October 3

Best graphic design agency in Singapore

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I stared at the screen, wondering if I was seeing right.

21 tenderers for a simple report design? That seemed ridiculous. Was the market so bad that a $7000 report would attract so many bidders?

One could say that yes, it was for one of the most well known Government agencies.

Faced with the deluge of submissions, they had to request for an extension, so that they had the time to make an informed decision. And maybe that’s you today too.

You’re faced with all these information online about what the best agency is, and frankly, you don’t quite know how to evaluate.

But that really begins with the question.

What are you looking for?

That is a difficult question to answer. Over the years, as I’ve spoken to more clients, it’s vital to get 3 misconceptions out of the way.

These misconceptions get in the way of you getting what you want. Because as agencies, we’ve come to hear clients that say one thing, but what they really want is something else.

Not all agencies bring greater sales

We’ve learnt from the start to understand expectations from the start.

Because it’s true. Not all graphic design agencies can deliver you sales. Some are pure designers, with little of the digital marketing skill you might expect them to deliver. They can make great designs, but they might not necessarily serve you the outcomes you look for.

You’re okay with the design, but you want something professional to showcase in front of others

Let’s be upfront.

How do you know a good design, from a bad design?

Here’s a quick test.

Above, you would see two designs. One done in-house by the client, on Canva, and the other with our agency.

The difficulty is not in telling which was the professionally done one.

The difficulty here is trying to know what the difference was worth.

Well, for the agency above, Allkin, one of the biggest social service agencies in Singapore, the difference was big enough for them to consider whether the DIY version was professional enough to launch in front of a Senior Minister of State, Dr Janil.

And yes, Allkin paid us about $3000 for the design of 110 pages, which was below the market rate for us, but which we thought – hey, it’s for a good cause!

So we did it anyway.

But you can see. The $7800 they paid was a lot of money for a charity, but it meant that they could showcase it professionally, and was not just something they hid on their website.

You’re okay with simple design, if it doesn’t cost a bomb

Let me share the first story, with a repeat client that asked for brochure design with us. His boss had asked us to ghostwrite a book for him.

He showed us the brochures he had from a decade ago, which were black and white, and had hardly changed.

As a young agency owner who was still wet behind the years, I pitched him everything we got. We showed him the fancy layouts we’d done for a charity. Or another nicely illustrated piece.

In the end, the most damning thing he did was to place us on a call with another agency. He wanted us to explain what we understood about the shipping business, based on the book we had done.

Mind you, this was a video editing agency, who said they could do brochures. Even when they had no such relevant experience before, they still did it.

Heck, I would even recommend them to you if you want something cheap, and may not always be very reliable. Turns out, my client ended up complaining to me that he didn’t like their slow replies, and their unresponsiveness.

And yes, they will show you the Marina Bay Sands video they did, but does that even relate to graphic design? Nope, but if you want something cheap, that’s what you should get.

Yes, if you want something good, you’re going to have to pay what it’s worth.

You don’t want design, but well-written content that undergirds your visual design

There’s no point having a fancy design, but the story underpinning your design is hollow. The clearest indication yet?

The Nutgraf. Borne by 3 journalists, they have added more and more communications and journalists to their team. Not graphic designers. They are the ones who inspired me, another budding writer, that doing good, wholesome content, could pave the way to success.

Not just content that aims to get clicks. From what we can see, no one in Nutgraf even styles themselves as digital marketers, or people who are remotely aware of how to optimize for Google Ads and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They show up as writers, and they have the client list to show that there are commercial companies that see that as vital.

Just look at their work with Maybank. They wrote:

We conceptualised a digital content hub right down to its name – “iMSavvy” – that was in sync with Maybank’s brand refresh and warmer approach in communicating with consumers.

No, they didn’t try to drown you with big words like click optimisation strategies, or impression counts.

All they told you was the good stories they did.

And boy did they create a well-researched article, that was chockfull of research articles and statistics they’d found.

Clearly, Maybank liked what they did, and it helped their business outcomes.

1. We recommend Nutgraf

And whilst we do know it hurts our business to recommend you to our competitors, we will still do it because we believe that the pie is not a zero-sum game. As more businesses see the good in great visual communication, more clients will buy from us, growing the overall value of the industry.

Despite them being a pure content agency, we recommend them because they take a different approach to graphic design, that starts first from understanding the story.

Why does this matter? Doesn’t the great design matter above all else?

No, it doesn’t, if you don’t have a good structure for your work. One of the things we keep going back to is what Ed Catmull, one of the cofounders of Pixar, who wrote in Creativity Inc,

Not only is writing time-consuming but writers also bring structural thinking to the development process—input that most directors really need.

Writers bring the ultimate structure into your design.

Without a good writer, you’ll have a really poor visual design.

Because there is no writer to conceptualize the end product.

Let’s take the above example from Nutgraf, who did the Housing Development Board’s (HDB) 60th Anniversary Book. You might think it’s simple.

How hard can it get? Just interview, and then build a book. No?

If you look at the above, you can see quickly that beyond just the initial interviews, Nutgraf eventually structured the book into those broad categories.

Without that, the book’s design would have fell apart.

It proves one thing. Your visuals can be great, but if there’s no good structure that undergirds it, you might just find yourself clasping at straws. As designers, we always are looking for the stories that undergird the design. If there’s nothing substantial, your graphic design agency’s job is a lot harder. They are not just visualizing what’s there.

They are imagining something that’s not there.

Ouch.

You don’t need design, but someone to fluff something up

Yes, I know, that’s difficult to hear. But take it from us. After 5 years of doing this design agency work, we’ve come to realize that there are some clients that have lots of style, but little substance.

There are many agencies like this around. In fact, this is one of the best ways to do agency work. You promise your client the moon and the stars, and you, the client might be swayed by it, because internally, you do know that the product does not have much features or benefits to highlight.

2. We recommend ourselves, Media Lede

Of course, this article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning ourselves.

Let me show you a positive example.

Last year, Allkin came to us with a problem. They wanted to do a book on mental wellness. They had a manuscript, but when we read it, it was long, and not particularly engaging.

If you’re from Allkin and reading this, sorry!

One of our first processes was to rewrite the manuscript so it flowed better.

What did help us was how they had done lots of initial research into what mental wellness actually was. Even though (I thought) I was a self-confessed pro who’d written a book on mental health, when I saw what they’d done, I realised how little I knew.

If you look at what’s below, you’d have seen that they had used Anthony Yeo’s Problem Solving Framework. All we did was to visually analogize it in a way that people understood.

What you do want are outcomes

In another recent chat with a copywriter with 20 years of experience, we heard a story of how he’d pitched crazy ideas, for crazy brand pitches.

We knew that we could never compare.

For one telecommunications company in Malaysia, he had done an advertising featuring chickens, making a strange connection between chickens and calls. Each time you clicked on the company website, there was a different funny image of a chicken.

But it became viral, encouraging people to remember that telco company.

It’s why we recommend GERMS, because they are simply so funny.

GERMS is pretty funny. Just look at them sipping their piña coladas

What’s more, they will get you the outcomes you want.

In these ads for FWD Travel Insurance, they showed how to find the nub of the painpoints faced by travelers.

So don’t worry. If you’re a client today looking for graphic design agencies, always remember:

  1. Know what you want.
  2. Know the agency’s strengths.

Then you won’t be forced to look through 29 tenderers, and feel even more lost at the end of it.

Yes, we just had to fight with these 20 other agencies for a piece of work with SINDA’s Annual Report 2025.

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