Questions to Ask a Design Agency Before You Hire (With What a Good Answer Sounds Like)

The questions to ask a design agency before you hire come down to five things: who will do the work, how they work, what it costs and why, what you own at the end, and what happens when things go wrong. Below are 25 questions grouped by the stage you will ask them, each with what a weak and a strong answer sound like, plus a 1-to-5 scoring sheet.

Most lists of these questions stop at the question. That is the easy half. Every agency will answer “yes, we have a process”, so the useful part is knowing which answer should worry you. That is what the weak and strong columns are for.

The stakes are real. TinyPilot’s founder hired an agency on an estimate of “four weeks and $7k” and paid $46k over eight months; his post-mortem names missing timelines and invisible billable hours as two of the causes (TinyPilot blog, 21 July 2022). Almost every item in that post is a question he could have asked before signing.

Questions to ask a design agency before the first call

Ask these by email or in the first ten minutes. They tell you whether a longer conversation is worth it.

#	Question	Weak answer	Strong answer
1	What projects like ours have you done in the last two years?	“We can do anything.” Old or unrelated examples.	Two or three recent, similar projects, with links and the client’s permission to discuss them.
2	What size of client is typical for you?	Avoids the question, or names only its biggest logos.	Gives a range, and says honestly where you would sit in it.
3	What is your minimum project size?	“It depends” with no follow-up.	A number or range, and what is included at that level.
4	Is our project your core service or a side offer?	Lists every service equally.	Says plainly which work is the core of the business and which is occasional.
5	Where is the team that would work with us based?	Vague, or only names a city in the footer.	Names the office and says who would join in-person workshops.

Question 5 matters in San Francisco. Several firms that rank on “San Francisco” lists give a street address in San Jose, Mountain View or Daly City on their own site. If you want people in the room, check, and see our verified list of branding agencies in San Francisco for firms whose SF address we confirmed.

About the team: 5 questions on who does the work

This is the most common complaint about agencies, so give it the most time. A former agency designer wrote on Hacker News that smaller clients “would be relegated to junior employees” (HN, 21 July 2022).

#	Question	Weak answer	Strong answer
6	Who exactly will work on our project, and for what share of their time?	“Our team.” Names only the people on the call.	Names, roles and rough allocation, written into the proposal.
7	Will the people on this call do the work?	“They will oversee it.”	“Yes”, or a clear split: who leads, who designs, how often the lead is in reviews.
8	Who is our day-to-day contact?	A shared inbox.	One named person with authority to make decisions.
9	What happens if a key person leaves mid-project?	“That won’t happen.”	A named backup and a commitment to tell you before any change.
10	Do you use freelancers or subcontractors?	Denies it, then you find out later.	Says when and for what, and that you can approve them.

About process and timing: 5 questions

#	Question	Weak answer	Strong answer
11	Walk me through your process for a project like ours.	Buzzwords and a generic diagram.	Named phases, what you see at the end of each, and where you make decisions.
12	How long will it take, phase by phase?	“How long is a piece of string?”	Week estimates per phase and the assumptions behind them.
13	How many revision rounds are included?	“Unlimited” or “as many as you need”.	A number per deliverable, and what a revision round means.
14	How will we see progress and hours?	“We’ll send updates.”	A regular check-in and, for hourly work, a live or weekly view of hours used.
15	What do you need from us, and when?	Nothing specific.	A list: approvers, content, access, feedback turnaround in days.

The weak answer to question 12 is a real quote. In a Hacker News discussion of the TinyPilot redesign, a commenter recalled an agency lead answering a timing question with “how long is a piece of string?” (HN thread, 2024). If you hear a version of that, ask for estimates per phase instead.

About money and scope: 5 questions

#	Question	Weak answer	Strong answer
16	How do you price: fixed fee, time and materials, or retainer?	One model for everything.	Recommends a model for your project and says why.
17	What is not included in this price?	“Everything’s included.”	A written list of exclusions (copy, photography, development, stock, fonts).
18	What happens when scope changes?	“We’ll figure it out.”	A change-request process with a written estimate before any extra work starts.
19	What are the payment milestones?	Most of the fee up front.	Payments tied to delivered phases.
20	Can we start with a paid discovery phase?	Refuses, or insists on the whole project.	Offers a short, fixed-price first phase with a clear output.

Question 17 explains most price differences between proposals. Two quotes that differ by half often cover different work.

About ownership and the end of the project: 5 questions

#	Question	Weak answer	Strong answer
21	Who owns the work and source files when we pay?	“We license it to you.”	You own the deliverables and source files on payment, written in the contract.
22	What exactly do we receive at handoff?	“The final files.”	A list: design files, fonts and licences, guidelines, code repository, account access.
23	Whose accounts are used for tools, domains and ads?	Theirs.	Yours, from day one.
24	Can we speak to two past clients on similar projects?	Only written testimonials.	Names and contact details, including one project that was hard.
25	How do either of us end the engagement early?	No answer, or a large kill fee.	A notice period and payment for work completed to date.

Question 23 comes from experience. In a marketers’ newsletter on choosing agencies, Natalie Alcock warned against an agency “running ads from the agency’s account instead of the client’s account” (Mehdeeka, 5 April 2023). The same applies to design: Figma files, font licences, CMS and domain accounts should be in your name.

Questions to ask references, not the agency

An agency cannot answer these objectively, so ask past clients. The same newsletter’s closing advice: “ALWAYS ask to speak to a client for a referral!” (Mehdeeka).

1. Did the project finish on the timeline and budget in the proposal? If not, why?
2. Did the people who pitched do the work?
3. How did the agency handle a disagreement or a missed deadline?
4. What would you do differently if you hired them again?
5. Would you hire them again?

Ask for one reference the agency did not offer. A mutual contact or a client named in a case study is a fair choice.

How to score the answers

Score each answer from 1 to 5 as you go. Do not wait until after the call; your memory will blur three agencies together.

Score	Meaning
5	Specific, written down, and matches what references say
4	Specific and credible, not yet confirmed
3	Reasonable but general
2	Vague, or answers a different question
1	Evasive, or a red flag

Weight the sections by what matters for your project. For a brand project, team and ownership usually matter most. For a website with a hard launch date, process and timing come first. To turn scores into a decision, use our design agency selection criteria, which has the same 10 criteria and weights we use on our how we rank page.

What to do with a bad answer

One weak answer is not a reason to walk away. Ask a follow-up, and give the agency a chance to put it in writing. A pattern of weak answers in the same section is different: that is where the project will go wrong. Our guide to design agency red flags lists 15 warning signs by the stage you will see them.

If the answers make you doubt that an agency is the right fit at all, compare the alternatives in which design partner you need.