Branding & Creative Agency Recommendation: Draft Art Department

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April 15, 2026

by a searcher from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, IL, USA

Hey Searchfunders—I wanted to share a quick recommendation for a creative agency that I recently worked with on two projects: one was creating a brand and the other was a merch package. The company is called Draft Art Department and they're based in Chicago but work with clients around the globe. It's a new business from a graphic design firm that's been in the CPG space for years. This new business model delivers projects start-to-finish via a 3-week sprint process. Having worked with this team twice recently, I was genuinely impressed. The quality of the work is excellent, but what stood out most was the process. The sprint format forces clarity and decision-making in a way that actually leads to stronger outcomes—and gets you to market much faster than a traditional design cycle. As an owner-operator, I know that there are so many options out there when it comes to agencies and its hard to sift through them all. I rely heavily on recommendations from my network, so I wanted to pass this one along. If you’re thinking about a brand refresh, new packaging, or merch, definitely worth checking out: https://www.draftartdept.com/ Happy to make an intro as well.
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Reply by a searcher
in Tampa, FL, USA
Great share, Gabrielle. The fast process sounds very helpful. Have you seen better results with this vs traditional agencies?
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Reply by a searcher
from Northwestern University in Chicago, IL, USA
I haven't work with other agencies, but I did work with a freelancer for one of the brands I acquired and the project took about 6 months. I was a big part of the bottleneck because decisions had to be made, I would take my time to think about it, and then get distracted by other more urgent tasks. We now have the final brand assets and we still need to put them into production (email, website, social content, etc.) which will probably take another 1-2 months because it's not the MOST urgent priority for our small team. I think the sprint process is better and prevents you from overthinking and getting distracted. Will definitely use them for the next brand I acquire.
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