One brand.
On every surface.
Same voice.
Most teams ship 30-50 small creative assets per quarter, ad variants, sales decks, event posters, ABM kits, motion cuts. Each one is a chance to look on-brand or off. Our retainer holds the system type, color, grid, motion, voice, across every surface, brief in, ship-ready out.
Brand consistency at scale isn’t a willpower problem, it’s an infrastructure problem. A real brand OS lives in Figma as tokens, not in a PDF nobody opens. We just decided to run it as infrastructure, and ship 30 assets a quarter that all read like one company.
Most studios ship assets.
We ship the brand OS.
That difference is the entire pitch.
On-brand. On deadline.
An atelier desk, a leather brand book opening to a type specimen, then a full brand system, type, color, posters, business cards, print proofs, arrayed as one museum-mounted OS.
Four benches. One brand OS.
System, static, motion, print. Each bench owns one slice of the brand. They share the same tokens, the same grid, the same voice, so an investor deck and an Instagram Reel read like the same company.
the.studio- Bench 01
Brand system
Most brand books are PDFs nobody opens. We run yours as living infrastructure, type specimens, color tokens, grid rules, motion language, voice rules, wired into Figma, codified per surface, version-controlled. Every asset downstream is consistent because the system upstream is a system, not a Pinterest board.
- Bench 02
Static creative
Ad units, one-pagers, conference posters, investor decks, webinar art, ABM kits, social cards, banner ads, email headers, sales collateral. All from one design OS, typeset to system, photographed to system, gridded to system. Brief Monday, ship Wednesday, on a different surface every week.
- Bench 03
Motion creative
Looping social cuts, animated ad units, kinetic-type webinar bumpers, demo overlays, Lottie product walk-throughs, hero-video frames. Motion designed to live alongside the static system, same type, same color tokens, same grid, so the brand reads as one thing, not a folder of vendor outputs.
- Bench 04
Print + event
Conference booth, trade-show banners, event posters, wayfinding, name badges, swag, perfect-bound reports, ABM print kits. The physical end of the brand system, printed on the right paper, in the right ink, at the right size, with the same typesetting discipline as everything else you ship.
Six layers. One coherent system.
Every asset that ships is the surface output of six underlying layers. Get the layers right and the surfaces hold up across years; get them sloppy and every new vendor introduces a new dialect of your brand.
- /01
Type system
Inter Tight + Instrument Serif · per-surface scale · spec'd letter-spacing.
- /02
Color tokens
Obsidian / ivory / signal-lime · semantic tokens, never raw hex in components.
- /03
Grid + spacing
8-pt baseline · per-surface column system · ruler-locked margins.
- /04
Motion language
Easing curves · timing constants · entrance / exit / loop primitives.
- /05
Image system
Photo direction · illustration system · iconography rules · alt-text discipline.
- /06
Voice rules
Tone, length, italic-pull conventions, line-break opinions, copy reads on-brand.
qa · 5 checksFive checks. Zero off-brand.
Every asset clears five checks before it leaves the studio. System, surface fit, accessibility, copy, final proof. No file ships without a senior designer’s signature on the print proof or the motion frame review.
- /01
Brand-system check
Type, color, grid, spacing, motion timing, all checked against the system tokens before the asset leaves the bench.
- /02
Surface fit
Asset specs verified per surface, Meta feed, IG Reels, LinkedIn doc, US-Letter print, projected deck, retina export.
- /03
Accessibility
Contrast ratios held above WCAG AA, alt-text written, motion respects reduced-motion preferences, type sizes hit minimums.
- /04
Copy + voice review
Editor signs off the words, not just the layout. Italic-pull, line breaks, capitalization, all on system, never autopilot.
- /05
Final proof
Senior designer signs the file. Print proofs go to a physical proof. Motion gets a frame-by-frame review. No hand-off without signature.
Five days. One asset shipped, on system.
- MON
Brief
Brief intake, surface scoped, deadline locked, brand-system tokens pulled, all by 11am.
- TUE
Draft
First-pass design shipped to staging by EOD. Senior review queued for first thing Wednesday.
- WED
Iterate
Senior + brand review, copy refinement, surface-fit checks. Up to two revision rounds before lock.
- THU
QA bench
Brand-system check, accessibility audit, surface-spec validation, copy sign-off, five-stage gate.
- FRI
Ship
Production files exported per surface, linked in Figma, dropped in your asset library, briefed for handoff.
Anyone can ship a poster. We hold the system, across thirty assets a quarter, ten surfaces, and a brand that has to read as one thing.
Type-spec discipline, color-token hygiene, grid review, motion timing, the unglamorous work that lets a webinar bumper, a conference booth, and a LinkedIn ad all speak in the same voice.
What the studio actually returns.
- /0124-72hturnaround per asset, brief in, ship-ready out
- /0210+surfaces unified under one living brand OS
- /03Unlimitedrevisions inside the retainer, until it's right
- /04Onevendor, one voice, no Fiverr coordination tax
- /055-stageQA gate every asset clears before it ships
- /06Livingbrand system in Figma, not a PDF nobody opens
Every retainer, scoped & shipped.
Fixed scope per retainer. Brand system, ad creative, sales collateral, event assets, editorial, web/product, asset library, all from one design OS, all shipping through the same five-stage QA gate.
- 01
Brand system audit + build
Type, color, grid, motion, voice, codified in Figma, wired to your design tokens, kept living.
- 02
Ad creative (static + motion)
Per-platform variants for Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, programmatic, refreshed weekly.
- 03
Sales & marketing collateral
Decks, one-pagers, case studies, sales sheets, pitch deck, email headers, on system.
- 04
Event + conference assets
Booth, banners, posters, badges, swag, signage, wayfinding, production-ready files per vendor.
- 05
Editorial + report design
Long-form reports, bound publications, executive briefings, typeset to print discipline.
- 06
Web + product collateral
Marketing-site components, dashboard moments, product UI flourishes that match the brand OS.
- 07
Asset library + ops
Figma library, exports per surface, naming conventions, version control, your team can self-serve.
Boring tools. Sharp output.
We’re tool-agnostic, the system holds the discipline, not the software. The stack is selected to be the one your team can self-serve from after the retainer ends.
- Brand OSFigma · component lib · design tokens · variants
- Static creativeFigma · Photoshop · Illustrator · spec sheets
- MotionAfter Effects · Lottie · Rive · Cavalry
- Print + eventInDesign · printer-spec PDFs · proof workflow
- Editorial + webWebflow · Framer · CSS-token export pipeline
- Ops + handoffFigma library · Notion brief desk · asset CDN
What buyers ask on the second call.
- 01
Why a retainer instead of project-based?
- Most marketing teams need 30-50 small creative assets per quarter, ad variants, sales-deck updates, event posters, social art, ABM kits. Project-based pricing punishes you for that, every asset is a new SOW, a new brief, a new round of vendor onboarding. A retainer gets you the on-call studio with the speed (24-72h turnaround) and the consistency (one team holding the brand), at roughly 60% of the per-asset cost of project work.
- 02
What's actually in the retainer?
- An always-on creative team, designers, motion, copy, and brand systems, running through your queue with named SLAs (24h for ad iterations, 48h for sales collateral, 72h for new assets, 5 days for full campaigns). Unlimited revisions inside the retainer. The Figma library lives with you. Senior creative direction held by us across every output. Cancel any month with 30 days' notice.
- 03
Will it look on-brand or generic?
- Brand consistency is the entire reason a creative retainer is worth more than a freelance pool. We start with a brand-system audit + build, type, color, grid, motion, voice, codified in Figma as living tokens. Every asset downstream comes from those tokens. After month two you'll find your brand reads as one thing across surfaces it never did before, because the system upstream is finally a system.
- 04
Can you work alongside our in-house team?
- Yes, and it's where the model works best. Most in-house teams are stretched on the 'marquee work' (campaign launches, brand evolution) and lose hours to the long tail (ad iterations, sales requests, event one-offs). We run the long tail, on system, while your team focuses on the strategic work. Your designers stop being a Figma support desk; we stop being a vendor your team has to retrain every project.
- 05
How do you handle motion + video?
- Motion is a first-class citizen. We design motion alongside static, same type, same color tokens, same easing curves, so a brand reads as one thing across surfaces. For full-cinematic film and the 8-second product trailer, our video-pipeline service handles the heavy production. For social-cut motion, ad units, kinetic-type webinar bumpers, demo overlays, and Lottie web animations, the design retainer covers it directly.
One brand.
One system.
Every surface.
Week 1: brand-system audit + Figma library stand-up. Week 2: queue intake, naming conventions, surface specs locked. From week 3: 24-72h turnaround on every asset, weekly creative cadence, monthly system review.
Pairs well with.
We’re direct about how we work.
Still something missing? Email hello@markingo.io. You’ll hear back within a business day.
Somewhere sharper. Think of us as your embedded growth team. You get the senior velocity of a well-run in-house function, without having to hire 9 specialists. We live in your Slack, your Linear, your calendar.
Want a single design ticket as a proof?
Send the brief. Brand-locked first draft back inside 72 hours, on us.
Ready to compound?
A 30-minute intro. No deck. We’ll ask three questions, diagnose the biggest growth lever on your desk, and tell you if we’re the right people to run it.