How a project runs

From the first email to the handover call, in the order it happens.

It is written down here so that nobody has to guess what comes next, and so that the things that make a project go wrong are named before they happen.

1The brief

You send a brief through the form on this site or to the studio mailbox. It does not have to be long or tidy; three sentences on what the company sells, who buys it and what needs words is enough to begin. We read it — both of us — and reply within two working days with questions. Then we arrange the brief call: about forty minutes, by video, with whoever will make the decisions on your side. We ask what you have tried to say about the company before and why it did not stick.

2The scope

Within a week of the call you receive a written scope: what we will make, how many weeks it runs, who from your side has to be in the room, what we need from you and by when, and what it costs. You agree it or send it back with changes. Nothing starts until it is agreed, and once it is agreed it does not change shape. If the brief changes later, we stop, write a new scope, and start the count again.

3The reading

We read before we write. First your own pages, all of them, including the ones you are embarrassed by. Then the emails your team sends most often, the sales notes, the quotes, and anything customers have written back. This takes the first week of any project, and it is where most of the value is made: a company's language is already in these documents, unevenly. We are looking for the version of it that works.

4The draft

The draft arrives as a document, with a short covering note saying what we chose, why, and where we were unsure. We ask you to read it twice: once alone, once with the people who will actually use it. The second reading is the one that matters, and it is the one most often skipped.

5One round of changes

You send your changes in writing — in the document itself or in one email — in a single batch. We take up to a week to work them in and come back with a second draft. There is one round because a second round almost always undoes the first; if something is still wrong after it, we talk, and if the scope was wrong we say so.

6Handover

Handover is a call in which we walk the people who will use the work through it: what each part is for, how to use it, and what to do when a case comes up that it does not cover. Then the files arrive — the document, a plain-text version so it can live anywhere, and the copy deck where there is one. After handover the words are yours, and we are not needed for them to keep working.

Said plainly

What makes a project go wrong.

Each of these is common enough to plan around more than once, so they are written here rather than discovered in week four.

The decision-maker is not in the room. A name or a voice chosen by someone who then has to sell it upstairs comes back changed, and the reasoning that made it good is lost on the way.
The brief changes after the scope. A new product, a new market, a new owner. We stop, write a new scope and start the count again. That rule is what keeps projects honest, and it is the one people like least.
The pages are rewritten before there is a designer. The copy deck sits in a folder for a season and the company keeps using the old pages. If you have no designer, tell us in the brief.
Someone expects the name to be cleared. We do not search trade marks or give legal clearance. Your lawyer does that, and the first page of every naming document says so.
A third language is added halfway. We write in French and English only. A guide can be handed to a writer who lives in another language, and we will brief them, but we will not write it ourselves.
The guide is finished and nobody reads it. This is why the handover is a call and not an email, and why every piece we make is short enough to read in a morning.

After handover.

We do not take retainers, so we are not on hand by default, and that is deliberate: a brand language that needs its authors nearby to keep working was not written well enough. Small questions about a guide you already hold are answered by email without a scope. If something new needs writing — a new product to name, a page set for a second market, a phrase library that has outgrown itself — send a new brief and we start again from step one.

Send us a brief

An open spiral notebook, a pen and a pair of reading glasses on a whitewashed wooden desk — vReading first. The draft comes after the notebook is full.