2024-2026: A Three Year Retrospective
Three years.
Well, two and a half, technically.
As we write this, we're midway through our third year as a company. And as such, we figured we'd offer a retrospective on these past years, in the hopes of inspiring other designers, creatives, and business and agency owners from our learnings.
Scale requires solid foundations
In both business and creative work, any form of scalability requires a steady set of foundations and scaffolding to get there.
For any of our clients who have done $1, 5, 10+ million in ARR, they'll tell you that it wouldn't be possible without the right project management, delegation and division of responsibilities and hiring, and processes as a whole. Most founders want to scale – immediately – but have to ask themselves: even if the clients, customers, and purchases they wanted came in, would their current company architecture be able to handle it?
In the beginning of our third year, a big task for us was redoing all of our SOW, Proposal, Stylescape, and studio templates to reflect the processes and polish we've built throughout the years. Not the most glamorous work, by any means – but some of the most essential.
Layers built upon strong concept
For many junior designers especially, the first instinct after receiving any brief is to start designing.
For us at STUDIOFORM®, it's the last thing we do.
Every single project begins with inquiry; the type of research, discovery, and strategic alignment with our clients that allow us to uncover the themes, directions, and key insights which will help steer everything moving forward.
We think like copywriters and design like researchers. And we research like we're designers.
“Great design can't save a shit idea.”
Clients pay for assurance
As we've grown, the size of our contracts and engagements with clients have, respectively. At first, it was daunting (you're trusting us with…all of this?) and in our minds', it meant introducing a number of new steps, logistics and deliverables to our existing brand process.
The truth? The process for a $100K client vs. a $10K client is virtually the exact same.
If you'd said that to us a few years ago (who are we kidding, last year even), we'd have said "no way."
But the truth is that pricing is all dependent on the value to the client and the impact it drives – the actual four-part process we have behind every identity project virtually applies in the exact same way, across the board.
