How our retainers work.
Our preferred-rate retainer gives you a cost-effective way to keep a senior creative team on call — priority scheduling, preferential rates, and a consistent level of support aimed at your long-term design goals.
Why Teams Commit
- Priority scheduling — retainer clients come first
- A preferential rate, locked for the engagement
- A consistent team that knows your brand
- Consistent support, month after month
More than hours — a working relationship.
Project management board
Every request lives in one place with status, owner, and deadline.
First-priority client work
We shift project coverage and personnel around to meet your timelines within reason. Retainer clients come first in our schedule.
Brand consistency
We become knowledgeable in your branding to maintain consistency — no re-explaining your brand every time.
Priority access
Swift response times and priority one-on-one call schedules whenever you need us on the line.
Creative consultations & work sessions
Want a working session to workshop a design? Let's do it — live, together, on your schedule.
Client training
Training sessions and materials to help your in-house team navigate new templates. Need to show your sales team some tips & tricks? We've got you.
Three commitments, one team.
The longer the commitment, the more flexible your hours become — and the deeper we embed with your team.
40 hours
per month
Where most teams land.
Enough runway for us to learn your brand deeply and become a true extension of your team.
Invoicing
Two payments — a deposit up front, the balance due three months in.
30 hours
per month
Full-year embedded support.
Our deepest level of integration. For large projects, hours can shift across months with 60 days' notice.
Invoicing
Two payments — a deposit up front, the balance due six months in. Prepay the full year and save 1.5%.
Scoped to you
Your terms
Built around the work.
A launch, a conference season, or a shape all your own. We'll scope hours, duration, and team around what's coming.
Invoicing
Defined in your statement of work — we'll walk through it on the discovery call.
How the hours actually work.
No gotchas, no mystery math. These are the same terms every retainer client signs — so you know exactly what you're agreeing to before the first call.
Your preferred rate is locked
Committing to a retainer earns you a preferential rate on everything we do together. Rates are reviewed on a yearly basis and never mid-engagement.
Hours roll over — within reason
Up to 5% of unused hours can roll into a consecutive agreement — we're structured around full engagements, not month-to-month billing — so a quiet stretch isn't wasted.
Overages stay simple
Any additional hours are billed separately at the end of the month they're incurred — at your preferred rate, subject to availability.
Fast turnarounds, prioritized
Retainer clients get first claim on rush work. Smaller requests — a handful of slides, a quick formatting pass — can sometimes turn around same-day, depending on the week. Whole-deck reformats and creative enhancements need a minimum of 48 hours.
How we keep it running smoothly.
One shared project board
We manage workflow and communication between designers, coordinators, and your team on a shared board — project comms, updates, and task tracking in one place.
A dedicated
project manager
We assign a PM as your single point of contact, and ask you to name one on your side. We'll run a 20–30 minute onboarding so everyone knows how the system works.
Organized file storage
Files are stored and transferred through a shared cloud folder, hosted for 90 days after each project wraps. Prefer your own storage? We just need access for three staff members.
Clear estimates, every time
Whatever the request, we communicate an estimated turnaround up front — so you always know when work will land.
What one
looks like
on paper.
Here's the shape of a recent retainer with a financial-services client — a six-month corporate support engagement built around presentations and design.
Every retainer is scoped to the client. Yours might look different — that's the point of the discovery call.
Sample retainer at a glance
Engagement
6-month retainer
Focus
Corporate support — presentations & design
Monthly hours
50 hours / month, 300 total
Invoicing
Two equal payments — up front and three months in
Team
Graphic design + presentation specialist
Deliverables
All original, layered files plus final PDFs