When a business decides it needs better design, the next question is usually the hardest one: how do you actually get it?
Hiring in-house means salary costs, recruitment time, and a headcount that has to be justified when budgets tighten. Working with agencies means proposals, project fees, and timelines that rarely move as fast as the business needs them to. Freelancers offer flexibility, but not reliability — and managing several of them across different types of work quickly becomes a job in itself.
Design as a Service was built as a direct answer to that question. The Danish company offers unlimited design work — presentations, social media, UI and UX, video, motion graphics, email templates, advertising materials, and more — for a single monthly fee of €1,295. No contracts. No variable billing. Tasks delivered within 24 to 48 hours, with unlimited revisions included.
The model was developed by Obsidian, a Copenhagen agency that built a full creative team for its own operations and eventually opened the service to external clients. The transition was driven by a simple observation: the problem its team was solving internally was the same one hundreds of other companies were struggling with.
"Companies often felt trapped between two bad choices," says Christoffer Sandau, Product Lead at Design as a Service. "Either they paid too much for slow agencies, or they took a chance on freelancers and crossed their fingers. There was no predictable, professional middle ground."
The service is now active in five European markets: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Slovenia. The expansion has been driven by demand rather than a structured international rollout — clients in each country found the model and signed up, largely on the recommendation of others who had already made the switch.
The financial logic tends to resonate quickly with anyone who has priced out the alternatives. A full-time senior designer in most European markets costs several times the monthly subscription rate in base salary alone. Agency retainers for comparable creative output are typically similar or higher.
"Design should just be there when you need it," says Sandau. "Whatever shape that need takes."
For the growing number of businesses that have experienced exactly that — design being there, reliably, when they need it — the model appears to be working.
Read more at getdesignasaservice.com.