Design-led shops win the brief on craft and creative direction. AgencyRelay slots underneath as the engineering, AI, and ongoing-support layer — without changing who owns the design relationship with the client.
These are the four moments most design-led agencies hit at least twice a year. AgencyRelay is built for exactly these — without you having to put a full engineering team on payroll to absorb them.
Strategy, comps, and creative direction are tight. The number that has to go next to the engineering scope is the one that keeps moving — and the deal slows down while you triangulate it.
The Figma file is approved, the prototype is signed off, and then the build keeps slipping — because the developer your team usually pulls in is overloaded, junior on the stack, or both.
An existing client wants the designed flow turned into a mobile app, a CMS-driven system, or an AI-assisted feature. Saying no costs the relationship; saying yes costs more than your current setup can carry.
Accessibility, performance, responsive edge cases, and post-launch fixes are quietly eating senior design time that should be on the next pitch — not on production triage.
Most design agencies start in Invisible Delivery Team, then extend into Proposal Rescue Desk for big proposals and Capability Expansion when a client asks for a service line you don't ship yet.
Engineering, AI, and ongoing-support pods that ship under your brand on your stack. The design relationship stays with you — we sit behind it as the build layer.
A per-cycle technical pre-sales partner for the larger build engagements. Solution direction, scope assumptions, and an estimate range your account lead can defend on the call.
Carry an entire service line — app, AI, custom CMS — under your brand without building each specialty in-house first. A named capability lead, paired with the delivery layer behind it.
Short-cycle burst capacity for the quarter where three projects landed in the same week. Right-size the pod, run for one to four weeks, hand back the work.
These three carry the bulk of design-agency engagements. The full bench is broader — see the capability hub for AI, QA, support, and backend depth.
Senior product designers shaping interaction and information architecture inside your existing Figma + Notion + Loom workflow.
Production builds on Next.js, Astro, or your house framework — with performance, accessibility, and SEO baselines built in.
Native iOS, native Android, and cross-platform React Native — with the release engineering that turns builds into shipped apps.
Most design-agency engagements settle into a weekly cadence by week three. The first two weeks are deliberately slow — we'd rather get the boundaries right than ship fast and have to renegotiate later.
60 minutes with the founder. We pull apart the agency model, the bench you have in-house, and the kind of work AgencyRelay would carry. Mutual NDA before any client-specific brief is shared.
One MSA with Salt Technologies, Inc. covers the relationship. The first SOW scopes a single engagement — usually one Invisible Delivery Team pod or one Proposal Rescue Desk cycle.
Named delivery lead, named designer or developer pair, your tooling, your repo, your project channel. Communication boundaries are agreed in writing before the first ticket moves.
Weekly check-ins with the delivery lead, founder review at agreed cadence, the same people on the engagement month-on-month. Capacity flexes up or down by SOW amendment, not by negotiation.
The most common shape for a design agency is one Invisible Delivery Team pod plus a Proposal Rescue Desk cycle on the larger bids. Both prices are public on the pricing page; the SOW is sized to the actual engagement.
Every engagement is contracted through Salt Technologies, Inc. The same operating principles apply across solutions and across the relationship.
We don't email your client, join their calls, or appear in the proposal — unless you explicitly white-list us in the SOW.
We don't approach your team and we don't accept introductions to your client off the back of an engagement.
Original design IP, components, and systems we co-build inside your engagement transfer to you on payment, per the SOW.
MSA, NDA, and SOWs are issued by Salt Technologies, Inc. — a 13+ year delivery company and the legal entity behind AgencyRelay.
The same operating principles apply across every solution and every engagement — including the long-arc Invisible Delivery Team relationships most design agencies start with.
Operational resources written for the same situations design agencies face — pre-sales scoping, technical proposal writing, and selling more technical projects.
The internal playbook for triaging a wobbly proposal — what to ask, what to flag, how to defend the technical estimate at the bid stage.
A reusable structure for the technical section of a design-agency proposal — assumptions, risks, architecture, estimate range.
Why technical proposals lose late, and the moves design-led founders use to make the engineering scope defensible at the bid stage.
Direct answers to the questions that come up on almost every first call with a design-led agency.
Not by default. Every engagement is white-label safe — we sit behind your team and the client only sees your brand. If you want a named technical lead joining a client call, we can do that, but it has to be explicitly white-listed in the SOW.
No. Design ownership stays on your side. AgencyRelay carries the engineering, AI, and ongoing-support layer underneath. The design relationship, the creative direction, and the client trust all stay with your agency.
Yes. Most design-agency pods are mixed — one engineer, one production designer, one delivery lead. Pure design pods are also available for production polish, accessibility, or design-system extension work when the build is happening elsewhere.
Original IP transfers to you on payment, per the SOW. We don't reuse client-specific design components in other engagements, and we don't claim portfolio rights without written sign-off.
The Solo Specialist pod inside Invisible Delivery Team starts on a weekly basis with no minimum number of weeks. Proposal Rescue Desk is per-cycle. Overflow Pods are sized one to four weeks. Capability Expansion is a monthly retainer when you're ready to add a new service line.
Once the partner call is done and the first SOW is signed, a Solo Specialist pod typically starts within 5–7 business days. Proposal Rescue Desk cycles can begin within 48 hours of NDA when there's a hard client deadline.
No. AgencyRelay is the engineering and AI layer underneath the design — most of our design-agency clients have an in-house design team and use us specifically so the design team can stay on creative work instead of production triage.
Mutual NDA before any client-specific brief is shared. Founder-led on every engagement. A clean read on whether the work is a fit — and which solution fits best — within the first call.
