things i, a design generalist, will happily tell you to hire a design agency for:

- a launch where everything ships at once. brand, site, launch video, campaign, same week. one person becomes the bottleneck. an agency runs it in parallel.

- multiple deep specialists. motion, 3D, packaging and print work, a design system at real scale. breadth is my job. that kind of depth is theirs.

- procurement. later-stage companies come with vendor onboarding, security reviews, MSAs, insurance minimums. a lot of that machinery turns a sole freelancer away by default. an agency clears it because it's built to.

- the project management layer. an agency hands you a producer whose whole job is that. if no one on your team can or have the time to direct a designer, agency is a better option.

- a famous name. sometimes you're buying the logo on the deck as much as the logo you're paying for.

for most tech startups (my usual clients), you'll hit none of these for a long time. a strong generalist designer gets you further than you'd think.

but i'll be the first to tell you when you've grown enough to move to a design agency or in-house team. yep, saying it costs me a job, but keeps the trust (which is the better trade anyway!)

things i, a design generalist, will happily tell you to hire a design agency for:

- a launch where everything ships at once. brand, site, launch video, campaign, same week. one person becomes the bottleneck. an agency runs it in parallel.

- multiple deep specialists. motion, 3D, packaging and print work, a design system at real scale. breadth is my job. that kind of depth is theirs.

- procurement. later-stage companies come with vendor onboarding, security reviews, MSAs, insurance minimums. a lot of that machinery turns a sole freelancer away by default. an agency clears it because it's built to.

- the project management layer. an agency hands you a producer whose whole job is that. if no one on your team can or have the time to direct a designer, agency is a better option.

- a famous name. sometimes you're buying the logo on the deck as much as the logo you're paying for.

for most tech startups (my usual clients), you'll hit none of these for a long time. a strong generalist designer gets you further than you'd think.

but i'll be the first to tell you when you've grown enough to move to a design agency or in-house team. yep, saying it costs me a job, but keeps the trust (which is the better trade anyway!)