“Show me two things you made eighteen months apart for the same client.”
Anyone can make one good thing. Direction is whether the second one still agrees with the first.
Lab note 004 · The engagement model
A creative director for the team you already have
.
You hired in-house to stop paying agencies. The work ships faster now — and it's drifting.
I come in one to three days a week and own the brand, the website and the product surface, so everything your team ships still looks like one company.
Who hires a fractional creative director?
Companies with a marketing team and no senior creative leader in it. Usually two to six people, usually funded, usually eighteen months past the last rebrand.
The drift
Every page, deck and product screen was made by someone capable, and no two look like they came from the same company. Nobody is wrong. Nobody is deciding.
The ceiling
Your team can execute anything you brief properly. The bottleneck is the brief, and the person who should be writing it is doing six other jobs.
The gap you can't fill
A full-time creative director is a $180k–$250k hire you can't justify at this size, and the good ones aren't available to a team of four anyway.
What does a fractional creative director actually do?
I make the creative decisions your team shouldn't have to make alone, and I'm accountable for the result.
01
Direction
Positioning, messaging and the creative call on every significant piece before it gets built, not after.
02
The system
One documented design system your team and your AI tools can both follow. Tokens the code references, not a PDF.
03
The build
I design and build what warrants it myself. Webflow sites, product surfaces, the pieces that set the standard.
04
The standard
Review on everything that ships. Your team keeps shipping; it stops drifting.
What I don't do
Manage your people, sit in your stand-ups, or take over your roadmap. I'm a director, not a hire.
How does the engagement work?
| Commitment | Six to twelve months. Creative direction that renews quarterly isn't direction. |
| Cadence | One to three days a week, agreed up front. |
| Notice | Thirty days, either way. |
| Checkpoint | A formal review at ninety days — scope, output, whether this is working. |
| Capacity | I take three to five clients at a time. That's the quality control, stated openly. |
Three questions to ask any fractional creative director
“Who makes the call when my team disagrees?”
If the answer is “we facilitate a conversation,” you're buying a workshop, not a director.
“What do you hand over if this ends in six months?”
The honest answer is a documented system your team can run without the person who built it. If there isn't one, you're renting taste.
[STUB] Proof — on hold
I won't fill a gap with something that sounds right.
On a recent build I needed to know whether a new product ran on the client's own optimisation engine. The obvious answer was yes. I marked it unconfirmed and asked. The answer was no.
Had I filled that gap with what sounded right, a false technical claim would now be live on an enterprise website — and quoted back by every AI assistant reading it.
Where a fact isn't confirmed, it stays marked unconfirmed until someone confirms it. That discipline has also turned up two service lines making the same claim, a published countries list contradicting the machine-readable one, and two different brand navies live at the same time. None of it was visible from inside.
What does a fractional creative director cost?
One day a week, from $5,000 a month. Two to three days, $8,000 to $15,000. Fixed on the scope call, invoiced monthly, thirty days' notice.
Common questions
Asked and answered
How is this different from hiring an agency?
An agency sells you a project and leaves. I hold the creative standard across everything your team ships, for as long as the engagement runs. You get one accountable name instead of a rotating account team.
Why not just hire a creative director?
If you can justify the salary and attract someone senior, do that — it's the better answer at scale. Most teams of four to six can do neither, and the alternative isn't a full-time CD, it's nobody.
Do you work with our existing team or replace them?
Work with them. Your team keeps building; I make the calls that keep it coherent and I'm accountable for the result.
What happens when the engagement ends?
You keep a documented design system, the files, the code and the decisions behind them. The handover is the deliverable, not an afterthought.
How many clients do you take?
Three to five at a time. Anything more and the attention isn't senior.
Where are you based?
Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel. I work with funded B2B teams in Israel, the UK, the US and South Africa.
Next experiment
Is your team shipping faster and drifting
?
One conversation, thirty minutes, no deck. If a retainer isn't the right shape I'll say so on the call.