Why it’s time to rethink how your business handles design

Let’s face it, in our fast-moving marketing landscape, agility matters more than ever before. Campaigns evolve by the week, content needs shift daily (or even hourly) and opportunities come and go in an instant.

Yet for many businesses, design remains a bottleneck.

If this is ringing bells for you, it might be time to rethink how your business handles design - not by doing more outsourcing, but by building creative confidence inside your own team.

Slow Turnaround Times
When every campaign, presentation or email depends on an external agency, even small delays cause a ripple effect across your workflow.

Each of these scenarios means another email or phone call, another brief, another waiting period and sometimes, another invoice.

It’s not just that the process slows you down, it’s also the knock on effect on the momentum of your project. Enthusiasm wanes, opportunities to be relevant and reactive disappear and before you know it, your project plans are accommodating supplier’s schedules instead of your own.

The Hidden Costs (and Loss of Control) 
Outsourcing your design needs seems an obvious and efficient choice - until it isn’t. 
As well as paying for creative time for the professionals to get to grips with your project, you’re also paying for context switches, rounds of feedback, handovers and sometimes, a creative interpretation that doesn’t quite align with your vision.

Every designer brings their own style and variations to your brand and if you’re a small or medium sized business outsourcing to an agency, there’s no guarantee that the same designer is going to work on your projects each time. The result? Those small style changes to colour, layout or typography can start to erode your brand consistency,  damaging the visual cohesion you need to look credible and professional.

And when urgent changes are needed, you’re suddenly back in the queue, waiting for capacity.

The Shift From Outsourcing Dependency to In-House Empowerment
There is another way. Forward-thinking businesses are now choosing to build internal design capability - not to replace professional designers, but to give their teams the skills and confidence to create day-to-day materials themselves.

Think of it as empowering your marketing, comms and sales teams to handle the everyday visuals that keep the business moving:
• Social media posts
• Internal communications
• Presentation decks
• Simple marketing materials
• Quick-turnaround graphics

With the right training, software and support, non-designers can produce high-quality, on-brand assets without waiting days for external help.

This doesn’t just save money - it creates agility. Your team gains speed, control, and creative independence while your external partners can focus on the bigger, strategic campaigns where they add the most value.

Building Design Confidence Across Teams
So that’s exactly why we’ve created Design for Non Designers - a five-week practical training programme delivered by experienced design professionals.

We help your people understand design principles, brand consistency and the tools they need to create professional materials in-house.

In short - less waiting and more doing.
Design shouldn’t be seen as a “nice-to-have.” It’s how your brand communicates every single day - across slides, socials, pages and screens.

If your team is still waiting for every small update to come back from an agency, you’re not just losing time you’re losing opportunity. Now’s a great time to rethink your approach to design and build creative capability where it matters most: inside your own team.