You work hard to understand every aspect of your clients and their businesses, inside and out. You identify any challenges and opportunities before they do. You monitor their industry, their competitors and the political landscape.

You talk to your clients in their language. You get them. And they are exceedingly grateful for it. You have cultivated deep and lasting relationships with them. Some of your clients might even rank among your closest friends.

At Decker Design, we view our work with our clients in much the same way: as a privileged relationship born out of trust, communication and a deep understanding of the legal and financial services businesses we serve.

It’s also why we have intentionally decided to keep our team relatively small. Our smaller size allows us to be selective about the projects we take on and the clients we choose to partner with. And we have chosen to develop a special expertise working with legal and financial services firms like yours.

A Right-Sized Design Firm to Focus on Legal and Financial Services

Law firms and financial services companies have unique marketing and communications needs. They provide critical counsel to companies and individuals across a wide range of industries.

Your website is the primary branded vehicle representing your organization. To work effectively, it should serve multiple functions and satisfy a variety of audiences.

Your website needs to:

• differentiate your firm from the competition.
• attract, engage, and inform your clients and prospects.
• act as a recruiting tool to lure and hire new talent.
• satisfy an internal audience of users.

By maintaining our size and concentrating on such a specific client segment, we have deepened our understanding of how organizations like yours function, the challenges you face, and the opportunities you have.

Knowing professional services as well as we do, we are uniquely positioned to provide highly customized brand design services that deliver results. That doesn’t require a deep bench; it demands experienced individuals with a robust knowledge base.

We have developed that base by maintaining a smaller staff with a long track record of successful projects with professional services firms. And we only put our starting lineup on the field. We simply don’t have a “B-Team.”

If there’s a “Goldilocks zone” for the size of design firms dedicated to working with professional services, Decker Design is smack in the middle. We’re “just right.”

We Aim to Build Special Client Relationships

Because of our size, we can emulate the intimate client relationships common in professional services firms.

Your partners are committed to serving their clients and forming strong relationships with them. They pride themselves on being available no matter the time or issue.

Decker Design is the same. If you have a serious problem or concern and you’re working with a larger design firm, you might not always get the response you need from a project manager. Sometimes you need the owner, and I’m always available to talk through whatever issue or question you have.

In fact, when we’re designing brand communications for professional services firms, I especially enjoy working with the most senior partners and leaders. These are smart people who appreciate the importance of the project and the value of a strong client relationship.

Suited to Navigate the Structure of Professional Services Firms

Working with an organization like a law firm requires a deft touch. The org chart is very flat, with numerous leaders acting as co-equal decision makers. And each one has their own vested interests and opinions about how a website should look and function.

Wrangling these differing and occasionally opposing viewpoints into alignment is our specialty. Our strategic approach to brand and website design allows your team to leave subjective aesthetic preferences at the door to align on an evidence-based consensus and chart a unified direction for your project.

One effective method we have for finding common ground and flagging differences is through our brand archetype exercise. Before our discovery session, we share information about the 12 universally accepted archetypes (from the caregiver to the everyman). We ask attendees not to compare notes ahead of time since the discussions in these sessions should be spontaneous and candid.

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At the discovery session, we ask them to work together to choose an archetype that best represents their firm. Somebody will say, “We’re the hero.” Another will insist, “No, we’re the magician.” Inevitably, most of them want to be the sage, but the aim is to uncover your firm’s authentic identity and use that to inform our overall design direction.

Even the most stubborn senior partners appreciate the value in the exercise and leave the discovery session with a clearer sense of our project’s purpose.

Design Agency Size Can Mean Substantive Differences

Larger design agencies inherently demand a different structure. Their top leaders are too focused on running the business to be involved with day-to-day client needs. It’s the nature of the beast.

In addition, larger agencies often rely on new business teams to close a deal with a new client. The actual creative team often turns out to be a different group altogether. And even in a large firm, your dedicated project team will be smaller. But the makeup of that team may be much less consistent over the course of the project.

When we are pitching for new business, who you see is who you get. You hear directly from those who will be designing and developing your brand. Which means they are prepared to field your questions, hear your suggestions and provide their own guidance—just as they have done effectively for so many professional services firms before.

Dedicated to Designing for a Distinct Market

We are in this business because of our passion for design and our desire to cultivate one-on-one relationships with our clients.

We have had opportunities to grow beyond our current size, but each occasion has reminded me how special this place is as it is. Growing would fundamentally change who we are, what we do and how we do it. And not in a good way.

With every professional services brand initiative we take on, our challenge is to raise our own creative bar each time. How can we make a difference? How can we make your firm stand out from the competition?

Hiring Decker means having a tight-knit, dedicated, and responsive support team working as your partner to present your brand in a way that leads to deep and lasting change. I’d love to share more about what we can do for your firm. Let’s talk.