Cockpitby Elegant Elephants
Build your Cockpit
Built for hospitality

A design department.
Without the
in-house hire.

Send a brief or a change. Designers who already hold your brand take it on, present a direction for your review, and deliver the artwork once you have approved it.

Start Design Studio · £950See how it works

Setup price shown. then £395/month keeps it running.

£950 to set upReal designers, not a generatorNothing printed without your approval

01

Send a brief.
See the direction.

The walkthrough

Two minutes, start to finish.

Watch Design Studio run once, end to end — the job going in, the work coming back, and the moment you approve it.

The whole workflow

From brief to delivered artwork in four steps.

No file naming to police. No brand deck to re-explain every time. You send the change; the studio carries it.

  1. Send a new brief or a change to an existing asset — a paragraph and a deadline is enough.

  2. Your designer works the brief against the brand you have already signed off, and prepares a direction.

  3. The direction is presented for your review. Approve it, or say what you want changed.

  4. Print-ready and digital artwork is delivered in the formats you actually use, once agreed.

Live state

The product changes
with each step.

Managed studio / liveReady for your approval
Approval queue · 04

Real designers, working to a brief. Timing is agreed against scope — no piece is generated on the spot.

  1. Brief received
  2. In design
  3. Ready for approval — now
  4. Delivered
Autumn tasting menuPriya, senior designer

Ivory laid stock, short-edge left-decked. Courses set in a high-contrast old-style serif with long descenders.

Nothing is printed, delivered or published from here. Approving only tells the studio to carry on.

Your brand is the product

Same brief.
Four unmistakably
different houses.

Constant inputDesign brief
“Autumn tasting menu. Six courses, one page, A4, printed in house each week. Needs to sit on the table without looking temporary.”
Country-house hotelEngraved, ceremonial, quietly old

Ivory laid stock at 300gsm, short edge left deckled so it feels cut rather than trimmed. A single centred column with 30mm margins and nothing crowding it. Courses set in a high-contrast old-style serif with long descenders and small caps for the wine pairings. One warm oxblood ink, a hairline rule between courses, and no photography at all — the only ornament is a blind-embossed crest at the foot.

Ravi, Senior Designer

Same brief. Four directions. This is the difference between a design department that knows your house and a supplier starting again every time.

What you are buying

A slot in thestudio. Heldfor your brand.

A retained design slot with people who hold your brand on file — not a stock template library and not a fresh briefing conversation every month.

£950 setupthen £395/month
  • 01

    A retained design slot for briefs and changes to existing assets

  • 02

    Your brand foundation documented — typefaces, palette, grids and logo masters

  • 03

    Guest-facing print work: menus, wine lists, signage, cards and collateral

  • 04

    Digital versions of the same pieces for your site, email and screens

  • 05

    A named designer and an approval loop before anything is delivered

  • 06

    Print-ready files supplied to your printer’s specification

£950 setup, then £395 per month. Six-month minimum term, then month to month. Delivered artwork and your brand foundation files — typefaces, palette, grids, logo masters and the working files behind every approved piece — are yours to keep. What stops is the managed design slot and the designers who hold your brand.

How it starts
  1. 1

    Pay £950 setup, 50% now and 50% on delivery

  2. 2

    Share your logo files, existing artwork and anything already printed

  3. 3

    We document your brand foundation and confirm scope and timing with you

  4. 4

    Your first brief goes in and the direction comes back for approval

  5. 5

    £395/month begins once you are live

Trust is won on the hard ones

Easy briefs are easy. The awkward ones are the real test.

A useful design partner does not say yes to everything. It names what is possible, what it costs, and what it would do to your brand — then leaves the decision with you.

01Overnight change
The AshgroveCountry-house hotel · 21:40, Thursday
“We’ve lost the venison for tomorrow and we’re on the pass at seven. Can you redo the tasting menu tonight and get it back to me before service?”
In your voice · accountable

Yes, with one honest limit. Swapping the course line, reflowing the page and sending you a corrected print-ready PDF is straightforward and I will have it with you tonight. What I cannot do overnight is the reprint on your laid stock — that is a two-day turnaround with your printer and there is no version of tonight that changes it. So the choice is yours: I send the corrected PDF for you to run on the house printer for tomorrow, which will not match the stock, or we hold the printed run and use a hand-written insert for one service. I would use the insert. Tell me which and I will start now.

Ravi, Senior Designer
  • Scope named
  • Options given
  • Cost stated
  • Owner decides
02Unusable logo file
Wren CottageCoastal B&B · new brief
“Here’s our logo — I’ve pulled it off the website. Can you put it on the new breakfast cards and the window vinyl?”
In your voice · accountable

I can, but not from this file, and I would rather tell you now than after the vinyl is cut. What you have sent is a 480-pixel web image with the background baked in. On a breakfast card the edges will be visibly soft, and at window size it will break up entirely. Two honest routes. If your original designer still has the vector artwork, ask them for the .ai or .eps and this costs you nothing — that is the outcome I want. If it is gone, I redraw the mark as clean vector artwork inside your slot this month, which means one other piece of work waits until next. I will not upscale the file and hope: it will look exactly as bad as it is, and it will be your name on the window, not ours.

Nadia, Designer
  • Scope named
  • Options given
  • Cost stated
  • Owner decides
03Push-back
The Harrow RoomsCity restaurant · change request
“Put the 20% off midweek offer across the top of the à la carte menus in red, biggest thing on the page. And add the delivery app logos at the bottom.”
In your voice · accountable

I will do it if you still want it after this. You charge £68 for a tasting menu and the room is built to justify it. A red discount banner above your own dish names is the first thing a guest reads while deciding what your food is worth, and it tells them the honest price is 20% lower. The delivery logos do the same job again at the foot of the page. My alternative: keep the à la carte clean, and put the midweek offer on a separate card at the host stand and in your confirmation email, where it reaches the people choosing when to come rather than the people already seated. Same offer, same reach, without training your regulars to wait for Tuesday. If you would still rather run the banner, say so and I will set it properly — small caps, house ink, not red — and it will be with you tomorrow.

Tom, Art Director
  • Scope named
  • Options given
  • Cost stated
  • Owner decides

Every one of these came back to the owner before anything was made. That is the point — the studio carries the work, you keep the decision.

The practical difference
£2,650a month
for a junior in-house designer£395a month
for a retained design slot

A design department. At a fraction of the hire.

A junior designer on £28,000 costs nearer £32,000 a year once employer National Insurance, pension, holiday cover and software are counted — about £2,650 a month, and you still have to brief, manage and cover them. A retained slot is £395 a month plus £950 once to set it up: £5,690 across the first year. Per-project agency work sits somewhere between the two — a single menu commonly runs £600 to £1,200 a piece, and each new job starts with re-explaining your brand.

An illustrative comparison built from published UK salary and typical agency ranges, not a measured client result. Your costs and your volume will differ.

0

pieces delivered unapprovedEvery direction is presented for your review first. Nothing is delivered, printed or published until you have said yes.

One brand. One studio.

Stop starting from scratch every time.

A design slot held for your brand, with designers who already know how your menus are printed and who reads them.

Design Slot£950

to set up · then £395/month

  • A retained design slot for briefs and changes to existing assets
  • Your brand foundation documented — typefaces, palette, grids and logo masters
  • Guest-facing print work: menus, wine lists, signage, cards and collateral
  • Digital versions of the same pieces for your site, email and screens

Six-month minimum term, then month to month.

Setup invoiced 50% before work and 50% on delivery. Monthly billed in advance. GBP, excluding VAT.

Delivered artwork and your brand foundation files — typefaces, palette, grids, logo masters and the working files behind every approved piece — are yours to keep. What stops is the managed design slot and the designers who hold your brand.

What happens next
  1. 01

    Pay £950 setup, 50% now and 50% on delivery

  2. 02

    Share your logo files, existing artwork and anything already printed

  3. 03

    We document your brand foundation and confirm scope and timing with you

  4. 04

    Your first brief goes in and the direction comes back for approval

  5. 05

    £395/month begins once you are live

Start Design Studio · £950

Building more than one product? Add this to your Cockpit and price the whole shape in one place.

Timing on each brief is confirmed against scope during onboarding.
Nothing is delivered, printed or published without your approval.

The price above is the one-time setup. then £395/month, billed in advance.

The honest answers

Everything worth asking before you buy.

Real designers. This is managed design work — a person reads your brief, makes the decisions, and puts their name to the direction. There is no generator behind it and nothing appears at the press of a button. What you are retaining is judgement and a studio that already holds your brand.

Partly, and here is exactly how. You pay £950 once to set it up and document your brand foundation, then £395 a month for the retained design slot. Six-month minimum term, then month to month. Delivered artwork and your brand foundation files are yours to keep either way.

A continuous line of guest-facing design work — new briefs and changes to existing assets, worked one at a time in the order you set. Menus, wine lists, signage, cards, collateral and their digital equivalents. If two urgent things land at once, we tell you which one moves and let you choose the order.

It depends on the piece, and we will not pretend otherwise. Timing is confirmed against scope during onboarding and again on any brief that is larger than usual, so you know the date before work starts rather than after. A wording change to an existing menu and a new signage set are not the same job, and quoting one number for both would be dishonest.

You do. Delivered artwork is yours outright, along with the brand foundation files behind it — typefaces where licensing allows, palette, grids, logo masters and the working files for every approved piece. You can take them to any printer or any other studio.

Say so, and say why in whatever words you have. The direction is presented for review precisely so it can be changed before anything is made. Revisions are part of the slot, not an extra line on an invoice, and nothing moves to delivery until you have approved it.

After the six-month minimum term, yes. Pause for a month and the slot is held; your brand foundation stays documented and any work in progress is finished and delivered before the pause starts. During the minimum term the slot runs continuously — that is what the term is for.

You keep everything already delivered and the brand foundation files we built. What stops is the managed slot: the named designer, the approval loop and the ongoing work. Nothing is withdrawn or switched off, because what you bought was time and judgement, not access.

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