Hiring a brilliant creative team or even a freelancer is never cheap, but the reason is more than justified. What you’re paying for, in fact, is an original and inspiring idea that will make your brand recognizable and will add your personal stamp to it.
Therefore, choosing the person/agency supposed to it is a challenging choice, and requires plenty of fruitful communication, understanding, and respect.
Going to the agency to discuss a layout shouldn’t be a painful experience, but something you enjoy doing. For the purpose, we gathered few interesting guidelines to help you choose a creative and productive team to visualize what your brand has to offer. At the same time, we laid out few of the best practices of most creative design agencies to help those offer advanced services:
The devil is in the details
Image source: Pulp Fingers
Don’t let any detail slide through the cracks. Everything displayed on your website will speak on your behalf. We mean… everything!
Keep communication crisp and clean in every situation, because communication is the mirror of the quality of your services and your operating manners. In fact, prospects will start judging your service from the very first moment, and you have to make the experience amazing.
Get along in every situation
Even if your list of pinpointed agencies is a long one, try to meet each team’s creative director or at least contact them online. Establishing a proper relationship matters from the very beginning, because both of you need to know how the other thinks and feels like.
If communication is good, that will become visible from the very first moment, and you will build a trustworthy relationship where you’re not afraid to share your desires or concerns.
Besides, the director is most of the time the only team member you will get to meet, so you need him to direct the other properly, and to behave as the filter between you and the executors, taking care of everything that is important.
Start working even before the contract is signed
As a creative agency, you’re not simply selling services to interested parties – you are becoming their partner. That’s why you shouldn’t wait for the contract to start in order to show them what you can do.
Start planning the introductory meeting in advance, and explain clients how you plan to execute their project, or even include a snapshot of how you think they are going to rate on the marked compared to their direct competitors.
It is not difficult to follow a brand, and to see how they manage communication, campaigns, or their identity in general, so developing constructive thoughts about the project won’t be so challenging either.
If nothing else, you will have a starting point for creative execution, and you will only improve it instead of developing a new one. Most importantly: stay authentic! That’s what clients respect the most.
Try to estimate whether the agency shares your vision
You absolutely need an agency that is going to match your working approach, or at least the essential parts of your workflow.
Try to discover how they handle pressure, tight deadlines, or how they use resources, because that will help you understand whether you’re investing your money in the right way.
Familiarize with their working habits
Image source: We are Royale
Try to narrow the choice down to only few companies that have experience in your industry. That will shorten the learning curve and will keep you safe knowing how they’ve handled similar project before.
Needless to say, you won’t be expected to give instructions all the time, unlike working with a new industry in the sector that know nothing about your line of work.
Once you’ve chosen the agencies you like, start contacting their creative directors. At this point, decision will be completely left to preferences, so go for the team you think is the most exciting to work with.
The creative agency’s website
What creative agencies do is to improve their clients’ market exposure, brand image, or revenue in general. At the same time, agencies have brands of their own that need to be well-designed to indicate positive user experience for clients and random visitors.
When it comes to their website, the one and only goal is to create one that will be pleasant and memorable for visitors. Their compulsory marketing tool is a beautiful portfolio where they attach some of their best work to attract new businesses.
Balanced portfolios
Image source: La Moulade
Landing on a reputable agency’s website would reveal a diversified client portfolio, meaning that such agencies don’t work with clients that surpass 10% of their overall revenue.
At the same time, their clients are coming from all sectors and industries, because they are governed by the principle that if one industry downturns and forces clients to do savings, the others will offset those cuts.
Simply put, they have specific performance habits and they know what they are doing. Therefore, you should try their strategy and balance your own portfolio to streamline revenue.
Usability
Usability is the cornerstone of every website. Poorly designed websites create a poor image of the agency, and they’re more likely to chase prospects away than to keep them.
Think of your agency’s website as the online brochure users are about to see. It is where you put your work and capabilities, and what you sign with your own credentials. Therefore, make it as user-friendly as you can.
First of all, you need to enable interaction. Don’t use large text walls because they are boring, intimidating, and too challenging to read. You’re not writing a newspaper, remember that!
Put users’ preferences on the top of your priority list, and adjust the text to them. Control both the looks and the size of the fonts you’re using.
Write titles and headlines that are both memorable and attractive, having in mind that you have only your humble page to provide search listing and to send users where they want to go.
At the same time, avoid advertisement-like posts, because people scan the website before reading it, and their selective attention doesn’t handle advertising that well. As soon as they think there is nothing relevant to read but persuasion to buy something, they will stop paying attention and they will leave.
The truth is that users always land on the website with a goal. You need to provide them the information they want if you wish them to stay there.
Finally, try to impress users even if you think that’s no longer possible nowadays. The wow-effect is still very strong, and it can be achieved doing simple updates or freshening campaigns and news sections.
At the same time, make sure dates are correct, and find a way to inform users that you’re upgrading your content (especially if you’re running a blog!). A website is not something you create once – it needs to be lively and maintained to keep you ahead of the game.
Team pages
Agencies were quite surprised to find out that people’s preferred section of their websites is ‘Our team’, which should not be strange considering that we always want to know who we’re working with and to establish contact.
Even with large and detailed descriptions, agencies make the mistake of writing personal info about their employees, instead of their professional expertise.
It is the destructive style of many companies nowadays: they keep the style long, but the substance short.
Examples of great agencies
8 Bis Branding
The communication agency called 8 Bis Branding specializes in courageous, idealistic, and respectful brand development.
Poco People
Kelly Eijdenberg is a full-time graphic designer in Poco People, Tasmania for over 10 years. She started working there because she had a passion for participating in an artistic community, one whose real potential she couldn’t use while working in See-Saw Illustrations and Design, and Graphic Detail.
For a while, she was a part of the communication and promotion team at Volunteering Tasmania (The University f Tasmania) and Fullers. 2010 was an interesting year for her, because she created the XYZ reading group, and was shortlisted for Australia’s Year award for Book Industry Marketing Campaigns.
Cpb group
Cpb people like to call themselves ‘culture tweakers’ because they are a very diverse rule-breaking team: a technologist, a scientist, an artist, an anthropologist, and recreational guitar players eager to look at your brand and to use numbers to improve your status and change your ID from scratch.
That’s what you get for working with engineers with snowboarding passion, philosophers, architects, problem-solvers and pop-culture nerds: there is simply nothing they can’t do!
Wieden+Kennedy
Consider visiting Wieden+Kennedy too. The organization is an independent, creative, and artistic advertising agency eager to create provocative and solid relationships between great companies and their target audiences. Their slogan is that a good idea will be successful, regardless of where, how, or when it is shared.
Studio OL
Studio OL is a high-end websites and applications development company based in Montreal.
Whiteboard
For Whiteboard, you are the visionary, and they give you the power and the tools to lead your meaningful brand even more successfully. Whiteboard started as a small team of friends in early 2010, but managed to become award-winners and an international leader in the digital industry.
Small Studio
Ever since 2007, Small Studio has been diving in the endless sea of design, carving both zeros and ones to deliver bare-hand made products to their clients.
5ème Gauche
Design, strategy, editorial/web design, integration, project management, ranking, and artistic direction. Planning, production, strategy, design, animation. Their role is to handle even the tiniest pixel on your website.
Never Bland
Never Bland is a startup studio, or basically a company in charge of building companies. They use the most advanced technologies, resources, and people to produce amazing digital solutions, both for them and for their partners.
Rally Interactive
This small, but professional team comprises of creative thinkers and technology makers, whose main task is to pursue remarkable digital ideas, and to convert them in useful products.
CreativeSpark
With more than 10 years of experience, CreativeSpark created thousands of head-spinning and eye-catching solutions for their multiple clients. Designing is not the first thing they will do for you – before everything else, they’re listeners@ They ask you what you want, and dig for information before starting to ask their questions. They want to be friends who know you well, and can therefore help you without asking for additional help.
Dotfusion
Dotfusion is a reputable digital agency whose expertise and craftsmanship can be seen on many national/international brands’ websites.
Pixel Wrapped
The Israel studio is young and small, but what is really huge about it is its love and passion for designing. They’ve been doing this job ever since 2001, and they’ve specialized in web design/development, app design, and UX.
Juicebox
Their main goal is to determine why you need a website/app, before they start discussing how it is supposed to look. Doing this, they start sharing your goals, whatever goal you might have (boosting sales, improving customer service, subverting your industry with new technology, etc.).
It helps them to measure the probability of success, which they believe is the critical thing to do for every business.
Vivas
TAG Interativa
Humaan
Their job is to craft memorable web experiences, and to help brands stay above their competitors. Their team comprises creators, explorers, makers, thinkers, and theatre singers – a serious crew when it comes to delivering outcomes and great ideas.
Demodern
Demodern the leaders of the digital sector in Germany, ever since 2008 when they started building their unique type of digital community. Their international teams include multiple specialists that collaborate on all digital solutions (apps, stores, websites and installations), and try to improve the quality of communication to the level where it will doubtlessly make an impact.
Fantasy
Their uniqueness consists in the fact that they combine design, UX, and digital strategies beyond what users expect them to do. They’re capable of handling both small and large projects, regardless of the corner of the world they are coming from.
Firstborn
Firstborn was established in 1997, being a design technology company. As time went by, Firstborn grew to a serious culture of makers and thinkers, whose final deliverable is much more than a PowerPoint presentation.
Their role is not to role of consultancy and production of somebody else’s visions, but developing individualized strategies for each client based on consumer behavior, interaction, and the characteristics of the digital space. They have a large record of successfully accomplished projects consumers love to interact with.
Big Spaceship
Big Spaceship was built with the ides to surpass competitors with speed, intelligent and efficient solutions. Behind it, there is a team of experienced strategists who like to become part of their users’ lives, making sure they know who they are, what they need, and how they can be motivated.
Their insights are slowly changing the digital game by developing unique strategies that cause radical shifts in consumer behavior. The team of UX specialists and visual designers is a highly synchronized one, which can create exciting ideas into elegant and useful solutions regardless of the business challenges present at the moment.
Droga5
Droga 5 is an independent advertising group led by creativity and strategy. Their focus is humanity, and they’re proud to be the executors of industry-leading brands’ marketing strategies and to add value to their sectors.
Huge
Their task is to create unique experiences that can cause the business to grow and people’s lives to improve. There team is divided in small groups handling huge challenges, and success is based on accurate and timely collaboration. In their work, users always come first, which is how they believed quality organizations can be recognized.
Active Theory
AREA 17
AREA 17 is a famous digital agency operating in Paris and New York. It was founded in early 2003, and it has been driven by creativity and independence ever since. The name was inspired by the brain’s visual cortex which receives sensory data, and helps recognize familiar images and patterns.
Stinkdigital
It started as a small, local company, but grew to be the giant of its time drawing almost all digital culture attention to it. According to the company, craft isn’t all about having the right skills: it is an entire informative philosophy concept where everything needs to be seen and understood properly.
Creative Brand Design
Creative Brand Design is a multi award winning London based website design agency, Creative Brand Design specialise in bespoke website design & development. They create highly animated and interactive web experiences that are immersive. Their experience spans a wide range of industry sectors, with clients based all across the world.
Mobo
Mobo is the digital agency that stands behind Cardiff online, but also provides various ingenious marketing services that can revamp every business. Their skills and capabilities are numerous, and they’re always on top of technological updates that need to be followed.
Another thing they’re famous by are up-to-date PR plans, fruitful presence on social media, and an imaginative and brave team daring to convey whatever statement ordered on their clients behalf.
Rocket Insights
Rocket Insights is a team of devoted professionals who ship user-friendly apps to growing companies and established leaders. Being on the market significantly shorter than most creative agencies (only since 2013), RI made a revolution in ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ software creation right because of working with proven professionals who are able to deliver maximal output even in the most extreme situations. In fact, there is only one team that is crafting software and leading the process – a B-team is not an option!
The favorite activity of the Rocket Insight team is crafting strong projects based on ambitious visions, unlike traditional agencies that follow the ‘outsider’ model and don’t consult their clients on any of the maters.
Ueno
Ueno is a complete digital agency offering all sorts of services in New York, San Francisco, and Reykjavik. They’re working with big names such as Cisco, Medium, Lonely Planet, Reuters, Google, Dropbox, Airbnb, Fitbit and many others. In case you haven’t found the perfect agency to design your website, going to Ueno and checking their previous work can be really helpful.
Ustwo
Ustwo has many partners, all the way from small startups to market giants (Adidas, DeepMind, Google, Sky, etc.). Their scope of work is creating digital products, but also providing businesses with professional services.
According to them, the strongest motivation to choose them should be the passion they invest into developing unique products and never stopping upgrading them, as for instance their iconic Land’s End and Monument Valley game, or the Wayfindr platform.
&yet
&yet are famous for constant upgrading too, as for instance the Talky update that took place in 2015. Another thing that makes them stand out of the crowd is the group of skilled and creative experts they call their team, and the somehow unique development of ideas based on collective passions and expectations.
Grouek
The best way to understand the progress of this company is to imagine how flash websites have evolved throughout the years, and have turned into complex installations, apps, films, and 3D experiences thanks to the development of new technology.
Nice and Serious
As the name indicates, the agency takes business seriously. Their solutions are very professional, but beautiful and creative as well.
Domain7
This is one web design studio that likes to add emotional depth to its designs, something that will definitely become the key of usable web design in future. They will become your partners and consultants which make use of your full potential to accomplish powerful ideas using transformative and advanced technology.
Muledesign
Their philosophy is that stubborn design issues can only be solved by stubborn designers, such that are absolutely committed to your mission, and understand each part of your project.
They like to call themselves stubborn, because they love what they’re dong. If you ask them, design is not only something supposed to please people visually, but also a practical solution that can help people. They’re always clear on what they’re doing, especially when it comes to calculating the value of your ideas.
CARTER
The principals of Carter, Paul Beardsell and James Noble are considered to be the leaders of their industry. They highlight beauty as being the core of pleasant user experience, and they motivate users to share their stories and their business identities using creative and visually attractive designs. As you can guess, the thing they’re best at is understanding your business, and guessing what it needs.
Legworkstudio
This Denver’s independent design studio specializes in delivering interactive experiences and animations to companies all around the world.
Ghostly Ferns
Ghostly Ferns like to call their team a family – a group of well-synchronized and brilliant New York professionals who used to work on freelance basics, but united forces to become even more professional.
Fueled
Fueled is a famous team of design masters, product whizzes, and development geniuses, all of them using his area of expertise to contribute to the quality of the final product. They understand how important it is to develop useful apps nowadays, because it is exactly apps that can bring profit to the company, or put it on top of the creativity and innovation charts.
SFCD
SFCD is providing leading brands or startups with development, UI and UX services.
Sparkbox
The Sparkbox team is a group of knowledgeable and smart professionals, who’d like to meet you and to be challenged by you.
Dogstudio
Dogstudio offers comprehensive solutions that cover the complete process between developing a digital strategy to designing and releasing amazing products. The agency comes from Belgium, where it has won multiple awards for unique and creativity. The press likes to call them ‘a bunch of perfectionists’’ who feel proud to go out of the conventional design box, and to offer new, potentially immersive design experiences.
ZURB
ZURB is on the market since early 1998, and has been the right hand assistant of many famous brands which were startups at the time. ZURB was their consultant and product trainer, and helped them create products that didn’t, and won’t stop generating tidy profits.
They are orientated towards financial success, and have established a pretty straightforward relationship between it and technological improvements, but they’ve simplified the process to the extent where even tech-savvy users can understand their business chances when investing in a particular method of digital interaction.
BAW Media
BAW media is one of the companies that can take over your project end-to-end, but can also capture and fix small details needed to return on the right path.
They understand your objectives and develop maps and strategies on how to achieve them, and they never use the same solution twice: each client deserves individual treatment and devotedness to his goals. BAW media understands it, and puts a long-term vision of tasks and results for every client.
Other relevant trends for the future development of marketing agencies
Technology is developing fast, and there are more and more marketing challenges creative agencies need to deal with.
It is no longer enough to come up with a creative idea – the agency has to understand what customers want to need, and even more importantly – to do it before competitors have taken over the power of knowledge. Knowledge decides who is going to stay on the market, and whose presence is going to fade instead.
Creative agencies’ business model for the future is the one of collaborative and hybrid enterprises: it will contain multiple small sections to involve professionals from all disciplines, and it will rely on strong connections with technology developers, best brand thinkers, and startups.
The idea of opening creative studios is considered by many content media companies which believe that their revenue will increase if they offer creative ideas to clients, instead of buying them.
Creating content
Brands often rely on their audience to enhance the content creation process, and to make it more successful and entertaining.
In fact, brands are following trends and common discussions related even to the simplest activities of their customers, and use them as tap signals and incentives to make content more consumer-oriented.
