Approach
Most studios publish a process diagram that could describe anyone. This is what actually happens on a Makeready project, including what we need from you and where we are likely to disagree.
01
Weeks 1–3
We talk to the people who sell the thing, the people who make it and the people who buy it. We read the support tickets and the lost-deal notes, because they are usually more honest than any research we could commission. You get a written diagnosis at the end, whether or not it is the one you expected.
What we need
Access to your team, your numbers and your unhappy customers.
What we will argue about
Whether the problem you hired us for is the problem you actually have.
02
Weeks 3–6
One position, written plainly, with the trade-offs spelled out. This is a decision document rather than a deck — if it does not rule anything out, we have not finished. Everything downstream gets measured against it, including our own design work.
What we need
One person who can say yes without a committee.
What we will argue about
What you are choosing not to do. This is the difficult conversation, and it is the valuable one.
03
Weeks 6–16
Territories, then pressure testing on your hardest surfaces first — the tiny ones, the ugly ones, the ones with legal text. We work in the open with weekly working sessions rather than staged reveals, because a big reveal is a good way to waste a month.
What we need
Weekly ninety minutes from the decision-maker.
What we will argue about
Scope. We will push back on additions that dilute the thing we agreed.
04
Final 3 weeks
Working files, a written rule set, templates your team will live in, and a session with the people who have to use it. We stay reachable through your first campaign or release at no extra cost, because that is when the real questions arrive.
What we need
The people who will maintain it, in the room.
What we will argue about
Nothing, by this point. If we are still arguing here, something went wrong earlier.
Principles
If the strategy did not rule anything out, nothing was decided. We write down what you are choosing not to do, and we hold you to it through the design.
Every system we make will eventually be used by someone who was not in the room. Documentation, templates and rule sets are scope from day one, not a file we email at the end.
Vans, shop floors, wet bathrooms, ice buckets, direct sunlight. Three weeks of observation has resolved more arguments for us than three months of workshops.
Our best work sits between disciplines — a packaging decision that solves a retail problem, a type hierarchy that is actually a campaign strategy. We staff projects to make that overlap likely rather than accidental.
We set the container first and then push hard inside it. Freedom without a frame produces work that cannot be repeated, and repetition is what builds a brand.
On anything interactive we design the degraded version before the ambitious one, so there is always a floor we would be happy to launch.
Commercials
Most identity and campaign work. We scope it properly, quote once, and absorb our own estimation errors.
For product and system work where the roadmap moves. A named team for a set number of days a month.
Four weeks, prioritised findings, no obligation to continue. The cheapest way to find out if we are useful to you.
Start a project
A 45-minute call with the people who would do the work. If we are not right for it, we will say so and suggest who is.