Client story
More design capacity,
without another person to recruit
Totalweb AS is a Norwegian web agency working across web design, WordPress development, e-commerce, SEO and digital marketing.
- Norwegian web agency
- Growing faster than its design team
- Capacity without headcount
★★★★★
“Working with Deer Designer has allowed us to scale our design capacity while maintaining the quality standards our clients expect.”
By the numbers
27
Requests delivered
100%
Positive rating across requests
165 hours
Design hours their team did not spend
How it went
From another hire to make
to capacity on tap
The challenge
Before Deer Designer, design work created a mix of problems: slow turnaround, high costs, multiple people to coordinate, and work the Totalweb team ended up doing itself.
The real cost showed up in the agency’s operations.
Every extra resource required coordination. Every design task handled internally pulled the team away from clients, delivery and growing the business.
The problem wasn’t a lack of work.
It was adding enough design capacity to handle more of it without also adding more management.
“These challenges increased project management time, made delivery timelines less predictable, and reduced our ability to scale efficiently.”
Why Deer Designer
Rune first heard about Deer Designer through recommendations in the Digital Gravy community.
Three things made him try it: plan flexibility, turnaround time and no recruitment or HR process.
That last part became particularly important.
Instead of growing design capacity by hiring and managing another internal employee, Totalweb could plug an external design team into the way the agency already worked.
Design became part of the workflow
Totalweb regularly sends Deer Designer landing pages, presentations and website/UI work for client projects.
For Rune, the value isn’t just access to designers. It’s being able to use that capacity without creating another management layer around it.
Predictable turnaround makes projects easier to plan. Consistent quality means less uncertainty when work goes in. And the flexibility means Totalweb can use the service across different client needs rather than recruiting for one narrow skill set.
“Deer Designer effectively acts as an extension of our team, helping us scale design capacity while maintaining consistent quality across client projects.”
The impact
Totalweb doesn’t isolate Deer Designer’s contribution into a revenue or engagement metric, and Rune is careful not to claim one.
What the agency can see is the operational effect.
Projects move faster. Quality remains consistent. And Totalweb can support more client projects simultaneously without expanding its internal design team at the same rate.
That gives the existing team more room to stay focused on the work they’re best placed to own: client relationships, technology, strategy and growth.
Standout project
The pricing page
that kept getting better
One of Rune’s standout projects wasn’t for a client at all.
It was Totalweb’s own pricing page.
The agency wanted to move away from a conventional pricing layout and create something that communicated its strategic approach, value proposition and project framework more clearly.
Totalweb provided the structure, content and strategy. Deer Designer handled the visual translation.
But the first version wasn’t the end of the process.
“What impressed us most was the team’s ability to take feedback on board and continuously refine the design until it aligned perfectly with our vision.”
For Rune, that’s what made the project representative of the wider relationship: Totalweb owned the business thinking, while Deer helped turn it into polished design.
“The team consistently delivers professional work, communicates well, and is easy to collaborate with.”
Capacity, without the headcount.
Totalweb grew its design output without a single recruitment process. See how a Deer Designer pod can extend your team without becoming another thing to manage.