The brief is not a list of deliverables. It is an attempt to articulate a desire that the client has not yet fully formed. Our job in the first 72 hours is not to answer the brief — it is to interrogate it until the real question emerges.
The Immersion Session
Every new project begins with a structured two-day immersion. We request that the client's founding team, not just the project manager, attends. We need to hear the contradictions: what the CEO says the brand is versus what the Head of Product believes the customer wants. Those gaps are where the design opportunity lives.
The most useful thing a client can tell us is what they are afraid of. Fear is a precise diagnostic of where the brand is fragile.
Questions We Always Ask
- —Name three brands you respect that are not in your category — and explain why
- —What does your best customer say about you that you wish were more widely known?
- —What would you stop doing tomorrow if you could?
- —Show us something you have designed that you are secretly embarrassed by
These questions are uncomfortable. That is the point. Design that emerges from comfort produces comfortable design. We are not here to produce comfortable design.
A brief that arrives complete is a brief that has already compromised. We prefer the ones that arrive as a question.
