Senior design firepower. Without the full-time price tag.
Grit Studio needed a Senior Designer capable of brand identity, creative concepting, and production work, but not full-time. Ghost Sherpa matched them with a designer at 15–20 hours per week, adapting availability month to month to match the studio's project rhythm.
Client
Grit Studio
Model
Fractional
Role
Senior Designer
Commitment
15–20 hrs / week
The Problem
For a studio like Grit, the challenge isn't finding design work. It's having enough senior creative capacity to do it well without committing to headcount the business doesn't need 40 hours a week. A full-time Senior Designer is a significant fixed cost. A freelancer on short notice is unpredictable. The gap between the two is where most studios quietly lose work quality or take on more than they can handle well.
The Engagement
Ghost Sherpa placed a fractional Senior Designer with the range to cover brand identity development, creative concepting, and production delivery, fully embedded in Grit Studio's workflow and process. Availability was set at 15–20 hours per week, with the flexibility to shift that commitment month to month depending on what the project calendar required.
The designer works inside Grit's tools, joins the relevant work sessions, and is invisible to clients. Another member of the studio's creative team, not a vendor handling overflow.
Why this matters for you
The fractional model exists for exactly this scenario: senior capability you need regularly, but not full-time.
Most agencies either under-resource their creative team because full-time hires feel premature, or they over-hire and absorb the cost when work slows. Fractional staffing is the third option. Senior talent, at a defined commitment, adjusted to the rhythm of your work.
It's not freelance. The person is embedded, consistent, and invested in how the work lands. It's not permanent. The commitment flexes with your pipeline. For studios and boutique agencies especially, this is often the model that makes growth financially viable before it's fully predictable.
Next Step
Need senior creative capacity, but can't justify full-time?
That's a fractional conversation. Tell us the discipline, the hours that make sense, and what you'd be handing off. We'll tell you if we have a match, and what it would cost.
