Flocksy is a design service that features unlimited design & revisions for a single monthly fee. This can be a huge help for people who have a general idea of what they want but not the skills or time to design it themselves. I’ve been using Flocksy for several projects, and have found what works & what doesn’t when working with their teams.
This referral link for Flocksy will save you $100 on your first month.
Availability
Your Flocksy team works Monday-Friday. Initial requests are typically about 1 business day turn around, and follow-up requests on that same project are normally within a few business hours.
Plans
Their silver plan is a great month-to-month option. You don’t have to commit long-term. And it’s about $200 less a month than similar services like deer designer.
They have a bronze plan for only $99/month that you can downgrade to once you have at least one month on their silver plan. It is a great option if you only need 2 items done a month. Most months I only have need a designer for about 2 items. An item can be a hero banner, a full page web design, or a printed brochure of 10 pages.
When you have an active flocksy membership, you can also access their marketplace. I use this when I already used up my 2 items a month and need a third item done. Most projects (including a full page web design) are under $100 there. And the designers are the same ones you normally have access to on your projects. Both of my usual designers that I have through flocksy are in the marketplace, so I’m continuing to work with designers that I’m already familiar with.
They also have Gold and Platinum level plans if you want even more, such as copywriting, video editing, virtual assistants, and more.
Limits
With any offering that is “unlimited”, there have to be limitations. The limits are that you can have one new project and one revision project at once. So if you need 10 webpages done, you’ll need to submit the first page as a project, and queue up the others. They have a queue of upcoming projects, so as soon as you mark one finished, then the next goes into the queue.
The typical timeline looks like this:
- Build your first project and send it off. In about 1 business day you’ll get back a response. After this, your project with move to revision status.
- Your second project can now have the active slot.
- You revise your first and second projects. Once you mark one of them as completed, then your third project can go from the queue to the active state.
- They have higher paid plan levels which allow for more active projects at once.
Flocksy project manager
With the Flocksy service, you get a dedicated project manager. This is the person that you turn to whenever you need help. Your access to the project manager is basically unlimited and you can schedule calls with them if you need extra assistance.
I’ve had a couple of times where the service glitched and my project didn’t immediately get assigned. In those cases, I just messaged my project manager, and the project was assigned within a business hour.
Flocksy designers
The first designer I got from Flocksy was a terrible fit. Just terrible. So I immediately messaged my project manager and told her that the designer was a very bad fit. I referenced what project I was working on and what the instructions & examples were that I had sent. My project manager got that designer removed from my team and had a new designer assigned within a few hours. My second designer has been great.
Designers are not UI/UX experts, they are graphic designers
It’s an important distinction. The difference between a UI/UX person who should be thinking about user interaction and user flow, vs someone designing the look & feel. What Flocksy offers are graphic designers. That means that you or someone on your team has to determine the overall wireframe.
Communicating the wireframe
One of the easiest ways to communicate the overall wireframe has been to record a video of a similar website that has the general wireframe I’m looking for. I do a screen recording of my web browser. I walk through a similar website with the structure I’m looking for and note any additions/removals from what the other site has. This video is typically only 5 minutes long.
Communicating design direction
I’ve found one of the easiest ways to communicate design direction is by sending a short screen video. Similar to my wireframe video, this is normally 2-5 minutes long. Here I show specific websites that have styles that I am looking for on this project. I might show buttons, icons, accents, section borders, layouts, or other design elements that I’m looking for. I’ve found the more I can show my Flocksy designer what I specifically like, the better the first draft.
Communicating the content
Flocksy does have copywriters if you need copy written. That’s a separate project, and I’m not going to go into that here.
When you send your design request to your Flocksy designer, you need to provide them with the written content and any images. But, what if you don’t have that? Then use filler content, just be clear to tell them how much filler content to use.
Flocksy does have a license with a stock photo location, so you can tell them to grab filler images as well. They can also get you licensed images to be used with your work. If you have questions about the license and what you are/are not allowed to do with it, please contact your project manager directly.
Flocksy does not have accessibility experience
When sending over a project to Flocksy, I make sure that I determine the fonts & colors that will be used. This is quick & easy to do with the Style Guide Builder. I drop in the brand information I have from the client and then click on Build Styles. The builder automatically determines accessible combinations based on those colors and generates them for both light & dark backgrounds.
I can then make a few tweaks to fonts or colors, check them on the grid, and then copy & paste out the styles. I include a text file with these styles in what I upload the Flocksy brand bucket for the project. The whole process of building an accessible color palette takes 5-15 minutes with this tool, as opposed to a couple of hours with previous tools I had used.
Next, I grab a copy of my designer checklist and include it in the brand bucket. That is a specific list of what to do and what not to do for accessibility. This means that designers without any accessibility training can produce designs that almost completely meet accessibility criteria. All they have to do is follow the checklist.
Reviewing work
As always, when you delegate tasks you need to review them. And of course, people aren’t perfect.
I don’t expect my designer to nail it on the first try. When I review the design, here’s what I look for:
- First, the overall wireframe, was it followed? Is the result what I was looking for, or do I want to change the basic structure of the design. I normally do wireframe type changes first.
- Second, were my colors & fonts followed? If not, I remind the designer they need to do that.
- Third, I check the copy. Make sure what was sent was actually used.
- Fourth, I look at design elements. Does the overall look match what I had sent over? Now that I see the look, is that really the direction I was going for?
There are typically a few rounds of revisions. Sometimes when I see things together, I make some changes from what I had originally sent in the brief. That’s ok, the designers are used to many rounds of revisions.
Overall summary of Flocksy
Flocksy has saved me both time and money by outsourcing design work. This has been a huge help to me in my business.
This referral link for Flocksy will save you $100 on your first month.