What We Do & Why
Recovery Units
A “recovery unit,” in simple terms, is the department the client pays to do the work.
In Creative Services, our three recovery units are based on the services they provide.
There are three main recovery units in Creative Services:
Marketing Design [MD] primarily works on printed items. MD is also usually the designer for deliverables like electronic posters, email banners that are part of a larger campaign, PDF-only documents, logos, etc.
Interactive Design [ID] is our largest recovery unit, both in dollars and in number of people. ID primarily produces websites, from digital strategy to design to development. They also take on smaller tasks such as email and e-newsletter templates, designing articles for online magazines, etc.
Photography [Photo] works with designers from both MD & ID to shoot strategic, authentic, and on-brand photography for publications and websites we are designing. Additionally, the photo department has two staff photographers dedicated to shooting imagery for our editorial platforms as well as shooting stock photography throughout the year to keep our image library, Cumulus, up to date.
There are departments within Creative Services that are notably not recovery units, such as Account Management and Editorial Services. This is because we do not charge for services in these departments.
The only exception to this rule is Editorial Services; clients can utilize our official University editors to review work they are producing at an “edit-only” rate, which recovers back to Interactive Design.
Additionally, marketing writing falls under both Marketing Design and Interactive Design and is billed based on the unit that is completing the project. The rate that is charged is based on the kind of project they are working on (either Writing—Print or Writing—Online).