Downing LLP is a specialist UK financial services company providing wealth management, investment management, and advisory services. The firm serves high-net-worth individuals, institutional clients, and corporate entities with sophisticated financial solutions across multiple sectors.
With a team of approximately 200 employees, Downing combines technical financial expertise with personalized client service, maintaining a reputation for professional excellence in the competitive wealth management sector.
Downing's two-person design team—consisting of a Marketing Designer and a Junior Designer—was stretched impossibly thin supporting a 200-person organization. After joining the company just over a year earlier as their first-ever designer, the Marketing Designer had implemented a complete brand refresh in November and launched a new website in July, but the transformation created an overwhelming new challenge.
The team now faced the monumental task of updating every existing template, presentation, and marketing material into the new brand identity while simultaneously handling the constant stream of day-to-day requests from across the business. With multiple products and departments all demanding "ASAP" turnarounds, the two designers simply couldn't keep pace.
The situation was made worse by a failed partnership with their previous agency. The quality of work delivered was consistently below the professional standard Downing required for their premium financial services brand, forcing the internal team to spend valuable time fixing and redoing work rather than moving forward with strategic projects.
The team faced several critical challenges:
Most critically, as a financial services firm serving high-net-worth clients, Downing couldn't afford design work that looked "amateurish." Every presentation, every brochure, and every client-facing material needed to reflect their premium positioning—but their previous agency partnership had repeatedly failed to deliver that quality, regardless of timeline pressures.
Downing partnered with Design Cloud giving them immediate access to a dedicated UK-based designer who could handle their template updates, social graphics, digital ads, and day-to-day marketing collateral.
The dedicated designer model addresses Downing's quality concerns from day one. Unlike the experience with their former agency, where quality was inconsistent and unpredictable, Downing now works with the same designer daily who learns their brand guidelines, understands their premium positioning, and delivers work that meets their exacting standards consistently.
Design Cloud's integration with Downing's existing workflow is seamless. The Marketing Designer continues managing incoming requests through their ClickUp system, then transfers appropriate work to Design Cloud's platform with clear, detailed briefs. This allows the internal team to maintain control over quality and priorities while offloading the volume they simply can't handle in-house.
The flexible briefing system works perfectly for Downing's needs. Whether it's a straightforward request like "here's a template, please update it to the new branding" or more complex work requiring creative direction, the platform accommodates both approaches. The Marketing Designer can attach brand guidelines, logos, and templates directly to tickets, and the dedicated designer saves these assets for easy reference on future projects.
The transparent communication process provides essential visibility for Downing's Marketing Operations Manager, who now has oversight of the entire design queue without needing to be involved in the day-to-day execution. This management clarity was impossible with their previous agency relationship.
For Downing's immediate need—working through the massive backlog of templates requiring brand updates—Design Cloud provides predictable, reliable capacity. Simple template updates are completed within one business day, while more complex projects receive daily progress updates. The internal team can finally plan their workload properly instead of firefighting constantly.
The realistic approach to deadlines and quality is transformative for Downing's experience. When deadlines are tight, their designer communicates honestly about what's achievable rather than over-promising and under-delivering. This transparency allows the Marketing Designer to manage stakeholder expectations confidently and focus on delivering top-notch quality rather than rushing substandard work out the door.
Perhaps most importantly, the solution scales with Downing's needs. As the Marketing Designer becomes more confident with the service and the template migration project progresses, upgrading to the Agency plan becomes a simple decision—adding capacity for presentation design and multi-page documents without requiring new vendor relationships or procurement processes.
