The budget conversation nobody wants to have first
Designing against an unrealistic number is the most expensive thing a studio and a client can do together.
Almost every difficult project we have seen — ours and other people’s — traces back to the same origin: a design developed against a number that was never going to hold. The design is loved, the number arrives, and then twelve months are spent removing the reasons the design was good.
We raise the honest figure in Discovery, before concept. Not a rough range, but a framework: what your scope costs at three levels of finish in your city this year, what the consultant and statutory costs will add, and what a sensible contingency looks like.
Occasionally this ends the conversation. That is a considerably better outcome, for both parties, than ending it eighteen months later.