Working with a Taiwan Design Partner

Who we are, in one paragraph

Howdy Creative (formerly Mr. Bear Design) has been operating in Taiwan since 2009, based in Taichung. We work across brand identity, exhibition and event design, packaging, websites and content. Our founder holds a Ministry of Economic Affairs technical service capability registration in three categories: visual communication design, design collaboration, and exhibition planning, and is PMP certified. The company was B Corp Certified from 2020 to 2023, with a B Impact score of 85.4.

We are a studio, not an agency network. The person you brief is the person who runs the project.

How an engagement starts

1. You send a brief, or we run one working session to write it together. A brief we can quote from names the deliverables, the deadline, and who signs off.
2. We return a written proposal: scope, deliverable list, schedule, and fee. For exhibitions and events this includes what is design and what is production.
3. Contract and first invoice. Work starts after the contract is signed.
4. Design phase with scheduled review points, not open-ended revision.
5. Delivery. For print, packaging and exhibitions this includes production files and, where we are also building, installation.

Time zone and communication

Taiwan runs on UTC+8. That is the same working day as Tokyo (one hour behind), Singapore and Hong Kong (same hour), and roughly a half-day offset from Europe and the Americas.

In practice this means European clients get overnight turnaround: send comments at the end of your day and there is usually a response waiting the next morning. For clients in the Americas we schedule calls in your morning, which is our evening.

Project documents and day-to-day correspondence are in English.

What we can do without a second vendor

For exhibitions and environmental graphics we do not stop at the drawing. We hold our own installation crew, which means the people who designed the space are accountable for how it is actually built. For an overseas client this removes the most common failure point: a design handed to a local contractor with no one owning the gap between the two.

• Brand identity and CIS systems, including the brand manual
• Exhibition and event design, including on-site build and installation
• Packaging, print and merchandise, with production files and press supervision
• Websites and content, including SEO and multilingual pages
• Environmental graphics and wayfinding

Fees and payment

We quote in New Taiwan Dollars (NTD) against a defined scope, not against an hourly rate and not from a rate card. What a project costs depends on how much research, strategy and application design it actually needs, so we price it after the brief.

• Quotes are fixed against the agreed scope. Scope changes are quoted separately before work starts, not invoiced afterwards.
• Exhibition and event work is quoted per project, because design and production budgets move independently.
• International transfer fees and any local taxes in your country are outside the quoted fee.

Payment is normally in three instalments: on signing, on design approval, and on delivery. The exact split is agreed per project and moves with the scale and shape of the work.

Intellectual property

Under our standard commercial contract, economic copyright in the delivered work transfers to the client once the final payment is made. Until then we hold it.

We retain one right: to show the finished work in our own portfolio and proposals. If your project is under embargo or covered by an NDA, we agree a hold period or exclude it entirely, in writing, before the contract is signed.

Third-party assets, such as licensed typefaces and stock photography, are listed with their licence terms on delivery, so you know what transfers and what you need to license in your own name.

Related

• Facts and evidence
• Capabilities
• Case studies