Direction before design: how we start every project

Most projects reach us as a request for a thing: a website, a logo, a pitch deck. That is a reasonable way to ask. It is rarely the right place to start.

The thing is usually a symptom. The offer has changed, the company has grown, a round is coming, or the business has simply outgrown the way it presents itself. If we start with the thing, we design a better version of the old story. So we start one step earlier.

Three questions

What has changed in the business? Who needs to understand that change? What should they do once they understand it? We ask these of the founder, and where we can, of the people who sell and support the product. The answers are often different, and the gap between them is where the work is.

The direction document

Before any design, we write the direction down. It is short, two or three pages: the routes we considered, the one we recommend and why. It covers what the company should say, how it should look and what the website has to do.

It is not a sixty-page strategy deck. It is a decision, written clearly enough that a founder can agree or disagree with it in one meeting.

Why it is worth doing first

Decisions get made once. Design and development move faster because nobody is arguing about the foundation in week five. And the direction outlives the project: your team and your partners can use it for the next campaign, the next page, the next hire.

This is what a Direction Sprint is: one to two weeks that end with a direction and a plan. Sometimes we carry it through ourselves. Sometimes we hand it over. Either way, the business knows where it is going before anyone opens a design file.