Decided before it’s drawn.
Ridden before it’s promised.
Every site starts with its decisions in writing, and a prototype where an idea needs proving, before a screen is designed. This is how the work runs, from the first question to the version after launch.
The idea
Decide the building
before drawing the rooms.
A website that’s different for a reason has to be different in its structure, not just its surface. The businesses I’ve worked with this year came with the same problem in different clothes: twenty competitor sites that were all the same, a sector where everyone looks like everyone, more evidence of the work on Instagram than on the site itself. A new coat of paint doesn’t fix that. A structure that fits the business does — and that structure has to be decided before it’s drawn.
So the work runs in a fixed order. A proposal that says exactly what was agreed; a site architecture, and a brand guide where the brand needs defining, that fix the decisions — together, the pack. Prototypes where an idea needs proving, so nothing is promised that hasn’t been tried. Then design, then the build, then a site that ships with a version number and keeps getting better. Three documents, one voice, and a website that carries the same care as the paperwork.
The pack
Three documents
before a single screen.
Proposal
What was agreed, for how much, by when: what I heard from you, why this approach, every deliverable numbered, the timeline, the price, and where the line sits.
Web Brand Guide
Where the brand needs defining for the web, how it looks, sounds and moves there: the idea, the principles, what the sector does and what you’ll do instead, colour with every contrast pair computed, type, the logo, motion, voice, accessibility. Versioned, printable, yours.
Site Architecture
What the site is and how it’s built, before a screen is drawn: every page and its URL, how it’s navigated, the templates block by block, the content model, the technical shape, the plan, the risks, and the decisions with their owners.
Each pack is written for one client and stays theirs, so none is published here — ours included. What matters is what it does: by the time a screen is designed, every decision that could be expensive later has already been made, in writing, with you.
How it works
Three things,
every time.
Decided before it’s drawn
The pack comes first.
Before anyone designs a screen you have the decisions in writing — a site architecture, and a brand guide where the brand needs defining — that fix what the site is, how it works and how it looks — and design sign-off is a decision you make with those documents in your hands, not with a mood board. The most expensive mistakes on a build are made before the first screen: a page with no home, content with no field to live in, a URL that has to change later. The pack is where they get caught.
Ridden before it’s promised
Nothing goes in a document that hasn’t been scrolled.
Anything that could be a gimmick is prototyped and ridden before it’s written down. On a current project, the first wireframe put bare floor numbers in the header as navigation; riding it showed a number means nothing without its name, and the whole navigation became something better. Three rounds later, the guide says which mechanics are settled, which are still under review, and what each would cost to cut. Prototypes stay private to the client.
Built to be added to
Launch is the first version, not the last.
A modern stack chosen for the project rather than a page builder; a content model that outlives the design; a case study system built for twenty entries, not three. The next phase is an addition, not a rebuild. Every document carries a version history, so the site does too — and a year after launch it should be better than it was on the day, because by then there’s more to show.
After launch
The site
keeps its author.
Launch is the first version, not the last. The first weeks of support are included with every build; after that, the site can keep the person who made it — a fixed number of days a month, a monthly release, and a quarterly look at the architecture that issues a new version of the document. Not a designer on tap: the same hands, so the site is never the thing that was launched two years ago and left.
The way in
Start with a conversation,
or with a document.
A relaxed 30-minute call, or an Architecture Review: a week, and a real document — what your site should be, its pages, its content model, and what it would take. Credited in full if we go on to build it together.