Answers before the first call.
Cost and timeline live on the process page. Agency rates and terms live on the partner page. Everything else is here, including the questions you may feel awkward asking us directly.
The short answers
The practice
- Who does the workTom leads and does the design. Specialists—illustration, photography, engineering—are brought in by name when a project needs them.
- DisciplinesProduct design and design systems, brand identity and graphic design, interior and environmental design.
- DevelopmentFront‑end built in house, with trusted development partners for full builds.
Working with us
- BasedChicago, working locally and nationwide. Mostly remote, in person for interiors, spatial planning, and workshops.
- AvailabilityA small number of engagements at a time. Ask and we’ll tell you what the calendar looks like.
- Agencies & studiosYes, and a large share of the work. White‑label, with rates and terms published rather than negotiated by email.
Fit
- Best fitSomething already running, with real users, real revenue, and a team mid‑flight.
- Poor fitA look with no product under it yet or a distinctive decision that has to clear a committee before it survives.
- Turned down outrightFour setups where the work reaches the world degraded, whoever takes it, listed with the reasons.
Services & scope
What design services do you offer?
Three practices: product design and design systems, brand identity and graphic design, and interior and environmental design. In practice that runs from tokens and component libraries through e‑commerce and product UX out to signage and wayfinding. What ties them together is the situation rather than the medium: the thing already exists, people depend on it, and it has to keep working while we change it.
Do you work with both digital and physical design?
Yes, and even in the same engagement. Designing the two together costs less than reconciling them afterward, which is what most companies end up paying for without ever seeing it as a line item. A palette that was only ever checked on a screen fails the first time it gets printed or painted. A wayfinding system nobody mapped back to the site sends people to a page that doesn’t exist.
Do you offer development as well as design?
Yes. We build front‑end and we work with trusted development partners on full builds. It matters more than it sounds: the gap between an approved design and the thing that ships is where most of a project’s quality quietly goes, and being able to open the code is what narrows it. It also changes what gets drawn in the first place because the cost of an idea is more visible while it’s still an idea.
What is a design system, and do I need one?
A design system is a reusable set of components, patterns and rules that holds a product and a brand together as more people encounter them across different touchpoints. The test is how many hands are on the thing rather than how big the company is. For example, three teams shipping into one surface or one brand being applied by multiple agencies and partners is where a system starts paying for itself in the rework it prevents. Five pages and one person maintaining them doesn’t need one yet, and we’ll say so rather than sell you one.
Can you help with interiors for retail or hospitality?
Yes. Spatial concepting, materials, signage and wayfinding, most often for retail, cafes and offices. It is the same job as the rest of the work under a different set of trades: the specified material gets value‑engineered out, the detail gets simplified for cost, and somebody has to be in the room arguing for the part that made it worth building.
Do you do research or just design?
Both, sized to the question. Most projects want a week of the cheap kind first—support tickets, session recordings, analytics, and some direct conversations with people who use the thing every day—which at this scale usually answers more than a formal study would. Generative research, usability rounds, and recruiting outside participants are real line items and get scoped accordingly. Where a budget can’t carry any of it, we say which decisions are therefore being made on judgment rather than evidence and which ones we’d want to revisit.
Do you design to accessibility standards?
Yes. The target is WCAG 2.2 AA unless your organization has set a different one, and it’s designed in from the start rather than audited at the end: contrast is checked when the palette is chosen, focus order and keyboard paths when the interaction is drawn, and the error, empty and loading states get drawn instead of invented under deadline. Where we build the front‑end, it’s tested with keyboard and screen reader before it ships. The limit worth knowing is that a design can’t make a product accessible on its own. The build and the content decide a lot of it, which is one more reason we’d rather stay through the build than hand off a file.
Working together
Where is SUPERBOLD Design Lab located?
Chicago, working with clients locally and nationwide. Most projects run remotely. We come in person for interior and spatial work, and for workshops, where being in the room is most of the value. If you’re in the area, let us know. We’d love to meet up for some coffee!
What industries do you specialize in?
The work leans toward hospitality, retail, consumer goods, tech, and professional services. We’re not specialized past that, and the specialization we do have is a situation rather than a sector: something already running, with customers and a team already mid‑flight. An unfamiliar category costs us a week of reading and research, but a brief with no operating pressure behind it is the one we’re worst at.
Do you work with startups as well as established brands?
Both, with one caveat. An early‑stage team that has shipped something and has users is a good fit. A team that wants a look before there’s a product to attach it to usually isn’t, because the thing we’re good at is invisible when there are no real constraints to design against. We’ll say so on the first call rather than three weeks in.
Who does the work?
Tom leads and does the design. SUPERBOLD stays small on purpose and brings in specialists—illustration, photography, engineering—when a project needs them, named to you rather than resourced anonymously. You’ll always know who is on your project and what they’re doing, and the person in the kickoff call at the beginning is the person in the QA call toward the end.
What if there’s already an in‑house design team?
That’s most of this work, and it is a better starting position than not having one. It usually turns into one of three jobs: building the system the team doesn’t have four uninterrupted weeks to build, taking a surface nobody has been able to get to for a year, or being the outside voice that can say the thing that’s hard to say from inside the organization. What we don’t do is arrive and grade anybody’s work. The people living with the product know things about it that no audit recovers, and the first week is mostly us asking them.
Can you work alongside our developers, or our current agency?
Yes, and we’d rather. Collaboration with whoever builds the thing is the one condition on every engagement, and it is the first of the four kinds of work we turn down. Working behind another studio is a normal arrangement here and a large share of what we do: their client, their process, their deck template, white‑label where the engagement needs it, and we never approach a partner’s clients.
Can you work in our tools, repo, and existing design system?
Yes, and that’s the default. Design happens in your files and your workspace rather than ours, front‑end work goes through your repo and your review process, and an existing design system is the starting point rather than something to replace. If a component already exists, we use it. If it doesn’t fit, we say why before drawing a new one.
How do you handle confidential work: NDAs, data, and our files?
We sign client NDAs as standard, before the first detailed conversation if you need one. Files live in your workspace rather than ours, access is limited to the people named on the project, and any specialist brought in works under the same terms.
The awkward ones
You’re a small studio. What happens if Tom is unavailable?
The honest answer has a limit in it: a two‑week absence would move a schedule, and you’d hear that the day we knew rather than find it in a status update. What can be done is making the work survive one, so documentation is written as the work is made rather than assembled at the end, files live in your workspace rather than ours, and anyone brought onto a project is named to you. A studio this size is a real trade. The cost is bench depth. What it buys is that nothing has to be re‑explained to a new person later down the line.
Why hire a studio this size instead of an agency?
For some projects you shouldn’t. A campaign running across six markets with simultaneous media buying needs a production floor, and we’d tell you that on the first call. What a studio this size does best is work where quality lives in a small number of decisions and it gets expensive for those decisions to be made by a rotating cast: a design system, a product surface, an identity that has to be applied by people we’ll never meet. There is no account layer here, so the person making an argument is the person who has to live with it. Fewer layers also means fewer places for a decision to wait.
Do you use AI in the work?
Yes, wherever it widens what we can try or shortens the distance to a decision. That includes brainstorming and pushing through a wider range of directions than a schedule would otherwise allow, crunching research and analytics, getting a hard interaction into a browser at real width in an afternoon instead of a week, and the unglamorous volume work around a system, like generating and checking states across a component set. What it doesn’t do is make the call. Every direction you see, and every judgment about which one is right, comes from a person who can explain why. If you’d rather it weren’t used at all on your project, that’s a constraint like any other and we’ll write it into the proposal.
How do you know whether it worked?
By whatever you were trying to change, agreed at kickoff and measured before anything ships: conversion on a storefront, volume on a support queue, dwell time in a room, or how long it takes your own team to build a new page. The baseline is the part almost nobody captures, and without one the end of a project is just vibes. Where there is no usable baseline we say so and report what changed.
Cost & timing
How much do design services cost?
It depends on scope, complexity, and timeline. Starting ranges for each service—plus how invoicing, change orders and ownership work—are published on the process and pricing page.
How long does a typical project take?
Brand identity 4–6 weeks, website redesign 8–12, design systems 8–16. Interiors depend on build. The process page breaks an engagement down week by week, and the schedule is written before kickoff and built backward from the date that matters to you.
Do you take on small projects, or only large engagements?
Both. Some engagements are a brand refresh or a single packaging piece; others are multi‑month product builds or a full rollout. The process scales down by dropping phases rather than by doing each one worse.
What’s your availability?
We take a small number of engagements at a time and each one gets a lead rather than a resource, so it depends on what is already running. Ask and we’ll tell you where the calendar stands. If the timing doesn’t work we’ll say so straight away and help you find another great fit in our network.
What actually happens, week by week.
Seven phases from the first call to launch, what each one produces, published ranges, how invoicing and ownership work, and what happens when a project doesn’t go to plan.
Read the process Agencies & studiosRates and terms, published.
Engagement models, what it costs, and the non‑solicitation position, written down rather than negotiated by email.
See partner termsAsk us directly.
We reply within one business day, including when the answer is “not a fit.” Questions we get twice end up on this page.