A new way to manage your design needs.
Monthly subscriptions are so common these days. From your mobile phone to online streaming services – their ease of use and benefits are clear to see. So why not apply the same approach to your graphic design needs? Are you considering a monthly subscription for design services? Want to buy your design by the minute?
So let us now take a look at what a subscription service is compared to a more traditional design purchasing approach.
What is a subscription design service?
Historically, retaining an agency was the preserve of large client accounts. Which spent large budgets every year on advertising, packaging and marketing with big-name agencies.
Currently, many agencies, marketeers and companies, benefit from committing to one agency with a monthly subscription (or retained) agreement.
The benefits of a subscription design service include:
- Budgeting – no nasty surprises at the end of the month
- Value for money – agencies can offer discounts or reduced rates once signed up
- Simplicity – One bill per month, less paperwork and administration
- Dedicated designers – access to specific or designated designers ensures consistency of style and greater brand appreciation
- Preferential treatment – quicker turnarounds or streamlined processes
- Trust – better working relationships through partnership.
What is a traditional approach to purchasing design services?
For the majority of companies choosing a design partner, usually through some form of quoting process, still end up in some form of open relationship. This is based on contacting the agency/studio for various services on a project by project basis.
As a project arises a brief is created and supplied to the agency who will then assign a designer to complete it. Each project is approached, quoted, managed and billed separately. A client may end up with the same designer, but the decision will more than likely be driven by a studio manager, rather than the client. The benefits include:
- Flexibility – free to try a new agency or designer
- Project-based – the ability to negotiate a cost based on a set budget
- No commitment – one-off jobs that just need to be done
- Separate bills for projects – one bill for each project
- Management – client/supplier relationship less defined.
So what approach/service is the best?
Ultimately, as with any service, it comes down to project specifics and personal preference. There are benefits and drawbacks to either way, but there is a growing need for a more evolved working relationship between clients and their agencies. Are you considering a monthly subscription for design services? Do you wish you could buy design by the minute rather than by the hour?
At Toast we believe that regular contact and consistent standards are essential to get the best results, and these are more likely to be achieved through a mutually beneficial relationship which is hard to achieve on a project by project basis.
How can we help?
The team at Toast is always looking to improve and develop their working practices to provide the very best service possible. We sit down with our clients and offer them the service that best suits their needs, for some this is to work on one project at a time. But for a growing number of our clients, this is a subscribed design service.
Our subscriptions packages allow clients with a range of different needs to save money and simplify their workload, all of them are based on the straightforward premise of buying design by the minute. Simple.
