What makes us tick?

Last year we started thinking about writing a manifesto. We’d worked on a couple of projects which hadn’t turned out as we’d expected, for one reason or another, and we were trying to work out why… what was it about them that didn’t quite sit right? Or hadn’t finished as we intended? I’m sure everyone’s had work that — even though the client’s pleased with the outcome — you know you could improve, or might have done differently, with the benefit of blissful hindsight.

And while we all have dream clients, it wasn’t about that, either… So we started to think about the things we do best, and the times when we’re most energised, passionate and effective.

We spend a lot of time with our clients working out what’s important to them, and what they want to achieve — generally helping them see the wood from the trees, and articulating the things that they know inside out, but know too well to actually, like, tell people. But, like a busman’s holiday, we don’t necessarily do the same things for ourselves. (And, natch, our own website is always lagging behind everything else we’re doing, too.)

So we came up with a set of guidelines, of sorts. They’re really just for us, rather than our clients. But they represent the things that are important in terms of the way we do things; what we think works and what doesn’t. They’re a reason to say ‘no’ to work that doesn’t really fit us, and mean we can pursue things with joyous abandon too, even if it might not be the ‘conventional’ best business decision. It’s our strategy. In most un-strategic packaging.

So this is it. It’s the things we think best represent us, and the work we do. We are ten next year, after all. It’s probably about time to be a little more grown up about things.

We’re going to be opening out each of the lines into a longer blog, and we’ll each keep posting and writing about them. And we’ve got some more exciting plans for them than that, too.

Keep. Everything. Peeled.

Originally published at wordscape.org.uk on April 23, 2018.