Back to blog
Why Consider A Graphic Design Subscription For Your Business?
We explore what graphic design subscriptions can do for you as a business owner and why you should consider them.
In a previous article, we discussed the issue of finding the right graphic design partner for your business. In it, we compared the pros and cons of hiring freelancers, in-house designers and agencies, and provided guidelines as to what factors to consider when making this important decision, as well as some potential pitfalls to avoid.
We said that finding a reliable design partner is a challenge, a journey and a learning experience. We concluded that investing in a strong working relationship with a designer, no matter the form it takes, can be highly beneficial to your business in the long run.
In this article, we will talk about graphic design subscription services and explore what they can do for you as a business owner and why you should consider them.
In recent years, subscriptions took the graphic design industry by storm. Niche and novel at first, they quickly became a common offering of freelancers and agencies alike. We believe there is good reason for this, as subscriptions solve many of the problems encountered by both designers and their clients. At first glance, it may appear that design has become yet another area which has needlessly adopted the subscription model. It seems that everything is a subscription these days. In software, for example, it used to be that you go into a store, buy a CD or DVD in a box, go home, install it and it’s yours forever. Not anymore. It can be easy to put design service subscriptions in the same bucket, but we beg to differ.
In graphic design, it used to be that providers – freelancers and agencies alike – would charge a fixed rate for each deliverable. Need a new business card? It costs X dollars to design. Need a 2-page leaflet? Y dollars. Designers would add up the manhours needed to create the average business card or leaflet, they would add extra hours for reworks, project management and other items, and come up with a price. That is, of course, how a large proportion of the business is still done today and there is nothing wrong with it. It works well, especially on a project basis.
Say you have started a brand new business. You know that you will need a logo, a website, a price list, business cards, leaflets, social media post templates, etc. You get in touch with a designer or an agency, you send your brief, you receive an offer, you give the go-ahead. Then the work is done, you pay and move on with your day.
A month later you decide to organize an event for your business. You want to gather your most important clients, to impress them. To do it right, you will need to brand an entire venue – everything from posters on the walls to menus to leaflets promoting the event. Everything needs to be designed from scratch, and quickly. You call the designer you know, but they’re unavailable. You hastily look for an alternative. You receive an offer, much costlier than what you’re used to, but the work needs to be done, so you accept.
The designs you receive are nothing like what you imagined. They need to be reworked, but reworks cost money. The new designer knows nothing about your business and your industry. You have to explain the nuances, the important details. Emails fly in both directions. At the last moment you decide you want the TV screens in the venue to run video ads for your business on loop instead of having static screens with your logo. It turns out, however, that the designer can’t produce videos or animations. Worse still, they have no one to turn to, certainly not as quickly as you need.
By this point you’ve begun to regret ever coming up with the idea for the event. It has been a hassle, costs have piled up, and the event in its final form is a far cry from what you wanted. Graphic design subscriptions are an attempt to prevent precisely such a situation.
As we have shown in the dramatized example above, graphic design work is surrounded by questions of provider availability, reliability, project complexity, workload predictability, and many others. As we discussed in our previous article, it is not uncommon to become ghosted by a designer or to suddenly find them unavailable, incapable of handling a request. Perhaps they just began working on a massive project for another client. This usually happens at the worst possible time. In the real world, it is also nearly impossible to predict exactly how much design work will be needed in the future, how complex it will be, what skills and technologies it will require. This can lead to frustrating delays, projects falling through, being forced to switch providers, facing higher costs, juggling between multiple vendors at a time, etc.
As our example illustrates, the seemingly benign task of branding an event should be seen as a whole collection of tasks, each requiring its own skillset, each running on its own timeline, each having its unique requirements and challenges. Instead of worrying about every little detail, you as the business owner should be able to have a reasonable degree of certainty that your design partner covers your most important needs, on time and within budget. Of course, in reality, there never is a be-all and end-all solution. No provider is 100% reliable, available, and covers every possible contingency, but a solution exists that works most of the time.
Graphic design subscriptions are such a solution. A few key parameters differ between vendors and packages, but in its most basic form you as the business owner pay a regular fee, reserving the right to send requests, usually unlimited, to your freelancer or agency. That way you don’t have to know in advance how much design work you will need, say, in a given month. You can safely and reliably budget the same amount every time regardless of the workload. Think of it as insurance.
In our view, freelancers and agencies offer subscription packages because they work for both sides. They smooth out the business relationship between designer and client by making it significantly more predictable. A designer who has a subscriber client dedicates time and resources in advance for them, month after month, should they need it. They know in advance what services the package covers and plan accordingly. Should they need to hire help, they will have the visibility to do so.
Great freelancers and agencies do not overestimate their abilities and availability. They do not oversell subscription packages. If they know that they can reasonably and safely handle, say, up to five clients at a time, they limit the subscriptions to that number. This gives them the necessary bandwidth to really get to know their clients, their specific needs, their quirks, and what makes them tick. Naturally, this reduces the number and severity of reworks and communication becomes easier. When business runs like a well-oiled machine, all you need to do as the client is to approve the designs you receive, a simple “ok” replaces the lengthy emails explaining why this or that design doesn’t work.
This leads us to the question of when to consider a design subscription. As we said earlier, there is nothing wrong with working on a project basis should your designer or agency agree to it. In the beginning, when your business is just starting out, your design needs might be limited, they might not yet warrant a subscription.
As your operations grow and evolve, however, a design subscription should become ever more attractive for the predictability and peace of mind it provides. You may need monthly content and ads design for all your socials, banners, blog post headers and graphics, ebooks and downloadables, video edits and thumbnails, and any other digital or print-ready assets necessary for the ongoing smooth sailing of your business. As every promise is only ever as good as the person making it, our advice would be to get to know your designer or agency, work with them for a while, and then decide if you want to subscribe to their services, should they offer such an option.
As we have shown in this article, there are numerous factors that need to be taken into account when choosing a graphic design partner, be it a freelancer or an agency. These factors include, but are not limited to, vendor availability, reliability and predictability.
One solution that reduces complexity, increases predictability and improves the efficiency of the working relationship between the designer and you as the business owner is a graphic design subscription. It typically involves paying a fixed fee in exchange for a predetermined number of requests per month, usually unlimited. In this way it works like insurance. As your business grows, the relative attractiveness of a design subscription service will increase alongside it. That is because the design workload will likely increase as you offer more products and services to more clients.
If you are looking for quality design service packages from a partner you can trust, check out our offering here.
Get in touch today!
