Building a web design studio in 2026
Building a Web Design Studio in 2026: Shovel's Year 2 Notes
I focus on fashion brands in the $1M to $20M per year range and sell a design system instead of just a website. Most of our leads still come from social media, but we're landing in Google Search results now.
Hey there! Blaze here,
I’m making a promise to myself to post on this channel every week.
A lot of where my work lands these days is within web design (duh) and creating content. The time that goes in-between these things to make them more efficient is what I consider “business” work.
Gravel is going to be a simple documentation process of how I achieve those efficiencies. I hate to overly complicate these processes, and I want this email to be as digestible as possible.
TL;DR: My top-level short form will cover design principles + design topics.
Gravel will cover more of my business brain
A quick story about me
I run a web design studio called Shovel. It’s easier to say “web design” but realistically I sell branding & content work under this LLC.
Shovel is 1.5 years old. I quit my UX design internship at the end of 2024 because short-form videos were a proven path to finding freelance clients.
My first year in business is all documented in my Year 1 Gravel Report here (one of you reported this to be unsafe, I promise its not)
Year 1 was a lot of learning around these topics:
- How to set up a funnel for quality leads
- How to position a portfolio
- How to grow a social media audience
- How to find talent and hire
- How to create a design & development process
- How to do accounting properly
- How to be a leader
- How to sell digital services & products
The snowball
I made ~80,000 USD in that first year. In 2026 I made that amount in the first quarter. Every week I have quality leads with a $10,000+ budget hitting me up for work.
I’ve found that fashion brands in the $1M to $20M per year range are a great fit for my design expertise. Even deeper into that niche, I work with streetwear, luxury retailers, and womenswear brands.
There are more clients outside of this scope. This is just a dataset I feel like I can sell very easily in. That comes from having a personal background in fashion with real case studies
Instead of just selling a website. I sell a design system, which effectively sells efficiency and results. It’s common that clients will have strong email or app initiatives in place. If you can connect that experience cohesively for them, you’re giving them a best-in-class digital experience.
I’m hooked on the idea of selling our internal tooling. Shovel’s Figma Ecomm Design System is releasing in April. We use this on real projects and it has real testimonials from designers in the space working with brands like me.
What prevents a best-in-class website?
Hitting a quality standard is crucial in my work. Every pixel we lay on the screen is a representation of Shovel. There are typically 2 external teams/people that can affect the quality. These are my solutions to them
| External team | Shovel's approach |
|---|---|
| When a client has their own developer: | We push to have a close relationship and QA process with them. I like to support developers for 30 days after the design handoff to ensure we have a 1:1 design with our Figma exports. |
| For client photographers (whether thats in-house or a vendor): | Photography is a huge factor into what makes a website look good. |
There are projects I’m not showing on the portfolio due to AI slop or DIY iPhone shots that completely subtract from the design we spent weeks on.
I’ve solved that with an Ecomm Photography Brief you can use yourself in Figma
These are two recent client sites that followed this PDF:
This is a tool I include in all e-comm projects now, and clients love it.
Before I close this off
Let me quickly answer commonly asked questions
What website builder/stack do you use?
I made a Notion page to answer this question here
How are you making proposals + contracts?
Claude is basically my lawyer… I know thats a bad move. I’ll formally hire someone this year. I have a project that knows my proposal template & contract clauses very well. From there I can take Notion AI Meeting notes and quickly turn around proposals after an intro call
Are all leads from social media?
Most of them yes. Some from my personal network, but I’m really happy to say we’re landing in Google Search results now.
Much like YouTube, Instagram transcripts now assist in SEO very strongly. If you search “acne studios web design” my 3 videos will appear at the top as of March 2026. I didn’t make the Acne Studios website…
Also, I’m simply having more case studies to post. Which in turn helps SEO. Pairing this with referrals are what I want my main source of leads to be in 3 years
Take care
Feel free to reply to this email with any recommendations you may find valuable here. Thanks again for the support. My DMs and email are always open
Take care! - Blaze
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