Tell us what the thing is for.

What a good first message contains

Four things, in any order.

What the thing is

Who it is for

What it must do that the current version does not

What has already been tried, including the parts that did not work

Two more help enormously. When it needs to be live, and who decides. A message with all six can usually be answered in one reply. A message with none of them usually needs three, which is a slower way to begin.

Length: a paragraph is enough. We have read long briefs that were a wish list and short ones that were a strategy, and the short ones win more often than not. Attachments are welcome if they are real: the current site, a deck, a folder of photographs, a competitor you quietly admire.

What is not needed: a request for proposal written by somebody else, a document with a scoring matrix, or a promise of future work in exchange for a discount. None of those has ever produced a better outcome for either side.

What happens next

You get a reply from a person within two working days. It will be one of three things: a question, a time to talk, or a straight no with a reason. The third is the one most studios avoid, and it is the one that saves everybody the most time.

If we take it further, the next step is a short call and then a written scope: what we understood, what we propose, what it costs, and what we need from you. Nothing starts before that document is agreed, and nothing in it is padded to look thorough. A scope you cannot argue with is a scope nobody read.

What we will ask you to decide

Four decisions, early. The decision-maker, because projects with three of them stall. The budget band, because a band is enough and a number is not required at first contact. The date that actually matters, which is usually an event or a season rather than a preference. And the one thing the project cannot fail at, which is the sentence we will still be reading in month three.

Answer those and the rest is craft, which is our part.

Briefs we are not the right studio for

A logo for a business that has not decided what it sells. A site whose only requirement is to be cheaper than the last one. Search work with no willingness to change the content that is being ranked. A build where the design is already fixed and only the typing is left, because then we cannot verify anything except our own obedience.

We say no to those quickly and without ceremony. It is not a judgement about the business, and it is not a negotiation position. A studio that takes work it cannot do well is a studio that will be back in six months to explain itself.

Other doors

Photography and sittings: villizpixels.com. Film and video: the Film & Pixels page, or a line to the same address with the word film in the subject. Genesis — the content operating layer has its own page. Existing clients with a maintenance issue can use the staff login rather than the general address, which keeps the inbox for new work.

Where we are

We keep no walk-in address on this page. Projects begin in writing and continue in whichever rooms the work needs: a studio for a sitting, a client's office for a walkthrough, a screen for everything else.

That is not evasion. It is a description of how the studio actually runs, and it means the address above is the reliable way to reach it.