---
title: "The first two weeks with a new client"
description: "How Fernlow Studio starts every project: a short questionnaire, one kickoff with the person who decides, a shared folder with a fixed shape, and a box of materials in the post."
url: "https://margo-astro.pages.dev/blog/the-first-two-weeks-with-a-new-client/"
date: "2025-11-25"
author: "Elio Brask"
categories: "Business"
---

# The first two weeks with a new client

> How Fernlow Studio starts every project: a short questionnaire, one kickoff with the person who decides, a shared folder with a fixed shape, and a box of materials in the post.

The first two weeks of a project decide how the next ten will feel. When the start is rushed, the same questions come back in month two, louder and more expensive. So we treat the start of a project as work, with its own plan, and we run it the same way for a tea merchant as for a linen maker.

## Before the kickoff: twelve questions

A week before we meet, the client gets a questionnaire with twelve questions. Short answers are fine. A few of them:

- What does the business do, in one sentence a customer would say?
- What should stay exactly as it is?
- Which three places will people meet the brand most often?
- Who signs off, and who else needs to be heard?
- What happened the last time you worked with a designer?

That last one is the most useful. It tells us what the client is worried about, which is usually the thing we have to get right first.

## One kickoff, with the person who decides

The kickoff takes ninety minutes, in person in Rotterdam or Montréal when we can, and the person who will sign off the work is in the room. If they cannot come, we move the date. Starting without them saves a week now and costs a month later, when they see the work for the first time and ask why nobody asked them.

We go through the answers, walk the client through our stages and dates, and agree how we will talk: one written update every Friday, one shared channel for quick questions, and calls only when a decision needs one.

> We would rather move a kickoff than start without the person who signs off.

## One decision-maker, in writing

At the end of the kickoff we write down one name. That person collects feedback from everyone else and sends it to us as one list. It sounds bureaucratic. It is the single change that has saved us the most time in nine years of running the studio.

It does not mean the others go unheard. Their notes still reach us, but through one person who has already settled the contradictions between them, and that person's list is the one we work from.

## A shared folder with a fixed shape

Every client gets the same folder structure on the first day: brief, research, in progress, approved, and final. Files only move forward; if something has to leave "approved", it goes back with a note saying why. Nothing is ever called `final_v3_new`. When a project changes hands inside the studio, the next person knows where everything is without asking.

## Materials, not adjectives

"Warm", "premium", and "honest" mean something different to every person in the room. So we ask for things instead of words. When we started with Osgrove Tea, they sent a parcel: their current tins, three paper bags, the stamp they used on invoices, and a handful of loose leaf in a jar. Halvard Linen sent fabric swatches and the paper tags their weavers tie to each bolt. Those parcels told us more in ten minutes than the questionnaires did in ten pages.

We return the favour. Before the first presentation, we post the client a small set of the papers and colour swatches we plan to use, so they can hold them in their own light before they see anything on a screen.

## Week two: one page back

By the end of week two we send the brief back in our words: one page, with what we heard, what we will make, and what we will not. The client corrects it and signs it off, and only then do we start designing. Two weeks without a sketch can feel slow. It is the fastest way we know to get to the right one.