Ambolt
Services / 06

An answer,
not an
agency.

Design, brand, and marketing consulting for teams who already have people making the work and need someone senior to tell them the truth about it. No files, no production, no retainer you have to justify. You bring the problem, we bring thirteen years of having seen it go wrong.

Fee$500 – $2,000 / mo
FormatSession, half day, or monthly
HoursTwo to eight, depending
CommitmentNone, or thirty days notice

If the honest answer is that you do not need us, you will hear that in the first session rather than in month four of a retainer.

See the full cost breakdown and hours →

Who this is for

  • You have an in-house team and no one senior enough to settle a creative argument.
  • You are about to commit to a direction and want a second opinion from someone with no stake in it.
  • A rebrand, a site, or a campaign is stuck and nobody can say why.
  • You are hiring a designer or an agency and want help writing the brief and reading the work.
  • You want an outside read on the marketing, not another deck of recommendations nobody actions.

How it runs

01

Tell us the problem

The intake form asks what kind of consulting you want — design, brand, marketing, or something that does not fit those — and what you actually want to talk about. Two paragraphs is plenty.

02

We prepare

We read whatever you send: the site, the deck, the campaign, the work in progress. Preparation is inside the fee, because a consultant who arrives cold is just an expensive opinion.

03

The session

A working session, not a presentation. We argue with the work in front of your team, and you leave with decisions rather than options.

04

Written follow-up

Notes and recommendations in writing afterward, so the session survives contact with the people who were not in the room.

What you get

  • Design consulting — direction on work in progress, critique of layouts and systems, and help setting a bar your team can hit repeatedly.
  • Brand consulting — positioning, architecture, naming pressure tests, and whether a rebrand is actually the thing you need.
  • Marketing consulting — campaign direction, channel fit, creative diagnostics on why a message is not doing what it should.
  • Anything adjacent — hiring, briefing, vendor selection, or a problem that does not have a tidy label. Describe it and we will say honestly whether we can help.
  • Written notes after every session, plus a recording if you want one.

What it is not

Scope boundary

Consulting does not produce files. Nothing is designed, built, or delivered as an asset. If a session turns into work you want made, that is a separate engagement and we will scope it as one rather than quietly billing advisory hours at production rates.

The other ways in

Brand AuditIdentity + Rebrand SprintCreative Ops + Design System SetupFractional Creative DirectorMonthly RetainerConsulting

Book a session

Tell us the shape of the problem and we will tell you honestly whether the Consulting is the right answer to it. We reply within two business days.

Prefer email? hello@ambolt.co. If we are not the right studio for this, we will say so and point you somewhere better.

Three ways to buy an hour

No production, no files. You are buying judgment, and the hours are the product.

Working Session

$500
One session
Hours includedTwo hours
Ninety minute session on one problem
Preparation on your materials beforehand
Written notes and recommendations after
Recording if you want one
Start here →
Most chosen

Half-Day Intensive

$1,200
One day
Hours includedFive hours
Three hour working session with your team
Preparation and materials review
A written point of view afterward
Two week email follow-up window
Start here →

Monthly Advisory

$2,000 / mo
Month to month
Hours includedEight hours a month
Two sessions a month on a standing slot
Asynchronous review of work in progress
Direct line for the questions between sessions
Thirty days notice to stop
Start here →

How the hours work. Fixed-price engagements are scoped at a blended $100 an hour; fractional creative direction is scoped at $145 an hour, because it is senior time rather than production. The hours above are what the price is built from. We track against them and tell you where we are, and if a scope change pushes past the block we say so before the work happens rather than after.

Let's strike
while the iron
is hot.

Companies leave here looking like one company again. The same voice on the site, the deck, the ad, and the booth. Every quarter you wait is another quarter of good work going out under a brand that undersells it.

Start a project → Or start with an audit →
Prefer email? hello@ambolt.co
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