What does a design agency of the future look like?

With the rate of technological change in recent years, it’s one of the most exciting times to be in business if your offer doesn’t rely on location. You can do business like we do from London with anyone, anywhere in the world and that is an incredible thing.

So many sectors are being revolutionised by re-inventing what has gone before and that is no different as an agency. We believe bespoke, creative teams are what a design agency of the future looks like.

Take a Hollywood film for example of where this works exceptionally well. A team is carefully selected to produce a blockbuster in certain locations around the world, the film is delivered and the team disband and work on their next opportunity.

It’s likely if they worked amazingly well together, they will collaborate again in the future and produce more great work.

The list of top design agencies with a team of less than ten are producing some of the most creative and compelling work as well as working with some of the biggest brands in the world. Size or location is no longer a barrier to entry.

Businesses and brands are realising using a larger agency doesn’t automatically mean the best or most creative result. We talked in another article about how scientific studies show smaller teams are more effective as the disruption level goes up the more people you add to a project.

The more lines of communication, the more gets lost in translation.

We are based in London as it’s internationally renowned for design and there are no shortage of opportunities for new business here. In almost every case, we love to meet our clients who also tend to be London based. Even if they are UK based, it’s very easy to jump on a train.

For the first time, we recently finished a project that spanned three countries and four locations and due to the issue of distance, regular updates and open communication was essential. You could argue we over-compensated because of it and this built one of the most personal relationships we have had with a client to date. Our branding agency serves Dubai and took on many projects in the Middle East.

For some clients this level of commitment of regular meetings is too much but it was of the key reasons the project was a huge success and stayed on time and on budget. This was a testament to how seriously they took their business and it’s this kind of passion we love to see in business owners. Any issues or design decisions were addressed quickly and efficiently before they could creep in the wrong direction. And they didn’t.

No matter where our clients are located--they are always happy with the engagement.

Big agencies will always have their place to deliver large scale projects that need a lot of manpower to execute but this will never be the measure of quality or creative output.

With the appeal of more and more people working in a flexible capacity who can reap the financial rewards and experience more creative control and enjoyment from their work, this trend is only going to get bigger. Agencies with a more agile model will prevail as they will easily adapt to changes in the market.

Businesses and brands budgets are getting squeezed and this new fluid model looks to provide maximum value in terms of creative output over a big fancy office and the overheads attached to it.

So. If you have to consider choosing a new design agency after some brand auditing, you have a big decision to make. We recommend you think small…