Custom design — co-creation, validation, and IP assignment

Design is not delegated, it is co-created

Corporate merch lives or dies by its design. A tee with a logo placed correctly on the chest, a mug with a pattern that respects the circular geometry of the substrate, a backpack with a pocket that already anticipates how the recipient will use it: all of that gets decided at a working table, not on a catalog screen. At Corp-Merch Mexico we run custom design as a co-creation process between your team, a local designer, and our technical area, with timing, deliverables, and IP assignment clear from the initial brief.

We keep a curated network of freelance designers in CDMX (Roma, Condesa, Polanco), Guadalajara (Providencia, Americana), and Monterrey (Centro, San Pedro). All of them sign a confidentiality agreement when they join the project file and, when the piece involves a trademark registered before IMPI, also sign a no-conflict letter with clients in the same sector. Curation matters: we do not subcontract any studio that pitches itself, only professionals with verifiable track record in industrial, graphic, or textile design, depending on the piece.

We build the brief with you in a first working session, in person in Polanco or remote, and it gets structured in five blocks: brand context (identity manual, prior campaigns, palette), piece or family of pieces, function and use, budget and volume, and deadlines including validation milestones. The brief gets signed by both parties and uploaded to the file, so any later change gets quoted as additional and formalized with an addendum. It is the only way to avoid the “that was not in the brief” argument that comes up so often in long projects.

The exploration phase runs one to three weeks, depending on complexity. The designer delivers two or three creative routes in sketch, usually as AI or PDF vector files, plus a physical sample when it comes to volumetric work or a three-dimensional object. We hold a review session with you where you leave specific comments on each proposal, and the designer iterates until reaching the signed final version. For award-grade pieces (we have participated in editions of Premio a! Diseno and the Premio Nacional de Diseno Industrial at UAM Xochimilco) the iteration takes longer because the level of detail is higher.

One piece that always comes up: IP assignment. When the design is original, the IP of the artwork transfers to your brand through an assignment contract signed by the designer and your legal representative, with our lawyer as witness. If your brand already has the design registered before IMPI, what we assign is the industrial use right to reproduce it on the agreed pieces for the term of the agreement. This matters because in Mexico the Federal Copyright Law (LFDA) and the Industrial Property Law (LPI) are distinct regimes, and mixing their logic is a source of legal disputes.

Before sending to production, we run a technical validation we call the “Engineering Proof.” On textile we review embroidery tolerances, fabric grain, and substrate behavior under wash; on rigid pieces we review wall thickness, fits, and color behavior; on packaging we review ergonomics and stacking behavior. This validation can add three to five business days to the timeline, but saves weeks of rework in production. If your brand wants to skip it to accelerate, we note that in the contract and the piece loses the fine-tuning warranty.

To keep consistency with your brand once the piece is in operation, we archive the production manual derived from the final design: source files, palette, typefaces, color tolerances, suggested suppliers for reprints, and quality evaluation criteria. This manual is delivered with you at project close and replicated to our authorized supplier network. If within a year your brand wants a reprint, we open the file, raise the manual, and produce without losing fidelity to the original design.