The Benefits of Working with a Designer on a Retainer

Designers charge for their services in several ways. Some will offer hourly rates or a set cost for a project, while others work on retainer.

What is a design retainer?

A graphic design retainer is a contract or agreement between you and your designer. It’s perfect if you need regular design work completing, rather than a one-off project.

By working with a retainer, you pay a set price on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis to reserve time in your designer’s schedule – which can get filled up pretty fast. When you’ve got work for them, space is readily available.

What’s included in a retainer?

You can include pretty much anything in your retainer: Monthly social media graphics, quarterly leaflets, the list goes on.

It’s a good idea to sit down and plan potential projects for the year. What types of graphics are you going to need? Is there other marketing materials or website graphics you’re interested in?
From this, you can gauge how much time you need your designer to reserve, and how often.

What are the benefits of a graphic design retainer?

Obviously, the benefit of a retainer for the designer is the guaranteed income or work. But what are the benefits for your business?

A smoother working relationship

By using the same designer for each project, you know your work is in good hands. If you have a marketing retainer with a single designer, the first few projects might take a few revisions to get perfect, while they get to grips with your style and business. After that, it’s plain-sailing: Unlike using a different designer every time, your designer will know exactly what they need to do as soon as the work comes through.

Consistent Quality

The designer already knows what you expect, so will create a consistent style throughout every project. By using different designers every time - even if you have a strong brand guideline to send over - you risk having varying qualities of work.

If you’re working with a retained designer to create your brand identity, you can ensure that every part of it will fall into place to create one larger picture. Outsourcing designers for separate segments, might lead to mis-matched designs that don’t portray the right message.

Skip the Queue

With a marketing retainer, you’ll be a VIP in the schedule. Instead of trying to get your project in months before the deadline – just so the designer can fit it into their schedule – you'll have a designated slot already in place.

Easier Budget Planning

If you hate bookkeeping, you’ll love the ease of a graphic design retainer. You’ll have a set price to pay each month. It’s consistent, predictable and easy to manage. Budgeting for each project is a lot of guess work.

There’s also much less paperwork. There are no random invoices for each piece of work, everything is in a single, regular invoice that covers everything.

As you can see, there’s a huge number of benefits for working on retainer. Find out how Bodhi-Design can work with you by contacting us here.

 Do you require a design retainer? Give us a call or drop us an email