Studio
5 min
Why our median turnaround is 38 hours, not 24
We could promise 24 hours. We'd rather tell you what actually happens.

Written by
Rui Kaneda
Lead designer, Lisbon. Eleven years in brand and web, four of them on subscription.
Subscription studios love to promise 24 hours. We track every request from brief to first full design, and our median in 2026 is 38 hours. Simple requests come back faster; complex ones take longer.
Where the hours go
The extra 14 hours are mostly thinking time. A pricing page that converts takes an outline, a first layout and a second look from a designer in another time zone before it’s worth sending.
When we pick up your request, we tell you the expected time before we start. If it will take longer than your plan’s target, you hear it then, not at the deadline.
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Why our median turnaround is 38 hours, not 24
We could promise 24 hours. We'd rather tell you what actually happens.

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