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6 min read
How we price a brand without a brief
Every proposal we send starts with one question: what would make this project worth doing? Here is how we turn that into a price.
Ines Kowalski
Founder, creative director
For years we answered that question in hours. Then we stopped counting hours, and the work got better.
The question
Most agencies price from a brief. A brief is a guess written by someone who has not yet seen the problem. We found that the first week of work usually changes the brief, and the invoice with it. So we flipped the order: we price the learning first, then the making.
That first phase is small, fixed and honest. It ends with a short document and a clear next step. If we are not the right studio, you leave with something useful and no further bill.
A price is a promise about what happens next. Make it after you know.
Three numbers
Every project we take now has three numbers on its first page. They are written before we draw a thing and they do not move without a conversation.
Number | What it fixes | Written as |
|---|---|---|
The scope | What exists on the day we hand over | A plain list |
The calendar | How many weeks, with the two dates that matter | Weeks and two dates |
The fee | One figure, with no hourly line under it | One number |
Work in progress from the studio wall.
The pricing page
We published our pricing page in 2022 and expected complaints. Instead the enquiries changed. People arrived already knowing the range, and the first call became a conversation about the work rather than the cost.
It also kept the wrong projects away. A founder who wanted a logo by Friday found the page, understood the pace we work at, and wrote to someone else. Everybody saved a week.
What changed
Our close rate went up, our margins stayed steady and, more importantly, our clients stopped being surprised. Surprise is expensive in this business. Almost every bad project we remember began with a quiet gap between what was promised and what was meant.
Stage | What we do | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
Learn | Interviews, an audit and a one-page written brief | 1 week |
Explore | Three directions on paper, one chosen together | 2 weeks |
Build | The full system, tested on real material | 3 weeks |
Key takeaway
Put the three numbers on the first page, and write them with the person who will read them.
Pricing · Process · Client work
Written by
Ines Kowalski
Ines started the studio in a spare room with two desks and one rule: never make work that could belong to anyone else.
