Every studio we know treats the estimate as the boring part. The proposal gets designed, the case studies get rewritten, and the number arrives in a table at the end as though it fell out of a calculator.

What a number is actually saying

A price is a description of the work in one line. It says how long you think the problem is, how much of it you have solved before, and how much room you are leaving for the parts nobody has thought of yet.

• How long the problem is, in weeks you are willing to name out loud.
• How much of it you have already solved on someone else's project.
• How much room you are keeping for the part nobody has thought of yet.

The four lines we always show

We break every estimate into the same four lines, no matter the size of the project. Not because clients ask for it, but because writing them forces us to admit which line we are guessing at.

Discovery is a line, not a favour

The two weeks spent reading, interviewing and arguing before anything is drawn are the two weeks that decide the rest. Giving them away signals they were never worth much.

If the first line of your estimate is free, you have already told the client which part of the work you do not value.

What we stopped doing

We stopped sending ranges. A range is a way of asking the client to pick a number for us, and they always pick the lower one, then remember it as the price.

We also stopped apologising in the covering note. The number is the number. If it is wrong for them, that is a useful thing to find out in week one rather than week nine.