Planning our retirement
All good things come to an end and today marks the end of a strategic overhaul for our first ever client. I’m writing this post less than an hour after leaving their office as I didn’t expect to feel quite this way…
I feel bittersweet.
Looking back
Nothing makes us tick quite like crafting a brand identity, building a website or launching a campaign alongside our clients. But we’re not the kind of designers who update business cards, design a one-off poster or populate thirty case study templates.
We do these things as a business. Mark and I don’t tend to do these things ourselves. We conceptualise, strategise and deliver impactful creative.
In an ideal world all of our clients would have the time and budgets to constantly require our services. But consultancy rarely works quite like that, so we deliver toolkits for our clients. These toolkits allow other designers, marketing people and production people to create branded products without our direct involvement.
This is great for our clients. But it means that we’re forever planning our own redundancy.
This feels a bit like a business breakup…
Next week I’ll email our client a link which includes fifteen months worth of ideas, design templates and assorted brand assets. These files will go on to have a life of their own.
If we’ve done our job properly then I won’t open some of those documents ever again.
Like children flying the nest, they’ll encounter people and have experiences that I won’t be a part of. I’m really bloody proud of the work, and I know it’ll be fine without me, but I’m sorry to see the end of this project.
The next chapter
Of course I know I’m being over dramatic. We aren’t parting ways with our client, and this isn’t our only project. As always, the next project will be our best work yet.
This just feels like the end of a great book. I’m not sure what we’re going to read next.
Retiring Don’t Walk
Sooner or later Mark and I are going to buy a boat. Or a shed. Or a camper van. We’ll let you know once we’ve stopped bickering about it.
But that won’t be the end of Don’t Walk. We’re always on the lookout for our next great project.
Fancy working with us?
