Listening
Half a day in a room. The argument, not the brief. A week of reading afterwards. No sketches yet.
Speculation · how it might go
Five stages, imagined.
If a studio of this shape existed, and if it ran nine-week engagements, the cadence might look something like this. Treat it as a thought experiment about where the real leverage in design work tends to sit: in the listening, the writing and the physical proof, not in the photogenic middle.
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Writing
Before a single mark is made, a 300-word statement of intent. What the job needs to do, what it can't do. If the page can't be agreed, nothing downstream fixes it.
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Drawing
Three directions. Not seven. Not one. Each gets one real artefact made in it — a page, a cover, a panel — not a moodboard.
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Pressing
Chosen direction, rolled into the system. Real proofs on the real stock. You fix in the brief; the studio fixes in the physical.
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Handing over
Guidelines written like instructions, not like philosophy. The things a designer needs to know in year four.
Questions this exercise invites
Is this on offer?
No. 67b is a speculative journal, not a studio. There is nothing to hire, nothing to quote, nothing to invoice. If you are looking for a real studio to run a project like this, you will need to find one.
Why lay it out at all, then?
Because most design processes published online are marketing dressed as methodology. It's useful to describe a shape of work honestly, without a price at the end, to see what the shape actually looks like.
Would it really take nine weeks?
Probably. The exact number is arbitrary. The general point — that the listening and writing at the start are where the project is won or lost — is, we'd argue, not.
Who holds IP in this imaginary engagement?
A fair default: the client owns everything the studio makes for them; the studio retains the right to show the work. We've written this down because we think it's a sane default, not because anyone is bound by it.