After a quick chat over the phone or via email, we’ll send you a few questions; this is to see if we are a good fit for each other and to see where we can add most value. These questions function like a design dating profile—we both need to know if we’re down for kids later on, otherwise it might ‘put a spoke in the wheel’ as the Dutch would say. Your answers also tell us where to start researching and help us prepare for a first meeting and proposal.
Depending on the project, our questions are usually along the lines of:
If it’s looking like a good fit from both sides, it’s time to take our potential relationship to the next level—with a first session! The goal is to get to know you, discover your needs, and identify some preliminary potential opportunities and solutions to jump-start the project into action. Following this, we’ll provide you with a detailed proposal.
If you like our proposal, the next step would be to dive a little deeper; we call this kind of session a ‘kick-off’. During the kick-off, we love hearing about your successes, challenges, previous approaches, constraints, and potential future obstacles. We do prefer to be in person for this first meeting, but video calls are also possible (and sometimes necessary for international clients). First we’ll talk about the basics: what we do, what you do, etc. Then we’ll get to the gritty: problem(s), goals, and complexities. If you happen to have analytics for more clarity, please bring them along. If not, don’t worry.
As mentioned earlier, we will also look into possible solutions and explore what a successful outcome for this project looks like to you.
We need to be able to understand your decisions and the decisions of your clients. When going through the process, we will get to know who you are, what you do, how you do it, and who you do it for.
Sometimes it’s important to take one step back and start a ‘Design Thinking’ process. If things are not clear, this is a great system to get things out in the open and redefine your vision. Design is flexible and a great tool to solve many different things. By learning from and with each other, we can multiply our results and increase the potential of our solution. It all starts with good communication and participation.
The offers we create are based on the learnings and information that come out of our initial meeting and contact. Internally, we‘ll compare notes and write a detailed, realistic offer based on the conversation we had. It’ll involve many different things and will usually take us a couple days to get to you. Designers that are able to give you a quote based on your first email should raise big, red flags.
We prefer the use of value-based pricing. It puts the emphasis on the fact that we are not an expense but an investment. This usually works out as the best option for the client. In return, you get a product that is handled with a lot of care and has a lot of potential at bringing in more money than it will ever cost.
We are in it for the long run—to help you achieve your goals and to create well-made products. That involves dedication and long-term vision. It’s not our intention to build you a solution that needs rethinking and redoing in a matter of months.
Our working process can be split into three main phases:
Disvover, learn and understand
Here, we partner with you to map out your project and deeply understand your organisation. Together, we define your brand’s values, current position, competitors, and market advantages while uncovering future opportunities. Through exploration and observation, we gain insights into your processes, identify key areas for improvement, and clarify what success looks like. This collaborative, strategic approach enables us to create a viable plan for building a scalable design system for your company—one that saves time, future-proofs your brand, and unlocks its full potential.
Design, prototype, and production
From the research and insights gathered in the discovery phase, we create initial sketches and lo-fi prototypes to explore different design solutions. This phase ranges from exploring visual opportunities to designing complete digital experiences. After testing and refining, we deliver the final designs, or handover, to our in-house development team for digital products.
Build, launch, and implementation
After testing and refining, we build the designs and prototypes into tangible digital products (followed by some more testing). Our in-house development team will custom code every element. When all the content is collected and uploaded, the digital product will go live. Or if it is a branding project, we closely monitor it’s launch to ensure it covers all the needs and requirements of the company, fits within its target market, and fulfils the original goals we set out to achieve.
As a small studio, we tend to prefer long-term partnerships over quick-fix projects; we invest a lot of effort into our clients and prefer projects with long-term growth and insights. If you want to know more about what kind of people we are, you can read more about our studio here (promise we don’t bite).
Aftercare Services
We also like to call this ‘in the digital age, you’re never really done’ part. And it’s true. Having a great digital product is like having a really nice new car. It needs upkeep. It needs to be maintained to keep it working properly and safely. Every once in awhile it needs a textual update to keep Google interested, browser updates create bugs, etc.
We provide two different kinds of aftercare services:
We are always open to new projects, so feel free to chat with us. Our first point of contact is Joris. He‘ll walk you through the process and address any questions regarding your potential project.
Sidenote: If you’re still wondering whether you need design, we’ve written a piece about the value of design. It will give you a bit of insight into what our skills and workflow can do for you and when to bring us in. Read it here.