Questions / 21 answered
The things people ask before they hire us.
Everything a prospective client has asked three times running is on this page, answered properly. If the fourth person has to book a call to find any of it out, we have written the page badly.
01Working together
What it is actually like to have a project running with us.
Angel and Bonolo. There is nobody else. The two people who present the work are the two people who make it, and nothing is handed to a junior after the pitch because there is no junior to hand it to.
The trade is capacity. We run a small number of projects at a time and we will tell you honestly when the next slot is rather than take the work and start it late.
Less than you fear, but it has to be the right time. Three reviews of about ninety minutes each across an identity project, with the person who can actually approve the work in the room. Plus an hour at the start for the interview.
The projects that run over are almost always the ones where the decision maker sent someone else to the reviews.
Yes. Roughly a third of our work is Cape Town, Durban and the Western Cape wine region, and the studio is set up to run a project entirely over video if that suits you better.
Location shoots carry travel outside Gauteng. Everything else costs the same wherever you are.
You will see two directions, drawn far enough apart to be a real choice, and both will be measured against the written position we agreed before anything was drawn. If neither works, that is a signal the position is wrong rather than the design, and we go back to the page rather than drawing a third option and hoping.
Every project includes two rounds of revision on the chosen direction. Beyond that, further rounds are quoted before they happen rather than absorbed silently and resented.
Yes, and most clients end up on one, though we never require it. A creative direction retainer suits a company with its own designers who needs someone setting the standard. A website care plan suits a company that would otherwise let its site rot for eight months.
Both are monthly with thirty days' notice. A retainer that has to be escaped from is not a retainer we want.
02Money
Prices, quotes, deposits and what happens when scope changes.
A full identity system starts at R48 500 including the mark, the colour and type system, application, and the master artwork. A logo refresh, where an existing mark is worth keeping, starts at R18 500.
Every price we charge is on the services page. We publish them because a client who has to book a call to find out whether they can afford us usually just books a call with someone else.
Fixed, quoted before the work starts, off the same catalogue you can read on this site. Hourly billing pays a studio for being slow, which is a strange thing to build a business on.
The only exception is ad hoc studio time for existing clients, which is billed hourly because there is no scope to fix.
A deposit of fifty percent on acceptance of the quote, invoiced as a pro forma, and the balance on handover. Payment is thirty days from invoice unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.
For retainers, monthly in advance.
It gets quoted. A new line, on a new quote, discussed before the work happens. You will never receive an invoice larger than a number you have already agreed to.
Small things inside the spirit of the brief do not get billed. We are not going to invoice you for moving a logo four millimetres.
Not currently, so our documents issue at zero VAT, which is what the law requires until the registration threshold is crossed. Prices on this site are therefore what you pay.
When that changes, it changes on the invoices as well, and you will hear about it before it does.
Thirty days from the issue date, printed on the quote itself. After that we will normally re issue it at the same price unless something in the scope has moved.
03The work
What we do, what we do not, and what you end up owning.
Yes, in full, once the final invoice is settled. Copyright in the delivered work transfers to you, including the master artwork, and this is written into the agreement rather than assumed.
Two carve outs, both normal. Typeface licences belong to the foundry and are licensed to you rather than sold, and we keep the right to show the work in our portfolio unless you ask us not to.
Yes. We specify print properly, with stock, finish and method, so any competent printer can quote from what we hand over. For digital work we will hand over designs and a written specification if you have a development team you would rather use.
We will say honestly that the result is usually about eighty percent of what was presented, for reasons we have written about at length. It is your call, not ours.
We produce the content, in monthly packs, designed and written and exported ready to schedule. We do not run the accounts, reply to comments, or manage a community.
Those are genuinely different jobs and the people who are good at them are not designers.
Often, yes, and we will tell you in the first conversation whether it is worth it. Sometimes the honest answer is that finishing it costs more than restarting, and we would rather say that than take the work and struggle.
Master artwork in every format a printer or developer will ask for, the font files or licences, a written system explaining how it is applied, and the source files. For a site, a deployed site, the repository, and access to everything it depends on.
Nothing is held hostage. If you part ways with us, you can walk away with everything and someone else can pick it up on a Monday.
04Practical
Timelines, availability, and how a project starts.
Usually two to four weeks from an accepted quote. We will tell you the real date in the first conversation, and if it does not work for you we would rather you knew immediately.
An identity system runs eight to ten weeks. A website build, eight to twelve. An online store, ten to sixteen. Packaging for a first SKU, four to six.
Those are working timelines with reviews in them, not best cases. The single largest cause of overrun is waiting for approval, which is why we ask early who is giving it.
Yes, if it is a real one and we know about it up front. We have run a naming, packaging and store launch backwards from a booked manufacturing slot in fourteen weeks.
What we will not do is take a deadline that only works if nobody thinks. We would rather lose the project than deliver something we have to apologise for later.
Fill in the quote request. It takes about five minutes and asks which services you are interested in, your budget range and your timeline, which is enough for us to come back with a real number rather than a request for a meeting.
If you just have a question, use the contact form instead. The two go to different places on our side, which is why they are two forms.
It lands in our internal system and is read by Angel and Bonolo. We do not sell it, share it, or add you to a mailing list you did not ask for.
The full position is set out in our privacy notice, which is written against POPIA and names the information officer.
Not answered
Ask us the one that is not on this page.
It goes straight to the two of us and it will be answered by one of us, usually the same day. If it turns out three people ask the same thing, it ends up on this page.
Or call +27 11 447 0140, Monday to Thursday, 09h00 to 17h00. Friday until 14h00.