We learned the big reveal in bigger studios. Three quiet weeks, then a meeting room, a long deck and a board turned round at the end. It looked good on the day. A week later it usually went wrong.
The client had seen nothing until that afternoon. They had no say in the turns that led to the board, so they questioned all of them at once. We spent the next fortnight defending choices they would have settled in a minute if we had asked.
We dropped it in our first year at Lime House. You see the work on the day we make it.
What you see, and when
In the first week you get our note from the listening days. You correct it before we draw anything.
Rough directions go on the table while they are still rough. We narrow them with you on one call. You get two rounds, then we build, and the build happens in the same file. Nothing is redrawn to look good in a presentation.
Proofs reach you when they reach us. When Robin runs swatches, you get photos of them next to the old pack, taken in daylight. When Carlisle shoots, you get the selects that evening.
Salty's lemon label as a flat, front and back. The founders saw it on a call, not on a board.
A reveal tells the client what we decided. A contact sheet asks them what they see. The second one makes better work.
Ruth Calloway
Founder
·
Origin®
What it costs us
Showing unfinished work takes nerve. A rough sketch looks rough. A first proof is often wrong, and you see it wrong.
We have stopped minding. A wrong green seen on a Tuesday costs one reprinted swatch. The same green found at a reveal costs a week, and sometimes the client's trust in everything else on the board.
It changes the calls too. With no reveal to protect, nobody performs. We talk about the thing on the table: whether a box reads from the end of an aisle, or whether a tube looks right next to a sink.
What you get instead
There is no single day when everything lands at once. There is a record instead: notes, photos of proofs and contact sheets, in one shared folder, each one dated.
By the end, nothing in the final files is new to you. You have held most of it already. The handover becomes a walk through things you know, which is how it should be.
The theatre is gone. We don't miss it.
