Design Cloud

A monthly subscription that puts a working designer at a business's disposal is what Design Cloud offers. The UK service gives marketing teams, enterprise teams and agencies access to experienced in-house graphic designers based in the country, with a head office in central Manchester, and describes itself as a way to avoid both hiring staff and juggling freelancers.

How the subscription works

The process is described in four steps. A new client books or watches a demo, picks a plan and signs up online, then gets access to the platform straight away. After the first request is submitted, a designer is assigned, and the company says this can happen in under a business day. Requests are sent through the platform, and finished work comes back every business day. The platform handles briefs, revisions and communication in one dashboard that also works on a mobile device.

Plans are tiered by the complexity of the work needed. The company says all plans include unlimited requests and unlimited revisions, and that a client can add designers when busy and scale back when it is quiet. It describes the arrangement as a flat monthly fee with no long-term contracts, so there is no recruitment, interviewing or IR35 question for the client to deal with.

What the designers produce

The list of design types is long. Its site names infographic design for charts, timelines and process diagrams, and editorial design for magazines and features. Presentation work covers investor packs, sales slides, webinars, reports and decks. Print and promotional work includes flyers, banners, stationery and handouts, while email design covers headers, body content and mobile-optimised blocks.

Digital advertising covers web banners, MPUs, Instagram ads and Google display creatives, and social media design covers carousels, posts, stories and thumbnails. Motion graphics and animation produce titles, product animations and lower thirds, with social video editing for reels, shorts and captions. The service extends to packaging, brand identity, brand collateral, web app, e-commerce, mobile app and website design.

Who it is built for

The company says its mission is to give every business access to professional graphic design at a predictable cost. It reports that it is used by more than 800 marketing teams and global brands, and it presents itself as particularly useful to agencies that want to scale their creative capacity without taking on staff. Support is provided by a UK-based customer team, and the company also publishes customer success stories and guides on graphic design and marketing.