Calling it a ‘design retainer’ doesn’t quite capture the excitement! It’s a mutual commitment to collaborate closely, ensuring you have creative graphic and digital design expertise readily available, every working day.

No need to worry about breaks or even adding us to your coffee rounds – we’re part of your team, without being in your team!

What are design retainers?

We offer oodle’s design expertise through individual projects and longer-term design retainers.

A design retainer is an agreement for ongoing collaboration, typically reviewed every six months. It addresses the need for consistent graphic and digital design support. The work can vary in type and timing. We agree on an average number of hours per month dedicated to your projects, converting those hours into a predictable monthly cost.

It’s a skillset you invest in, not a fixed project type. Our expertise covers a wide scope of work. Design retainers are ideal for:

• Recurring projects like newsletters
• Creating visuals and animations for sustained online engagement
• Campaign design across mixed media.

Top 5 advantages of a design retainer

1. Ownership – We’ll build a dedicated team around your needs, led by your Systematic Account Manager and our oodlers, ensuring accountability and efficiency.
2. Brand consistency – We’ll become intimately familiar with your brand’s look, personality, and behaviour. We’ll bring added value to your brand by refining key elements, evolving new assets when required.
3. Access to specialist skills – A retainer allows your projects to draw on the diverse specialisms within oodle, which is quite a different tact to directly hiring your own designer. We blend the skills, experience and ideas of our team into retainer outputs, you have our team at hand. Communication is typically through your Account Manager, for a coordinated and inbox friendly approach!
4. Priority in our schedule – With a design retainer, we already anticipate working on your projects each month. It’s like having a reserved spot in our schedule.
5. Easy budgeting – A set monthly investment in design simplifies budgeting.

Let’s talk design retainers

It all starts with a conversation. We’re ready to apply our skills to your business to maximise your return on investment.

oodle is the name for all things design and creative at Systematic. We’ve been offering graphic design services for over 20 years, and grew into our new brand name in May 2023. oodle is part of the Systematic family, which has been adding value to leading UK businesses for almost 50 years. We’ve got lots of experience, and our day-job is about applying it to the success of the clients that we work with, across all sectors and sizes.

• Did the economic climate lead to your loss of creative expertise?
• Are your growth plans driving a need for more designed assets?
• Considering recruitment but lacking the time, energy, or budget?
• Need little bits of lots of different creative skills?

Whatever your situation, we’re likely to have encountered it. Let’s discuss options to elevate your design collateral and make your brand shine.

P.S. Here’s the lowdown on a design retainer in action, courtesy of our work with Hopkins Solicitors. Click here.