scaling up as we have enough headroom on the team to expand 2-3x at any time with a few days’ notice. Some of our clients also prefer to commit to a longer-term agreement, but that is entirely optional.
Why should I invest?
Outsourcing a proportion of your design needs can address several pain points without removing all creative control from your internal team, taking the pressure off so they can focus on the tasks at hand without becoming overstretched.
The cost of hiring new staff is also considerable and its unrealistic to expect one person to cover multiple disciplines like motion graphics, illustration and 3D. With Design on Demand, you get the depth of an agency for less than the cost of one designer. There’s no downtime costs, no sick days and no hardware to buy.
When investing in our service, you’re not only investing in Tone Agency, but the individual skills of our team members. That could be a Creative Director like Mark, a Project Manager like Sofia or a Brand Champion like Simon. In return, you’ll receive specialist support to ensure assets are on-brand, on time and on standard.
This applies to our design team too. While you’ll be working with two or three designers specialised in a certain area (a motion graphics specialist won’t be pulling together your PowerPoint deck), each designer will be included in the relevant project thread with you and can provide input into discussions as needed.
We pride ourselves on providing the highest level of output, so every project runs through a detailed process to ensure it looks the part. Our three-tiered approach begins with a peer review and Project Manager overview to catch copy and other obvious errors. It’s then reviewed by a Senior Creative to ensure consistency to brand and best practice, before being signed off by a Design Lead for delivery.
When can I get started?
We’re more agile than most agencies, so we can get you onboarded in around a week. Step one is to familiarise ourselves with your brand and integrate our teams by putting faces to names, ensuring we have an aligned vision from the get-go.
Then we’ll get stuck into your workflow, deciding on a briefing process that’s best for you. You can use our briefing forms, or if you commit for three+ months, we’ll pull tasks directly from your own workflow so there’s no new systems to learn.
Once we’ve finalised the briefing process, then it’s time to get to work. From this point on, you’ll have a dedicated Project Manager who acts as your day-to-day contact, managing project timelines and coordinating asset delivery between you and the production team. They’ll be your eyes and ears on the ground at all times.
We’re ready to go when you are, so if Design on Demand sounds like the right solution for you, then let’s chat. We can walk you through the service in detail, delving deeper into how it works and why it checks out. Simply book a demo.
Liam Veitch
Head of Production at Design on Demand
Design team stacked?
Book a demo to learn about Design on Demand, a monthly subscription that allows you to deliver more campaigns, across more channels, more consistently. For less than the cost of one designer, you can choose from a whole agency-worth of tasks.
