Why the design agency still matters to you

We’ve seen a few articles that mention the end of an era, where traditional design agencies forfeit and dismantle their talent to multiple (product) companies, or get acquihired. Here’s why we still believe the design agency has a huge podium when you adapt properly.

Freedom

We determine which projects we take on. It may sound obvious, but if you’re working for a product company, you’ll often work on the same product each day. For a limited time that makes sense, there is a lot of value in focusing on one product for a specific amount of time, but we also realize that the attention span of a human isn’t that long. Boy, don’t even get me started on the attention span of us designers.

Our preference is to work hard and focused for a limited time. By choosing the fun projects and epic, passionated clients, we can bring the best to the table each time.

Multiple Projects

We all know that feeling; the creative block. You’re invested in a project and aim to create the best design possible, but somehow you’re trapped in an endless spiral of similar looking design. We allow ourselves to switch to a totally different project and replenish the creative mind. Multiple projects prevents our designers fatigue.

Mentoring, not managing.

Mentoring

Mentoring, not managing is one of the principles in our company as we believe our team, on all levels, has a lot of uncovered potential, talent and skills. By creating a mentoring environment we aim to enhance these talents and skills, which often brings a lot of joy.

By aiming to have a diverse team we enable ourselves to teach and guide on many different aspects of the design profession and skills so we can all benefit and learn from each other”

We never cease to be amazed and proud when we see the year-to-year growth of our interns and junior designers.

Rinse-and-repeat to improve

In product companies, a design team can be limited in numbers and doesn’t rinse-and-repeat often enough. In many product companies, when a step in the design process is completed (because the end-result is accepted), you leave that step behind and focus on the next.

We generally have relatively short project timelines, ergo there is much more rinse-and-repeat to learn from mistakes, and immediately improve our process for the next project which is already around the corner.

Startups love us (and we love them)

By far the lion share of our clients are startups or bigger companies with new ideas. They reach out to us because we can fix their problem. Mostly in a relatively short period of time with a set of 5+ designers immediately at their disposal. On top of that: they’re not even required to invest in a longterm contract.

I don’t have to tell you how many startups mushroom out of the ground on a daily basis, right?

In Short

There are enough reasons that a design agency like we built still has a great place in the current market for both clients and employees. Don’t you agree?