Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits of a design subscription?
A design subscription is the perfect way to supplement your in-house team's skills, handle overflow work when you're busy, or lead design for your startup until you're ready for your first full-time hire.
The greatest benefit of Super Pixels membership is flexibility:
You can quickly access a top-tier designer: when you need it most, without having to invest time and money in a hiring process.
Our async, direct process is perfect for busy entrepreneurs and managers – you can get work done easily without the hassle of meetings, quoting or scheduling.
It fits great when you need regular design work, but don't always have enough work to justify hiring a full-time designer, or are too busy to constantly manage their workload.
What are the alternatives?
You could hire a designer.
However, a full-time senior-level designer's salary is usally over $100k. It is hard to find the best ones (they're either employed, or fully booked) and it takes time to run the hiring process and get someone on board.
You could hire a regular design agency.
The good ones are either booked up well in advance or don't want to take on smaller jobs, and are expensive.
You're often paying a premium to cover their overheads, whilst the actual work is done by a less experienced designer.
You'll be tied in to a fixed contract and scope of work and have to negotiate any changes to that.
We think there's a better way!
What are the drawbacks?
Super Pixels is definitely not for everyone!
You're sharing access to a designer's to-do list – which is why we're cheaper than a full-time designer, and more flexible than a regular agency – but this means we are not suited to every project.
If you are working on a large, intensive project with a tight deadline, then you probably need someone working on it all day, every day: hiring would be the better option.
What happens when I sign up?
We'll set up your Design Board, so you can start adding tasks right away. We include some guidance and templates on how to create a good brief for your task, so we can get straight into productive work.
We'll also book an intro call (if we haven't already had one) to get to know more about you, your business, and your design needs.
We think it's great to talk in realtime every so often – to put a friendly face to a name, and gather your unique insights that will help us deliver more value.
How does the queue-based system work?
Your Design Board has four columns: Drafts, To Do, Active, and Done.
You can use Drafts to add notes, upload assets and work on your design brief with your team.
When a task is fully-formed, you can move it over to To Do, which acts as your backlog of tasks.
We'll review your task to make sure we fully understand it, and have all the resources we need, then mark it as 'ready'.
Now, you can add one single 'ready' task to the Active column – this means you want us to work on this task next.
When you mark your task as Active, it goes into a combined queue of tasks across all of our clients. We work on them one by one, in order of the date/time they were marked as Active.
Each client can only have one active task, and we maintain a sensibly-sized client roster, so this combined queue can never get too large for us to handle.
Once we've completed your task, we'll move it to the Done column on your Design Board, add some notes to explain our work, and upload the design files so you have everything you need.
There's now a free slot in your Active column! Whenever you're ready to start your next task, just slide it over and the cycle begins again.
What counts as a single task?
A design task is roughly defined as 'a single view' of design.
So for example – if we're working on designs for a new website, each page would be a separate task.
If we're working on something more complex – like a web app product design – we may work more iteratively: starting with wireframes first, allowing you time to review them with your team, followed by the UI design for each page.
We review all tasks added to your board before they're ready to work on, so we'll recommend splitting up tasks in the way that makes them as productive as possible.
How quickly will you complete my tasks?
On average, it takes a few days between moving a task to the Active column on your Design Board and the task being completed.
It depends on the size of your task and the size of our combined queue at any given time – if the queue is empty, or your task is small, you might receive your designs back even sooner.
Sometimes if the queue is full, or your task is more complex, it might take a little longer – but our client roster limit is designed so we can deliver on every client's task within a week maximum.
Who will I be working with?
Super Pixels is led by Mike Harmer – a digital designer with over 15 years of experience working with startups, big brands, and everything in between.
All tasks are either worked on directly by Mike, or overseen by him using a trusted network of top-tier senior designers.
Mike works productively with your whole team – happy to have high level conversations about your business goals, understand the needs of your marketing team, and talk in technical detail with your developers.
What tools do you use?
We use Notion to power your Design Board, making it easy to add your tasks and collaborate – both with us, and with your own team – in one dedicated place.
Most designs are created using Figma, and we can share access to our projects to make it easy for you to work with.
What if I no longer need your design services?
Super Pixels is designed to be a flexible service – if you don't need any design work right now, you can either:
Pause your subscription – we'll stop working on any active tasks, but keep your Design Board active so you can come back to your drafts later: you can resume your subscription any time you like to use up your remaining credit.
Cancel your subscription – if you know you won't need our services any longer,we'll stop working on any active tasks, delete your Design Board and any other data we hold.
What if I don't like the design you create?
No worries. We understand that design is very subjective – if we haven't nailed it first time, then you can simply add a new task to the queue to make revisions... as many times as you like!
We try to be proactive during the Drafts stage to help you give us a great brief and all the details we need to hit your goals.
If you really don't like our design work, then...
What is your refund policy?
We offer a First Task Guarantee to new customers:
If you don't like our service after we complete your first design task, you can get a full refund on your subscription.
This refund is only available until you set your next active task on your Design Board. After that, no refunds are available – but you can pause or cancel your subscription at any time as detailed above.