Dark Water Digital Asset Vault
Digital Asset Vault
Every asset we create for you — owned by you, in one secure place.
Brand Assets
3 setsSource Files
3 setsMedia
3 setsDocuments
3 setsInfrastructure
3 setsMarketing
3 setsEverything We Make for You, in One Place
The vault is the permanent record of an engagement. Six categories, one search, and no dependency on whoever happened to email you the file.
Brand
Logo suites in every lockup and format, guideline documents, and colour and type tokens exported as JSON so developers consume the same values designers drew.
Source
The website repository, the Figma files, and motion project files — editable originals, not flattened exports. Everything a future team would need to continue the work.
Media
Photography at full resolution alongside web-optimized derivatives, video masters and cut-downs, and Lottie animations with their source compositions.
Documents
Signed agreements, proposals, statements of work, and invoices, synced from billing so the commercial record matches the delivery record.
Infrastructure
Domain and DNS records including a pre-cutover zone export, hosting credentials, and the analytics and search console access list.
Marketing
Ad creative libraries, social templates sized per platform, and email templates with their tested HTML, so campaigns can be rerun without a rebuild.
How Assets Are Filed
A predictable path beats a clever one. Every asset lands in the same four-level structure, which is why search actually works.
Category
One of the six top-level groups. An asset lives in exactly one; cross-references are links, never copies.
Set
The deliverable it belongs to — a logo suite, a campaign, a release. Sets are what you actually download.
Variant
Format, size, and colour mode, generated from one master so nothing drifts out of sync.
Version
Dated, numbered, and immutable. The current version is obvious; the previous ones never disappear.
You Own It. All of It.
The most expensive thing an agency can do to you is hold your assets. We wrote our terms so that leverage does not exist.
Most agencies
Licensed, not transferred
You pay for the work and receive a licence to use it. The agency keeps the copyright and the leverage.
Exports only
You get PNGs and PDFs. Layered files, repositories, and design sources stay behind a support ticket.
Accounts in their name
Domain, hosting, and analytics sit in agency accounts, so leaving means rebuilding your own history.
Dark Water
Full transfer on payment
Copyright in everything we produce for you transfers the moment the invoice clears. It is written into the agreement, not promised on a call.
Sources, not just outputs
Repositories, design files, and project files ship with the deliverable. If you hired someone else tomorrow, they could pick it up on day one.
Accounts in your name
Domain, analytics, ad accounts, and search console stay in entities you control. We hold delegated access, and you can revoke it yourself.
Two carve-outs, stated plainly: third-party licences we buy on your behalf — typefaces, stock, plugins — carry their own vendor terms, and we keep the right to show finished public work in our portfolio unless you ask us not to.
What You Actually Receive
Every set ships in the formats a working team needs, generated from one master rather than exported by hand.
Download any depth
Pull a single file, a set as a zip, or an entire category. Large media is streamed through signed links that expire, so nothing sensitive lives in a shared folder.
Handoff on request
A full export — every category, every current version, plus a manifest — can be generated on demand and delivered to cloud storage you control. No fee, no notice period.
Machine-readable where it matters
Colour, type, spacing, and motion values are published as tokens, so a new developer implements the brand from data rather than from a screenshot of a PDF.
Nothing Is Ever Overwritten
Design work goes backwards as often as forwards. The vault is built so that the version you approved in March is still retrievable in March of next year.
Immutable versions
Uploading a revision creates a new version rather than replacing the old one. The current version is flagged; every prior one stays downloadable.
Named approvals
Each version records who approved it and when, which ends the argument about which round of feedback was the final one.
Change notes
Every version carries a short written note explaining what changed and why, so a file opened two years later still makes sense.
Restore in one action
Any previous version can be promoted back to current without a support request. Source repositories keep their own full commit history alongside it.
Getting Into the Vault
Access follows the engagement. Nobody is issued a shared password.
Request
Your account owner requests access for a named person and a role. Requests come through the portal or from your strategist.
Verify
The invitation goes to a work address, expires in seven days, and requires multi-factor enrolment before the first sign-in completes.
Scope
Roles are granular: full access, category-limited, or read-only. A contractor can be scoped to one set and nothing else.
Audit
Every view, download, and permission change is logged. Owners can pull the log or revoke a person instantly.
Vault FAQ
It stays available for 90 days after the final invoice so you can export everything at your own pace. On request we generate a complete handoff package — every category, current versions, plus a manifest — and deliver it to storage you control. There is no exit fee and no notice period. After 90 days the workspace is archived, and we will still restore it on request for a year.
Yes. Clients regularly add photography, legal documents, and prior brand work so the whole record sits in one place. Uploads follow the same versioning and audit rules as anything we produce. Storage is included; we will tell you if a media library gets large enough to matter.
Yes. Vault storage is encrypted with AES-256 at rest and in transit, replicated across regions, and backed up daily with 30-day retention independent of your hosting backups. A hosting incident cannot take assets with it.
Only people assigned to your engagement, and only the categories their role requires. Access is granted for a task and expires rather than persisting after a project ends. Every action is written to the same audit log you can see.