About [a] design agency

[a] design agency is the trading name of Stewart Ainslie, a consultant living in Scotland, UK.

Since 2015, we’ve been consulting and delivering design-led work for UK-based organisations.

We tend to work on large projects for small organisations or project-based work for big organisations. We’re most comfortable when doing things for the first time (ambitious briefs preferred).

Associates

How we work with best-in-class designers, creatives and makers.

Associates

Process

What you can expect when we work with you. From brief to delivery.

Process

Services

Skills we can apply for you. (Things we’ve done before that left us wanting more.)

Services

Credentials

The people we’ve helped and some nice things they said about us since then.

Credentials

Structure

[a] company of one… and other ones.

Every project deserves an [a] team.

We deliver art direction, branding consultancy and design projects through collaboration.

Every project has one senior creative lead.

That person is Stewart Ainslie.

We hand pick the best independent talent out there. Including individuals, agencies and selected freelance teams.

We build teams of associates around your requirements as opposed to selling you outputs based on the strength of a core staff.

The agent in agency

One project lead operating an associates model to scale to your specific needs.

Associates

  • [a] "business that represents one group of people when dealing with another group:

    an advertising/employment/estate/travel agency"

    [src: dictionary.cambridge.org]

  • Unlike an agent, we don't just connect you with a freelancer. Unlike an agency, you'll always work with Stew on every stage of your brief through to delivery.

    [a] is one agent, Stewart Ainslie, and the creative folks he works with. We'll talk about 'I vs we' elsewhere.

As a company of one, ‘an agent and affiliates’ might be more accurate than an ‘agency’.

Neither term quite sits right.

Anyway, a-design-agent-and-affiliates.com‍ ‍
wasn’t an available web extension in 2015.

Our ‘Why’

[a] exists because creativity is good for people and good for business.

We believe that the best relationships value independence and freedom.

Marketing and design can be seen as a necessary evil. We all communicate, though, and communication isn’t a necessary evil...

The act of branding (including activities like copywriting, marketing and design) helps align communications across companies and movements. Communicating well can provide an individual or organisation with an unfair advantage.

That’s why we attract an ever growing roster of independent creative and strategic people.

The work we create benefits from the results of freedom of thought and freedom of choice.

Services

Art direction • Branding • Consulting • Design