Six weeks, not six months

Most identity projects take six months because nobody decided how long they should take. Ours take six weeks because we decided, and then we built the process to fit. That sounds like a constraint. It is really a promise: the client gets a date on the first call and we hit it.

Week one is listening. Two long conversations with the people who run the business, a visit to wherever the product is made or sold, and a written brief that they sign. Nothing is drawn. If we cannot describe the business in a paragraph the client agrees with, we do not have the right to draw it.

Weeks two and three are the direction. We show one route, not three. Three routes is a way of asking the client to do the design; one route is us doing our job and standing behind it. The route arrives with the reasoning in front of it, so the meeting is about whether the argument is right, not whether anyone likes green.

Weeks four and five are the build. Wordmark, type, color, the four or five applications the business needs on day one, and a system document a new designer could work from. Two rounds of revisions are included, and we have never needed a third when the brief was signed.

Week six is the handover, which we treat as a project of its own. Files in every format anyone will ask for, a printed brand book, a call with the printer, and a call with whoever runs the website. The work is not done when it is designed; it is done when the client can use it without us.

The schedule holds because the scope is fixed before the clock starts. When a client wants more, we scope it as the next project rather than stretching this one. Six weeks is not fast. It is the length of time the work takes when everyone knows what the work is.