When you bring a designer on full time, you benefit from someone who’s deeply immersed in your brand, available at a moment’s notice, and invested long term in your team’s growth. You build institutional knowledge and have immediate collaboration around the water cooler. On the flip side, the all-in cost for a senior designer in the US easily starts around $70K–$100K/yr, not to mention the cost of recruiting, onboarding, taxes, benefits, equipment, software, and management. Designers are also hard to attract and retain without access to peers and mentors, clear career advancement paths, and competitive salary and benefits.

Agencies can scale up team size quickly and bring diverse expertise to the table. However, you’re paying not just for execution but also account teams, back-office overhead, and profit margins. Often you have less direct access to the people doing the work, scopes can feel rigid, and lead times may stretch longer as work filters through multiple layers.

My retainer combines the best of both worlds. You’ll have top-level design expertise and hands-on execution for a monthly fee that typically undercuts the cost of a single full-time hire or your average agency. If a project demands specialized skills or extra bandwidth, I tap into my curated network of collaborators so you never hit a hard limit. You get direct access to the person doing the work, plus flexible scale when you need it.

Ultimately, if your priority is building an internal bench of full-time talent, a dedicated hire may be right for you. If you need expansive, multi-disciplinary services and can absorb higher fees and longer timelines, an agency will work great. But if you want senior expertise, strategic partnership, and flexible capacity, without the recruiting headaches or overhead, a retainer with me may offer the perfect middle path.

The standard monthly retainer fee is USD 5,000.

Typically included in the retainer are: Brand Strategy, brand Identity Design, Logo Design, Brand Guidelines, Social Media Branding, Social Media Templates and creatives, Slide Decks, Document Templates, Packaging Design, Stationery Design, Environmental / Signage, Digital & Print Collaterals, Web Design, Landing Pages, Digital Product Design, Wireframing, Digital & Print Ads, Brochures / Flyers / Posters, Email Templates, Branded Merch.

Development, Animation, 3D graphics, video editing, custom illustrations are typically NOT included instead. However I’m happy to recommend someone from my network or bring them in and manage them so you have a single point of contact. Just ask!

I’ll work as an extension of your team for the duration of the retainer period. I will set up our project management system or plug into the one you may already have to keep track of our to-dos and priorities. Add as many tasks to our list as you need. I’ll work on one task at a time as fast as I reasonably can, you can expect progress every 48 hours.

After the onboarding call we’ll mainly communicate asynchronously through our project management system and email. This allows us to keep track of our conversations and decisions while safeguarding our schedules and productivity. I’m also generally available to jump on the occasional call for strategic conversations or friendly catch ups.

You can decide not to renew the retainer at any time, no questions asked. I will consider our contract terminated if the following monthly retainer fee is not paid in advance. I will continue working on our remaining tasks until the end of the paid retainer period.

Book a 15 minutes intro call or send me an email at hi@felicedellagatta.com to get started. We’ll make sure we’re a great fit, schedule your project, and sign a contract. Once the deposit is paid, we’re ready to go.