Steve Lee — former Director of Industrial Design at Ammunition (15 years, San Francisco). SidekickID is a one-person studio: every project is done personally by him. I worked with companies such as Lyft, Beats, Adobe, LG, Cafe X, Williams Sonoma, Polaroid, and many more, ranging from startups to fortune 500 companies. You can check out portfolio from above or check out my personal website.

Hourly rates often create a mismatch between the goals of client and designers. While clients seek high-quality outcomes delivered fast, designers may be encouraged to take work slowly when working in hourly rates. Our priority is delivering exceptional work promptly, and this is where the monthly subscription model shines. With our membership model, you gain price certainty, making budgeting easier and securing stronger stakeholder support. Memberships foster deeper relationships and lead to superior results compared to short-term or freelance engagements.

Employing a full-time industrial designer can cost over $100,000 annually, plus benefits, and the hiring process can be lengthy. Here’s a link you can check out for a breakdown of the cost for hiring a full time industrial designer. If they’re not consistently busy, you’re also paying for idle time. Our plans offer better value and flexibility compared to maintaining in-house staff or can be a great addition to your already existing in-house team. You can check out this page to get an idea of the cost of hiring an industrial designer.

We are mainly an industrial design agency and offer anything related to designing a physical object. You can check out detail list of things that we offer here.

Examples include: A CMF (Color, Material, Finish) study for a single product, a CAD refinement for a specific internal component, or an initial concept ideation phase for a new device.
More complex projects are simply broken down into a series of logical tasks to ensure the “1 working week” turnaround remains consistent. You can check out the services offered here.

We understand that hardware and product development cycles fluctuate. You might have an intensive sprint of design requests, followed by downtime while waiting on engineering reviews, prototypes, or tooling feedback. Billing operates on a standard 31-day cycle. If you work with us for 16 days and then pause, your billing cycle freezes immediately, preserving your remaining 15 days for whenever you are ready to resume. Pausing freezes all active and queued design tasks.
You can review the complete Pause Policy & Rules here.

All Adobe suites are used at a basic level, 3D and visualization is done using Solidworks and Keyshot. Other programs or services include Adobe Premier, and Midjourney.

Absolutely! Depending on the quality of your existing assets, we can often advance more quickly from your current stage rather than starting from scratch. Although we prefer STEP or Parasolid X_T files, we can also work with nearly all file formats you provide. If you prefer to work with native files from Solidworks (pending Solidworks version match) we can preserve full structure and edit-ability and enhance what you already have. We also provide service to improve your existing CAD surfaces for things such as +C2 Curvature Continuity

All Adobe suites are used at a basic level, 3D and visualization is done using Solidworks and Keyshot. Other programs or services include Adobe Premier, and Midjourney.
For communication, we use Slack, notion, Zoom, Teams or whatever platform your team prefers.

You will receive industry-standard files ready for your engineering team or manufacturing partner. This typically includes STEP, IGES, or Parasolid files for 3D data, along with high-resolution 4K renders in JPG or PNG and technical drawing packages (PDF/Adobe illustrator) as needed.

That’s absolutely fine! Once the single request is all finished, you can place a pause on the subscription so that you can use the remaining days for future work.

This depends on the type of task that is requested. For example, creating renders for existing CAD files typically takes about 48 hours, while doing a full concept design work takes approximately 2 weeks (including initial kickoff, research, ideation, and all that’s needed to understand your product). I basically need “cave time” to dive deep into your products for full range design work whereas one-off task such as rendering or CAD updates are done within 1-2 days.

If you don’t like the design we’ll continue to revise the design until you’re 100% satisfied. Revisions and refinements are all a very natural part of the design process.

You do. Every concept, 3D model, and render created during your subscription belongs to you the moment payment is settled. I provide all the native files and assets, ensuring you have full control over your product’s future.

Absolutely. Working with startups and Fortune 500 companies requires the highest level of discretion. Since this is a one-person run service, your sensitive data and upcoming innovations never pass through a chain of junior designers or external contractors. I am happy to sign your company’s NDA or provide a standard one for us to use.

Once work has begun, we are unable to offer a refund. However, if any issues arise, we’re committed to making it right and we’re confident you’ll be thrilled with the results we deliver!

The subscription fee covers industrial design services listed here and many more depending on your need. However, the fee do not cover cost related to 3D printing and model making or sub-contracting non-industrial design related work such as professional photography & high level animations. It also does not cover cost for travel if requested by the client.

SidekickID is an agency of one and only receive membership with a limited slot. This is to ensure that all subscriber receives the highest level of quality design and amount of dedication for their projects. Simply put, this means that I am at max capacity at the moment.

Our pricing is dynamic and reflects current slot availability and my personal bandwidth. Because SidekickID is a one-person-run service dedicated to maintaining the highest industry standards, my capacity for new partnerships is strictly limited.
When all standard slots are occupied, accepting an additional partner requires me to utilize personal time and weekends to maintain our signature one-week turnaround. This “at-capacity” premium ensures that existing clients never experience a dip in quality or speed, while fairly compensating for the additional “over-capacity” hours required to launch your project.

No. Once you secure your slot, your rate is locked in for the lifetime of your membership. As long as your subscription remains active, you will continue to pay your original starting price, even if external rates or demand increase later. Please note that if you cancel your subscription and rejoin at a later date, you will be subject to the current market rate and slot availability at that time.