A Design as a Service subscription from TDS operates as a seamless extension of your in-house creative team — handling overflow production, specialist disciplines, and campaign surge periods without the cost or delay of another hire. Businesses using TDS to augment their in-house team eliminate creative backlogs within 30 days and unlock disciplines their team previously couldn't cover.
In-house creative teams are almost always under-resourced relative to the demand placed on them. A two-person design team supporting a 20-person marketing function is not uncommon — and the backlog that accumulates is a constant source of friction between marketing and creative.
The backlog problem compounds in two ways. First, volume: the number of requests coming in exceeds what the team can produce, so work is delayed, de-prioritised, or done at a lower standard to keep pace. Second, capability: in-house teams are usually hired for core disciplines but are expected to produce across video, motion, web, presentation, and specialist formats they were never resourced to cover.
The reflex response is to hire — but another full-time designer takes 6–12 weeks to recruit, costs $80,000–$110,000 per year, and still only adds one generalist to a team that may need five specialists. Freelancers bridge gaps but create inconsistency, briefing overhead, and availability risk. The in-house team ends up spending significant time managing external resources rather than producing creative work.
What most in-house teams need is not another permanent hire — it's a flexible, always-on extension that scales with demand, covers specialist disciplines, and integrates seamlessly into the existing workflow.
TDS integrates directly into your in-house team's workflow — acting as an always-on extension that handles whatever your team can't get to, or can't do.
When your in-house queue is full, TDS absorbs the overflow. Standard requests are delivered within 48 hours — your marketing team never waits, and your in-house designers are never overwhelmed.
Motion graphics, video editing, web design, packaging, and 3D — disciplines your in-house team may not cover are available immediately through TDS, with no specialist hiring required.
Product launches, seasonal campaigns, and major events create predictable spikes in creative demand. TDS scales up to meet those peaks without the need to hire temporary contractors or rush freelancers.
TDS works within your existing tools — Slack for briefing, Figma for design, your existing file structures for delivery. Your team briefs TDS exactly as they'd brief an internal designer.
TDS operates within your existing brand guidelines and design system. Output from TDS is indistinguishable from in-house work — same standards, same components, same voice.
All TDS output goes through Creative Director review before delivery. Your in-house Creative Director or Head of Design doesn't need to QA TDS work — TDS QAs itself.
Teams that augment with TDS typically clear their design backlog within the first month and permanently increase their effective creative capacity.
The less obvious benefit is what happens to your in-house team. When production overflow is handled by TDS, your internal designers shift from reactive production work to higher-value strategic and conceptual work. Creative Directors stop being production bottlenecks and start being creative leaders. The team dynamic improves when the backlog disappears.
Every in-house team is different. These are the three most common patterns for how teams integrate TDS into their existing workflow.
In-house team handles all strategic and brand work. TDS handles all production overflow — social assets, ad variants, presentation updates, and templated collateral. In-house designers stay focused on high-value work; TDS absorbs the volume.
In-house team covers core brand and print disciplines. TDS covers specialist work the team doesn't have — video production, motion graphics, web design, UX, and emerging format work. TDS functions as an on-demand specialist studio.
In-house team manages day-to-day creative. TDS activates for campaign periods — product launches, seasonal pushes, and major events — providing the surge capacity needed to execute at scale without any permanent hiring.
Integrating TDS with your in-house team takes three steps. Most teams are fully operational within one week of their first call.
In a 30-minute call with a TDS strategist, identify where your in-house team is most constrained — volume overflow, specialist disciplines, or campaign surge capacity. We'll design a TDS engagement model that targets exactly those gaps.
TDS's 5-day brand immersion ingests your existing guidelines, Figma files, component libraries, and production standards. By the end of onboarding, TDS produces work that is consistent with your in-house output — no style drift, no brand interpretation.
TDS is added to your Slack workspace as a dedicated channel. Your in-house team starts briefing TDS directly — overflow tasks, specialist requests, and campaign work flows to TDS while your internal designers focus on the work only they can do.
Book a no-obligation capacity mapping call. We'll identify where your team is most constrained and show you exactly how TDS fills those gaps — starting within the week.