Working agreement
Internal · fill it in, read it out, get it signed
Filled in before stage one starts, read out loud on the first call, and signed by both of you before any work begins. It is not a contract written to win an argument — it is the shape of the job, written down, so that neither of you is guessing later. Fill the four fields, print it, and go through it a section at a time.
01
Own Craft Studio is building the brand around what you already know how to do. That means deciding who the business is for and what it stands against, giving it a name, a face and a voice, and putting it out into the world so it works without either of us standing next to it.
It runs in three stages, and you can stop after any of them. Each stage ends with something in your hands. Nothing is held back, and whatever is finished when you stop is yours to keep and use.
02
No design happens in this stage. That is deliberate, and it is why everything after it holds together.
What we settle
Not in this stage
You leave with one sentence and a short written positioning note. If we go no further, you still have the most useful thing.
The sentence gets a face. Everything made here comes out of what we decided in stage one, not out of what looked nice.
What gets made
Not in this stage
You leave with a complete brand kit — the first time you see your own thing finished.
Everything switched on and running in your name. After this the brand is open for business.
What goes live
Not in this stage
You leave with a business that is open, consistent everywhere, and yours to run without us.
All three stages: $4,500. A studio will usually quote $5,000 to $15,000 for the same work, as one payment before anything starts. This is three payments, each one after you have seen what the last one produced.
03
Two rounds of changes per stage, and they are real rounds — collect everything and send it once, rather than a note at a time. A third round is fine; it is priced as an add-on rather than absorbed.
Anything outside the list above gets written down and quoted before it is started. Not refused — quoted. You get a price and a rough number of hours, and nothing happens until you say yes. This is the clause that keeps a job finishing on time, and it protects you as much as us: you never receive an invoice for something you did not agree to.
Decisions inside three working days. Not a rule to catch you out — a stage stalls the moment it waits, and the momentum is worth more than the calendar.
One person signs off. Tell me who that is now. Two people is a delay; three is a committee, and a committee spends stage two discussing a colour.
04
Answers to four questions before stage one: what the business is, who it is for, what you sell and roughly what you charge, and where you are now — an idea, already trading, or rebranding something.
Anything that already exists — logos, photographs, copy, account logins — collected in one place. Old and imperfect is fine; missing is what slows things down.
And one honest answer: have you sold this to somebody who was not doing you a favour? If not, go and do that first. Branding an untested guess is an expensive way to find out the guess was wrong, and I would rather say so now than take the work.
05
Three payments, one per stage, each due before that stage starts. $700, then $2,800, then $1,000. Nothing is invoiced in advance of a stage you have not agreed to.
If you stop after a stage, nothing further is owed and everything finished is yours. If a stage is paused for more than sixty days, it restarts at whatever the rate is then — the price is held for the job, not forever.
Costs that are not mine to absorb — domains, fonts, printing, photography, hosting — are yours, bought in your own account wherever possible, and never marked up. You will always be told before anything is bought.
06
Everything finished and paid for is yours, outright, to use however you want, for as long as you want. Master files are organised and handed over at the end of stage three.
Domains, hosting, social accounts and listings are set up in your name and your account, not mine. You should never need my permission to run your own business.
Work that was explored and not chosen stays with the studio. I may show the finished work as a case study once it is public — and I will show you what will be published, and take it down if you ever ask.
07
Either of us can stop at the end of a stage, for any reason, without explaining it. Work completed is paid for; work not started is not owed.
If something is wrong, say it early and plainly. Almost everything is fixable inside a stage and almost nothing is fixable three stages later.
We have both read this. The stages, what is in them, what is not in them, and what each one costs are agreed. Work starts on stage one when this is signed and the first payment is made.
Signed · for the client
Date
Signed · Ant Simmons, Own Craft Studio
Date
Read it out, do not email it. Going through this on a call takes eight minutes and it is the most useful eight minutes of the engagement — it is where scope stops being a surprise. Plain English, not legal advice. This is a working agreement between two people and it is written to be understood, not to be argued in front of anybody. If a job ever gets big enough that you want a lawyer to look at it, that is the right instinct.