03 — Design Leadership
Design
Leadership
When you need a senior design voice at the table but the timing or the budget doesn't support a full-time hire. We embed as fractional design directors — setting direction, reviewing work, coaching the team, building the foundations for what comes next.
This engagement is for organisations at specific inflection points: startups who've found product-market fit and need to build a real design practice around a scrappy beginning; companies that have lost their design director and can't afford a leadership gap; mature organisations that need outside eyes to see what's become invisible from the inside.
We measure success by how little you need us over time. The engagement ends when the team is self-sufficient. That is always the goal.
What's included
- 01Design Strategy
Defining what design is for in your specific organisation — where it creates leverage, where it removes friction, and how it earns trust from the teams that don't yet know what good looks like. Not an abstract vision deck, but a working direction: concrete enough to decide from, specific enough to measure.
- 02Team Structure & Hiring
Building a design practice from the role architecture down. Where do embedded designers sit? What does the IC track look like versus the management track? How do you write a job description that attracts the right person and deters the wrong one? We shape the first few hires — the ones that define the team's DNA for years after.
- 03Process & Ways of Working
The rituals that raise quality without adding bureaucracy. Critique formats that generate insight rather than approval. Sprint rhythms that give design enough lead time to do its job. Review gates that catch problems before they become expensive. These patterns compound — small structural changes that shift how a whole team thinks about craft.
- 04Design Reviews
Regular critique sessions structured to make the work better, not just to get sign-off. We bring outside perspective, ask the questions no one inside the team is asking, and hold the work to a standard that is both fair and ambitious. Reviews that leave designers sharper, not bruised.
- 05Stakeholder Alignment
Design earns its seat at the table through outcomes and narrative, not through org-chart position. We help design leadership build the cross-functional relationships — with engineering, product, and the C-suite — that create the conditions for good work. Translating design decisions into business language. Defending quality with evidence, not opinion.
- 06Designer Mentorship
One-to-one support for designers at pivotal moments: the first management role, a difficult stakeholder relationship, a crisis of craft confidence, a decision about where to take a career. These conversations happen at specific inflection points and matter disproportionately. We've been at those moments ourselves.
04 — Start a Conversation
Most projects start with a short conversation. Tell us what you're building and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
Get in touch.