The first two weeks of every project

Clients often expect to see designs at our second meeting. Instead, they see questions.

The first two weeks of every Atrium project are spent gathering: talking, reading, visiting and listening. It is the least visible part of what we do, and the part that shapes everything after it.

Week one: the people

We sit down with founders, team members and, whenever possible, a few customers. We ask about the company's history, the decisions it is proud of and the ones it regrets. We want to understand what the business is for before we think about how it should look.

Week two: the world around it

We visit the places where the brand will live: the shop, the café, the shelf, the screen. We collect what competitors are doing, not to copy it, but to find the space nobody is standing in.

The single page

At the end of the two weeks, we write everything we have learned down onto one page. It names the idea the project will be built on, and it becomes the reference for every decision that follows.

Clients sometimes worry that two weeks without design is two weeks lost. By the end, most of them say it was the most useful part of the whole project.