The brief is a conversation

Most briefs arrive already sanded down. The edges are gone. What remains is a list of deliverables, a deadline, and a sentence about elevating the brand.

The useful part is usually the sentence someone says out loud and then apologises for. A launch that has to land with one specific room. A name that no longer fits the company they became. A site doing three jobs and doing none of them well.

What I write down

The first conversation is not a workshop. I listen, then I leave with three lines:

• Who it is for
• What must be true when the work is done
• What we will refuse

If those lines are clear, the rest of the project has somewhere to stand. Decks can come later. Mood boards can come later. The three lines cannot.

Studio work is made for someone else. The taste on the page is a negotiation, not a monologue.

Holding a point of view still matters. A client does not hire a mirror. They hire a practice that can say what the work is, and what it is not, without pretending they are a canvas.

When a project starts to wobble, I go back to those three lines. If they no longer match the room, we rewrite them in the open. Quiet scope is how commissioned work stays kind.